Matt Taibbi

Instead of asking calmly if hydroxychloroquine works, or if the less restrictive Swedish crisis response has merit, or questioning why certain statistical assumptions about the seriousness of the crisis might have been off, we’re denouncing the questions themselves as infamous.

All three of these things are widely discussed in every mainstream media outlet and on the Internet, what the fuck is he talking about? There was literally a widely-shared article in the New York Times YESTERDAY about Sweden's COVID response, there have been clinical trials around the world of hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir whose results are broadly publicized, there is constant discussion of what the true fatality rate per infection is (and general consensus that in most places it's probably less than the 0.9% in the first iteration of the Imperial College model.)

I have no knowledge of whether Taibbi is a rotten person but this is just an incorrect thing for him to be saying.

xp - Back to the job at hand.

@Aimless: I guess so, but it could also be a way to say "I'm sure I'm guilty of this too."

So, here is a thought. If he really had been denouncing those questions, but reversed course and decided that he'd been entirely wrong to do so, wouldn't the appropriate way to correct that be to state: "Like many people, I reflexively dismissed and denounced these questions on inadequate grounds. But now I want to re-examine them, and I suggest you do, too, because if they have merit it is important to discover that."

By writing "Instead of asking calmly... we’re denouncing the questions themselves as infamous", he casts himself as the sole one who understands the merit in asking calmly, and is correcting the faults of the rest of the world. Like I said, if he truly was accusing himself of acting wrongly, this is a disingenuous way to say it.

why do people register here just to shit on everyone

it is their imperative reason for being?

@eephus

I think that's fair. I have seen what he's talking about too, though. There is this constant need by the media to frame everything in how it relates to Trump. And of course these types of stories fuel the outrage networks and drive traffic.

@Aimless
ok. I'm not sure why you're dismissing him based on this rhetorical problem, but fair enough, I guess.

I am not dismissing him. But if you are a writer for a living, your choice of words matters, and if your subject matter is telling others how to interpret and evaluate world events, then doing so disingenuously is not just a rhetorical problem. If his purpose was to admit guilt, then admit it directly, don't implicate the rest of the world and then exonerate yourself.

I've seen what he's talking about but it's on a team-sports level from individuals more than the media, choosing their thoughts and feelings about any given corona-related topic by its positioning against what Trump thinks/says/does. (As the MAGAs have based their positioning on what he thinks/says/does.)

let's get Left banned pronto

ironic

if left posted some Dennis Perrin tweets and dialed down the invective about 40% they'd be you

tsk tsk dontcha luv me no more

I don't have any particular animus against either you or left but I do like to complain

I’m mostly curious who in the media/activist/political sphere Left likes.

"media/activist/political sphere"

gross

icky, eh?

fp'd Left for the Zeppelin comment

Did you ever read what Ellen Sander wrote about them?

I have, yeah :(

shame bell

a "shame post" function is long overdue on ilx

This is good.

The coronavirus bailout could end up being the last chapter in this hideous story. Although we’re seeing a graphic demonstration of how “unskilled” workers like home health aides and delivery people and grocery clerks are actually the vitally important people in our society, they’re not getting the radical rescue. There’s no sudden universal health care, no guaranteed sick leave, no massive jobs plan, just Band-Aids. They will die in massive numbers and emerge from this crisis, if and when it ends, poorer and more vulnerable than before.

But the financial markets are getting the World War II-style “whatever it takes” financial commitment, based upon the continuing fallacy that “wealth creators” must be the first in line for rescue in any crisis. This was a wrong assumption on the decks of the Titanic, a wrong assumption after 2008, and a criminally wrong assumption now.

Continuing belief in the trickle-down myth that has been destroying and dividing this country for decades will kill us faster than any pandemic. If we’re going to spend in “unlimited” amounts, let’s for once do it in the real world and for the people who need it most.

go ahead

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-news-media-is-destroying-itself

This sucks, Morbs come get your boy

i am v curious about the story behind David shor’s firing. i suspect he didn’t get fired for the tweet; it didn’t actually get a bunch of engagement and no big accounts got mad at it, just some randoms in his replies. he also didn’t make a big deal out of it and apologized. feel like he prob has mixed feelings abt dumbasses like Sullivan and Taibbi using him as an example in their tone deaf rehashed culture war pieces

man what the fuck is going on in that newsletter

Cotton did not call for “military force against protesters in American cities.” He spoke of a “show of force,” to rectify a situation a significant portion of the country saw as spiraling out of control. It’s an important distinction.

oh well that clears it up

His lumping in the Bon Appetit thing is flat wrong

yeah the left is... ruining journalism... by identifying racism in in their workplaces

kill all rapists

Tom Cotton wasn't calling for the government to give the mere appearance of potential force. You show force by applying force. The government is not empowered to control peaceful protest through the application of force. It is specifically forbidden from doing so.

Government officials have a duty to obey the law, including the first amendment. Fuck 'the perception that the situation was spiraling out of control'. Perceptions are easily manipulated by the media, which has no duty to the nation, only a human responsibility they are legally allowed to ignore, but morally called to observe.

the NY Times has always been big on moral observation of... eg, supporting and even fueling every US war ever

How does their past support for wars apply to this decision? Seems irrelevant.

times be timesin'

the NY Times has always been big on moral observation of... eg, supporting and even fueling every US war ever

― brooklyn suicide cult (Dr Morbius), Saturday, June 13, 2020 5:29 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm sorry but is taibbi even making this point

idc

lol

Just let my man morbs cook please,brad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFELNIpeTjY

lol

kill all rapists

― If you choose too long a name, your new display name will be truncated in (Left), Sunday, June 14, 2020 12:10 AM (forty-seven minutes ago)

not relevant btw

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eap3DurXsAIGy7D?format=png&name=large

If you weren’t a fan, I’m guessing this won’t change your mind:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility

This notion that color-blindness is itself racist, one of the main themes of White Fragility, could have amazing consequences. In researching I Can’t Breathe, I met civil rights activists who recounted decades of struggle to remove race from the law. I heard stories of lawyers who were physically threatened for years places like rural Arkansas just for trying to end explicit hiring and housing discrimination and other remnants of Jim Crow. Last week, an Oregon County casually exempted “people of color who have heightened concerns about racial profiling” from a Covid-19 related mask order. Who thinks creating different laws for different racial categories is going to end well? When has it ever?

At a time of catastrophe and national despair, when conservative nationalism is on the rise and violent confrontation on the streets is becoming commonplace, it’s extremely suspicious that the books politicians, the press, university administrators, and corporate consultants alike are asking us to read are urging us to put race even more at the center of our identities, and fetishize the unbridgeable nature of our differences. Meanwhile books like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, which are both beautiful and actually anti-racist, have been banned, for containing the “N-word.” (White Fragility contains it too, by the way). It’s almost like someone thinks there’s a benefit to keeping people divided.

he makes bad points imo

during the civil rights era there were racist laws on the books; removing those was a step towards ‘colorblindness’ but it wasn’t good because it was colorblind it was good because it was antiracist. implicit bias in colorblind law and policy now is also bad and changing it would be antiracist and good. how can you do reparations in a colorblind way?

it's wild that someone so ostensibly smart could be this dumb. how do you feel about Affirmative Action, matt? is that part of a conspiracy to 'keep us divided'? fuck's sake

wow that is terrible

so now I've learned Huckleberry Finn is "actually anti-racist."

I'm actually starting that book with my kids tonight and now all I'm going to be able to imagine is Matt Taibbi hunched over my shoulder and forcing me to say the n-word to them every time it appears.

plenty of good reasons to be wary of the white fragility book but i think the taibbi piece doesn't do the best job making the case - this is better:
https://slate.com/human-interest/2019/09/white-fragility-robin-diangelo-workshop.html

as is the ahmed piece linked to in it (that predates white fragility but is a general critique/theorization of whiteness studies):
http://www.borderlands.net.au/vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm

Actually, Taibbi's takes of late have indeed changed my mind, from occasionally enjoying his writing in the past to actively disliking him.

he was calling Democratic leaders hypocrites for saying that the anti-lockdown rallies were dangerous and then promoting the anti-police violence protests. zeroing in on greenwaldian territory.