who is worse - Taibbi or Greenwald

taibi because greenwald has actually done useful journalism in the past.

or does that make greenwald worse because of how far he's fallen?

Voted Glenn due to his direct involvement in sending Reality Winner to prison because he was careless AF.

greenwald has probably caused more people to be murdered or imprisoned overall but taibbi is a serial sexual predator who pays people to harass anyone who mentions this fact online despite his alleged ability to handle criticism on other issues so idk what a utilitarian answer would be here

Clearly it's the Phantom Zone for both of them.

taibbi because greenwald has actually done useful journalism in the past.

Funny, I'd make the exact opposite argument. Greenwald has never been a journalist; he's always been an opinion blogger, going back to the GW Bush administration. Taibbi, meanwhile, did some good work on subprime mortgages and financial corruption in general about 15 years ago. But now they're both irredeemable pieces of shit.

Voted Glenn due to his direct involvement in sending Reality Winner to prison because he was careless AF.

Didn't everyone decide RW was a war criminal last week or something?

Greeenwald definitely would not have been capable of writing some of Taibbi's books--like the one about Eric Garner.

I remember Greenwald--back before he became a right winger--trying to crowd source a title for his upcoming book that was supposed to be about the right's obsession with machismo. I think he ended up calling it Great American Hypocrites or something.

a harder question is why certain
factions which now distance themselves seemed to think for years that defending these fucks from people who accurately characterised who they were and what they were doing was some kind of socialist praxis - despite them not even pretending to be particularly left wing themselves (a related question could also be asked about the level of anglo-left support for the right-wing regimes they've done PR for)

I read both a great deal through 2011; Taibbi wrote well-reported and decently written journalism, almost always fun. He's the one I didn't expect to turn into a quasi-conservative.

I've Tabbi to thank (up to a point) for explaining credit defaults swaps and other late '00 horrors.

but Greenwald wins this poll based solely on his honored guest status on Tucker Carlson's show.

I have to grudgingly admit that taibbi is a better writer than glenn, who never really evolved out of his 2005-era hysterical blogger tone

Didn't Greenwald used to portray himself as a libertarian? He did have a fairly libertarian view of government surveillance, anyway.

I didn’t follow Taibbi but didn’t he start to turn during Covid, and was starting to get obsessed over lockdowns, etc, arguing that Sweden was doing just great,etc?

tabbi is a baby compared to greenwald

tabbi is a babby

how is taibbi formed

have no idea who these two people are.

OK FINE, I know who they are I just don’t give a shit about them.

https://i.imgur.com/F0SCnuI.jpg

I continue to subscribe to Taibbi. He's still doing interesting, useful reporting on finance stuff and other subjects. The whatboutism stuff can be tedious, but I think it's good (for me) to hear opinions outside of my bubble.

"Didn't everyone decide RW was a war criminal last week or something?"

Well the US government decided that and I think the only reason it's come up again is because she was the last person we recall being charged under the Espionage Act which is what is motivating the investigation into Trump. But no, I do not think most rational people believe she is a war criminal, she got railroaded.

Greenwald is worse for reasons stated above (never a good journalist, Taibbi was for a while). Both can eat my shit now.

I meant the reaction to Reality saying she had 600 confirmed kills as a drone operator

Greenwald. Actively working on behalf of the GOP 24/7

xpost oh I totally missed that one.

Yeah she’s definitely a war criminal but for reasons unrelated to why she actually got prosecuted

Whoa I totally missed the drone stuff. Yikes

smh you guys are just haters with max 500 kills

I think Greenwald is worse but they're both afflicted with weird Trump/Russia stuff that I can't totally figure out. (Could add Chris Hedges to that list too.) Something about the Trump era broke them, in a way that the 9/11 era broke the brains of an earlier generation of iconoclasts (Hitchens etc).

He's still doing interesting, useful reporting on finance stuff and other subjects.

other subjects like what, the obsessive transphobia?

i think taibbi might actually be worse now, greenwald is just enjoying the grift of being a useful idiot for the right & is fairly lazy and often weaselly about it while taibbi is a lot more aggressive in his culture-warring

I think Greenwald is worse but they're both afflicted with weird Trump/Russia stuff that I can't totally figure out.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Monday, August 15, 2022 10:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

its just careerism, theyre making way more than they ever did with less work selling newsletters, and theyre both excitable reactionaries without strong politics so it wasnt hard for them to make the pivot when the opportunity presented itself

they were both also fired so they needed to do something

Greenwald has his 87 dogs though

who let the dogs out (glenn did glenn did) (87 of them)

I wonder what Pareene thinks of Taibbi's trajectory

The size of a man's trajectory should tell you nothing about him.

BTE

Greenwald has his 87 dogs though

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Taibbi is putting in his best effort to win this poll.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

straight reprinting the lamest gop talking points

Biden’s handlers had the otherwise inspiring setting of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall bathed in so much blood-red light, he looked like an opening act for Queensrÿche or Rammstein. https://t.co/i8DT7g1kKv

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 3, 2022

love too criminalize crimes

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbwDCD_XwAMVW5W?format=jpg&name=small

first they came for the criminals and i published a newsletter

Bringing the war on terror home? Is this an article from 2004 about the FBI setting up Muslims for bombings that were never going to happen?

The speech Biden’s primetime gambit most resembled was the great demented clarion call of our age, George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address: https://t.co/i8DT7g1kKv

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) September 3, 2022

This motherfucker whined for years about overheated #resistance rhetoric and this is what he thinks about Biden’s thousandth call for civility?

GG in particular has been very concerned about Brandon’s imminent mass arrests of anyone who had a Trump bumper sticker.

starting to think these guys might be racist

Which is worse--poop with corn or poop with peanuts?

Leftist "The Young Turks" co-host and longtime anti-Trumper Cenk Uygur admitted that President-elect Donald Trump’s victory earlier this month brings him "optimism."

Uygur, who routinely railed against Trump for years on his progressive online talk show, posted to his X account on Friday that he had accepted Trump’s win because it meant that "the establishment" had been defeated.

"I've been trying to figure out why I'm more optimistic now than I was before the election, even though I was so against the guy who won. I know now. MAGA is not my mortal enemy (and neither is the extreme left). My mortal enemy is the establishment. And they have been defeated!" he wrote.

It feels like what happened to Taibbi/Greenwald is writ large across independent media. Right wing media supports Trump. Centrist media says both sides are crazy, so it makes sense to support Trump. Left wing media says both parties are the same but Trump is at least anti-establishment, which is actually the most important thing. And corporate media is flying down to mar-a-largo to smooth things over

If you cant beat them...

"I've been trying to figure out why I'm more optimistic now than I was before the election, even though I was so against the guy who won. I know now. MAGA is not my mortal enemy (and neither is the extreme left). My mortal enemy is the establishment. And they have been defeated!" he wrote.

Really though I just think this is bullshit "I wasn't wrong, I'm not a loser" cope from a guy I've never had any respect for and who for all his protestations to the contrary has clearly craved becoming part of the pundit class, but for the left, for the $$$ and for his ego.

TYT codes centrist liberal rather than left, right? Certainly I've never heard anything but scorn about them in the leftist spaces I visit...

I guess by "for the left" I mean more "not explicitly right-wing", though his "my mortal enemy is the establishment" stance doesn't feel very centrist

Yeah no it's a turn for sure but it's a turn to maga from the center imo.

A lot of centrist-branded media has been on the anti-establishment train for a while now too though, all roads lead to Trump

TYT is now in a flame war with Sam Seder and the Majority Report that is seemingly driving Cenk and Anna insane.

hey look it's infectious

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/democratic-lawmaker-immediately-defects-to-gop-after-winning-re-election/ar-AA1vyCIh

xpost

I mean how fucking embarrassing is this? This woman used to do a Jacobin show with Michael Brooks.

forgot link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4INl-LYCoo

Čenk and Ana are multimillionaires living in SoCal and occasionally have opinions as such. They have also been professional media creatures for many years which tends to detach you from a lot of reality, even if your overall leanings are vaguely progressive/left-liberal.

Being rich media creatures, they also react badly when pushed back against a couple of their bad stances(particularly against homeless people) on social media.

I say this not to absolve any of what’re En route they’re doing, so much as giving it context.

Cenk's been a little shit about everything for years, notably people asked why his media company was not specifically but definitely named for people responsible for the Armenian genocide and it took him a while to admit it was real! Political soapboxing is almost always policy second and gesticulating at policy while laying on personality first, and it really only happens that people align with you on policy and not identity writ large, but identity as personality.

My mortal enemy is the establishment. And they have been defeated!" he wrote.

This is a negligible distance from "I don't care if it's stupid or harms me more than it helps, so long as it pwns the Libs!!!!"

i mean we all know this but also it just…isn’t true? like replacing career politicians with the wealthiest cabinet in history isn’t actually getting rid of any establishment. just very simple thinking, but then again, the person is a political podcaster so it checks out.

It depends how you (or they) define establishment. Another of these nebulous shape shifting terms used to mean different things by different people, but I think what a lot of people mean when they say anti-establishment, is actually anti-institution.

This allows Trump, Musk et al to be anti-establishment, in the way that they are anti-institution. Power should be contained in the body of the person, not the office. Faceless bureaucratic administrators are the problem, in Washington, in Brussels, in London, and also in HR at your job, and on the other end of the phone call you're currently 19th in line on.

The fault is not with the Tsar, the fault is with the Boyars. The Tsar isn't the establishment, the Boyars are the establishment.

Replacing career politicians with billionaires is moving power from Boyars with their pens and their papers and their rules and their regulations, with Tsars who are unencumbered with all that nonsense

That is obvious, and my point is that this sort of definition of “establishment” is frankly, stupid

This is the problem with definitions in general though! The ones that are used, for most of these things, are incorrect - but getting caught up on that is a fools errand. What matters is what people mean, whether they use the right definitions or not

And I think getting caught up on this is counter-productive, being technically correct but narratively wrong is always going to lead to missing the point

I don’t really agree that it’s a fool’s errand but ymmv

I don't see a lot of this "optimism" from Uygur or anyone else surviving the reality of Trump being president again for very long. Some people are somehow pretending it's not going to be a disaster, "maybe there'll be room for new ideas," etc. But of course it's going to be a disaster. The excuse here is that he won, so maybe the electorate knows something that all those smartypants scolds don't. But the electorate does not, in fact, know very much at all.

There's nowhere else for them to go until there's a new train to jump on. And just because it will be a disaster that doesn't necessarily make it Trumps fault

It will only be Trumps fault if the electorate decide it is. They don't need to know anything to have an opinion

But that doesn’t mean their opinion is valid or backed up by any sort of facts or evidence, or that you or I or anyone who isn’t a fucking moron has to respect it.

I don't have to respect it, and I don't respect it.

If I'm in a dinghy and everyone decides dinghy's go faster when you let the air out, then the air is going to get let out whether I respect it or not. I'll need more than facts and evidence to keep that air in

The ones that are used, for most of these things, are incorrect - but getting caught up on that is a fools errand.

What isn't a fool's errand in your opinion? From your posts I've gathered your MO is mostly doing ethnographic work in order to better understand the right wing mind, and I def don't think that's useless, but there's limitations to passive observation, no?

Facts and figures about the economy may have all been correct, facts and figures on crime, on immigration, they may call be correct, but so what? At the end of the day they really were eating the cats and the dogs and China is going to pay for it, and its just a better story and more watchable

yeah, the “the right tells better stories” argument, which i would argue is true! i just couldn’t figure out whether you were applauding the fact that people believe these stories or merely stating that they believe them and we have to come up with better ones on the left. this latter point is one i agree with.

Fools errand wasn't the best choice of words. What I mean is if someone says its rained all day every day and you say "actually to be clear its didnt rain on Thursday morning so you're wrong" you would be missing the point of what they're saying, and misreading the room

ie being right isn't enough, not even close!

or being far right

I used to make it a habit to check out cloacas like NRO to Understand the Conservative Mind but now I think their writers should die painfully.

i just couldn’t figure out whether you were applauding the fact that people believe these stories or merely stating that they believe them

Yes, being descriptive not normative, and definitely not applauding. I could have phrased better

I don't really think this is all that much to do with "the conservative mind". I used to, but now I think its much more generalised than that.

The internet has made us even stupider as a species

I think stupidity is a part of it, but also the way language works and the way we use flexible shortcuts, the literal truth of them often isn't meant. But we know what is really meant (tho can anyone get annoyed if someone else doesn't?). Bernie described himself as a socialist, but no one gets all "well actually" about it. Its not meant in a literal sense, and people implicitly understand that. Except when they don't.

You have to meet people where they are with the terms and framing they use

do you?

your entire shtick here is just like an exercise in rhetoric, right? i found most of what you've posted to be utterly vacuous.

TYT has earned one eyeroll after the next for as long as I've heard of them - being a midpoint between Democracy Now and MSNBC while run by half-wit egomaniacs limits your brand growth.

You love to see it:

Ranking Member Kamlager-Dove calls GOP witness Matt Taibbi a "serial sexual harasser" and enters articles into the congressional record about his history as a sex pest

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llr2v5wu3s23

https://bsky.app/profile/nytpitchbot.bsky.social/post/3llprsvndns2p

uh oh, Taibbi was not pleased with the congresswoman's words

https://bsky.app/profile/noupside.bsky.social/post/3llwp5nouak2fp

About the videos: pic.twitter.com/TfkSyWowMJ

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) May 30, 2025

"I will continue the many prongs of my journalism."

The mighty prong of the free press will not go limp

Its so weird that he didnt have this reaction when Hunter Biden’s private sex stuff got leaked. Its not like Glenn to have double standards about this kind of stuff, hope he’s ok

Wouldn't wish this on anyone, though.

I'm always surprised when someone who takes on billionaires and governments still does anything sexual with a camera nearby. This one, with its findom/humiliation side, reminds me of Toobin as much as anything.

there is not enough money in this or any other world to make me want to voluntarily know anything about the contents of Glenn Greenwald's sex videos

yeah its objectively a bad thing to happen to anyone but definitely filing this under "couldnt happen to a nicer guy", plus ofc if the same material leaked of a politician or even another journo that he didnt like, he would be chaining himself to a cross on the white house lawn to protest the fact that CNN wasnt broadcasting the uncensored tape twice a day

I disagree with and more than disagree with so many things you've said and done over the years, Glenn. But this is 100% your own business. And I applaud and support your telling everyone that.

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 30, 2025

it is a weird situation in which he RT'd a frame from one of the videos first, then deleted it; and, given the described content of the video (self-abasement/findom), the longer post itself may be part of a dynamic? pretty odd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arbuX0CHLyU

damn u JCLC for making me consider the “about the videos” note is also part of the kink