This one is not even a competition folks.
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Matt Taibbi vs. Byron York
October 15th, 2008
13 Comments
Oliver Willis
Like Kryptonite To Stupid
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Taibbi’s an asshole.
This is what happens when a smart person debates a Right Wing tool.
We weren’t supposed to vote for the smart person for at least the last two elections because they were smarty pants elitists and not in touch with reg’lar people like the peanut butter sandwich eating George Bush, Jr. That didn’t work out so well. Can I vote for the smart guy this time? Pretty please? It’s OK, right? Even if he is elitist becaue he worked his ass off from nothing to attend elitist schools? Right?
Taibbi’s an asshole.
And why do you write that, Kev?
Taibbi’s an asshole.
Facts have an asshole bias.
Beautifully done by Taibbi. No mercy – Mock them – Show disdain for them, they are stupid failures.
And because they are also cowards who can never admit how horrendously wrong they have been, and therefore will never learn, it is up to liberals to treat them like idiot curs and rub their noses in their shit.
Which is something that liberals have a hard time doing because traditionally we try to be humanists and we try to be nicer. But enough is enough.
I’m glad Taibbi is an asshole. We need more people who are correct and who are assholes about it.
Debates aren’t for the sake of educating your counterpart. They are for an audience – proving the strength of your position to your audience.
The popularity of UFC, FOXNews, Donald Trump and other assholes attest, Americans respect viscousness.
It has become so that if you don’t attack an argument with a view to a kill, your audience won’t even give you a chance.
The article Taibbi wrote on Palin for Rolling Stone indicates he’s a wanna-be Hunter S. Thompson. I think Kevin’s assessment is fair based on that article — unlike the much more effectively scorching piece someone else did on McCain for the same issue, it’s just a stream-of-consciousness piece of “wah, people who aren’t like me!” The repeated references to Palin’s fertility were particularly pointless and ugly.
That said, Taibbi does know what a credit default swap is. Maybe Byron York read the Washington Post today and now also knows what one is, and Gramm’s role (as well as that of Greenspan and other Clinton-era officials) in blocking the CFTC from regulating them.
MT was BRUTAL!!!!!!!
Taibbi’s channeling of Dr. Thompson does feel a bit forced, but on the other hand, he pulls it off pretty good (dropping acid and dressing up like a Viking at a Kerry rally works for me).
His dismantling of Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat” dreck is one of the single best book reviews ever. A sampling:
His piece on Palin was funny and justly devastating. As with the recent bit on Karl Rove. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly as Steve Benen (?) observed. This life could stand more Matt Taibbis and fewer Tom Friedmans and the rest of the Village idiots.
Taibbi will never be able to be like HST because despite HST’s fear and loathing of Nixon, he could sit down and talk football with the guy. Taibbi seems distinctly lacking in the ability to recognize the underlying humanity even of those whom he perceives as monsters. I found his Palin piece useless for sending people who didn’t already loathe her — which to me is not a sign that it was “justly devastating” — and not as funny as its hyperbole superficially portended.
But yes, the review of Friedman’s book is excellent. I think that and the argument with York are better playing fields for Taibbi than is the arena of the culture wars. Dissecting the fallacies of other “public intellectuals,” he comes off well; trying to understand the Republican National Convention without the slightest human sympathy for the people who attended it, he comes off as an asshole.
People always say Taibbi’s trying to channel Hunter, as far as I can tell because they both worked for Rolling Stone. FWIW, he says his inspiration is actually H.L. Mencken, which, based on a reading of their respective work seems more appropriate to me than the comparison to Hunter Thompson.
Taibbi’s style isn’t at all like Mencken’s, though the contempt for the booboisie certainly is there in full force. I would agree that he is more Mencken than Thompson in spirit, but the style seems awfully copy-catty of HST’s stunts.
Well I’ll admit I haven’t read THAT MUCH Mencken. In spirit was more or less what I was going for though.
I read a lot of Mencken 10 years ago when I was writing a paper on 1920s American literature. He would have hated Palin too, but of modern political writers, I would say Florence King comes closest to Mencken — a ladylike/ gentlemanly misanthropy. Taibbi comes across as more the type to wear a “Palin is a Cunt” t-shirt. This sentence is the rhetorical equivalent of such a T:
‘Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.’