Matt Taibbi Parroting squawkbox Pundits And a dirty dozen more * Orson Scott Card * Theo van Gogh * Ron Reagan * Noam Chomsky * Wayne Allyn Root * Diamond & Silk * The Young Turks * Kaitlin Bennett * Dylan Wheeler * David Clarke * Candace Owens * Black Pigeon Speaks v \- t \- e | This page contains too many unsourced statements and needs to be improved. * * * Matt Taibbi could use some help. Please research the article's assertions. Whatever is credible should be sourced, and what is not should be removed. | Matt Taibbi (1970–) is the son of Edward R. Murrow Award-winning journalist Mike Taibbi and an incredibly snarky motherfucker who currently writes for Rolling Stone. His style is hard to describe, but it's something like one part Mencken, one part Hunter S. Thompson, and one part Gen X cynicism. He is an atheist and, while not related to the skeptical movement, has written on fundamentalism and 9/11 conspiracy theories. In his book The Great Derangement, he describes his experiences as both a deep cover fundie and Truther. At one point, he infiltrates the ministry of the whackjob preacher John Hagee, revealing Hagee's ties to Israeli lobbyist groups. His office was also picketed by Truthers after he called them "insane" and "deranged" in his blog. Those posts are also now completely spammed with Truther comments about him being a gatekeeper and Mossad agent. ## Contents * 1 Born in the sewer: the eXile * 2 Later years * 3 External links * 4 Notes * 5 References ## Born in the sewer: the eXile[edit] Together with Mark Ames, Taibbi ran an English-language tabloid in Moscow, Russia called the eXile, which lasted from 1997 to 2008. the eXile was characterized by "its high-low mix of acute coverage and character assassination, sermonizing laced with smut",[1] but the tabloid was also characterized by the two men who ran the paper, who were known "singly or in combination, children, louts, misogynists, madmen, pigs, hypocrites, anarchists, fascists, racists, and fiends."[1] If it wasn't bad enough that they may have been some of these things in a general sort of way, the duo also misogynistically attacked specific women.[2][3] ## Later years[edit] Taibbi has gotten embroiled in further controversy over his recent work on Wall Street, the housing bubble, and his latest book Griftopia. In the book, he referred to Alan Greenspan as "the biggest asshole in the universe" and in an earlier column called Goldman Sachs a "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." This set off controversy and drama in the political blogosphere, most notably when McMegan attempted a poor excuse for a rebuttal to his Goldman piece.[note 1] The Goldman piece became so famous that the bank's spokesman came out and denounced it as "a collection of conspiracy theories" and then failed to deny the factual accuracy of the piece. Taibbi is probably the only person who can write a sentence including the words "credit default swap" and "fucking asshole" and manage to make it humorous, making him one of the few journalists around today who's worth a damn. He has repeatedly dumped on the media for shilling for Bush's wars, misreporting the financial crisis, and general hackosity. In an appearance on Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said of Michele Bachmann: "This morning outside of Penn Station, I saw a guy huffing glue out of a paper bag and he made more sense than Michele Bachmann was making."[4] In 2014, he left Rolling Stone to start a new blog at First Look Media focused on "the ongoing financial crisis – and… the political machinery that makes it possible."[5] However, he departed First Look after several months without publishing anything due to conflicts with the company's management, and returned to Rolling Stone. Taibbi has stated that he thinks Trump most likely colluded with Russia, but that a lot of mainstream media have lately indulged in a form of Trump-Russia conspiracy theory hysteria (i.e. "Putin derangement syndrome") where even the most extreme theories are taken seriously, and anyone who doubts them is branded as being part of the plot.[6][7] In October 2017, the MeToo social movement began, sparked by revelations of sexual abuse by powerful figures such as Harvey Weinstein. Consequently, in a 2017 interview with Taibbi, an NPR reporter brought up some uncomfortable passages in his 2000 memoir on the eXile that seemed to detail sexual harassment and other abuse of young women. This raised a bit of a public furor.[8] While Taibbi apologized for the book (sort of, while also deflecting attention from the book by calling it a "giant satire"), Taibbi's article topics noticeably changed around this time. Increasingly, Taibbi went on a path similar to Glenn Greenwald, where his combative, contrarian-jackoff-style articles were largely directed at barbs about the American press (which, ironically for an ideological barnstormer-style reporter, he saw as too ideological and "woke"), purported censorship by Big Tech, and "both sides" style arguments no matter how ridiculous they ended up being.[9] This paradigm has led to some noticeable blind spots in his reporting, such as failing to recognize Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to the point where he called early reports pointing to an imminent invasion a "big international PR win" for Putin for some reason.[10] In early December 2022, Taibbi got some attention when he teamed with Elon Musk to make some supposed "bombshell" revelations where, in 2020, the Joe Biden campaign asked Twitter to remove some posts with Hunter Biden in it. It turns out that these posts were revenge porn style nudes of Hunter tweeted from a Chinese account, posts which violated not only Twitter policy, but violated California law as well. [11][12] ## External links[edit] * Unnamed New Financial Blog at First Look * Taibblog at Rolling Stone * Old Taibblog at True/Slant, now defunct. * That time Matt threw a horse semen pie in someone's face.[No, not The Onion] * the eXile ## Notes[edit] 1. ↑ She referred to him as the "Sarah Palin of journalism," but conceded all his factual evidence and then argued his conclusion was wrong, leading to her famous statement that it was "technically true, and collectively nonsense." ## References[edit] 1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lost Exile: The unlikely life and sudden death of The Exile, Russia’s angriest newspaper. by James Verini (February 24, 2010 12:00 am) Vanity Fair (archived from October 28, 2017). 2. ↑ The two expat bros who terrorized women correspondents in Moscow: Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames trafficked in hideous stereotypes and body-shaming. by Kathy Lally (December 15, 2017 at 4:42 PM) The Washington Post. 3. ↑ The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia by Mark Ames & Matt Taibbi (2000) Grove Press. ISBN 0802136524. 4. ↑ Taibbi on Hardball 5. ↑ Matt Taibbi To Lead First Look’s Next Digital Magazine 6. ↑ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/something-about-this-russia-story-stinks-w458439 7. ↑ http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/taibbi-putin-derangement-syndrome-arrives-w474771 8. ↑ "U.S. journalist faces sexual harassment furor over memoir" by Dan Whitcomb, Reuters, 2017 October 28 9. ↑ "What Happened to Matt Taibbi? The former darling of the liberal media is now one of its loudest critics. He says he hasn’t changed." by Ross Barkan, New York, 2021 October 29 10. ↑ "Matt Taibbi Apologizes for Insisting Russia Wouldn’t Invade Ukraine: ‘When You’re Wrong, You’re Wrong’" by Ross A. Lincoln, Wrap, 2022 February 24 11. ↑ "Elon Musk's 'Twitter Files' drop revealed some of the tweets the Biden campaign asked the social app to remove were nude photos of Hunter Biden spread without his consent" by Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, Business Insider, 2022 December 3 12. ↑ "No, You Do Not Have a Constitutional Right to Post Hunter Biden’s Dick Pic on Twitter" by Tim Miller, Bulwark, 2022 December 3