@Matt Taibbi you’d probably hate this article quite a bit but you might like the ending, consider reading it and telling me why I’m wrong (I am aware he will never see this, yes)
Apr 14, 2023·edited Apr 14, 2023Liked by Laura Jedeed
Excellent article. It makes me want to think and comment but I need time to digest it before really getting into it.
Taibbi is weird and sad and infuriating. I subscribed to him when he first started on substack. I read his serialized first draft of Hate Inc and it legitimately changed, on a fundamental level, the way I consume media to this day, I would like to think for the better. His analogy of big media being essentially cigarette breaks makes intrinsic sense to me. If I had to pick between him and Greenwald for "journalist I used to respect but turned heel", I think I'd probably pick Taibbi.
I didn't dig a lot into the Twitter files but Taibbi was so rabid to tear into them that he left a *lot* of factual errors behind him from other peoples' critique and left a lot of things that feel ethically questionable to me in them, including personal details. It bothered me he was so pumped to work the story he never stopped for a moment to wonder if he was getting curated views of Twitter or everything, unvarnished. Like you said, he never questioned the reasons *why* Musk has done what he has done. He didn't want to dry up the spigot of what he probably thought was career-defining.
I've said elsewhere that Musk loves making the grand, over the top bonkers gesture, and I can see how that could be catnip to someone like Taibbi. It's surprising and sobering to me to watch him walk into the mouth of the beast with a grin on his face and barely a second thought.
Yeah, the lack of nuance was extremely upsetting to me. Like, dude, this really IS a big story, why wouldn't you DO it like a big story? But he didn't. He charged in and made propaganda for the richest man on earth
I used to read everything by Matt Tiabbi. I really thought he was speaking truth to power. But then, like green Greenwald, I guess they saw another source of income. Shilling for the far right. I have a hard time understanding how the man who wrote Griftopia behaved that way during the eXile years and now so aggressively seeks negative attention on twitter.
Maybe I’m not surprised. Insecure men ultimately behave in predictable fashion. I haven’t quite figured out why him and Greenwald are so vocal denouncing Russian actions…often wondered of the existence of a Kompromat back from those days in Moscow. But it could be as simple as there being more money fanning the flames of right wing angry outrage than writing for rolling stone, or going on democracy now like Greenwald. Maybe white men are just not ok. Maybe he just never recovered because we know those days were not "satire", but are irredeemable to being a real journalist. He was a hero to me for awhile, I'll never forget the piece he did on how the venture capitalists stole the pensions of public employees in RI.
I have not been able to take the twitter files seriously. Because i never believed for a minute that Elon believed in free speech. I certainly don't think twitter did things well, but I cant understand why it's not obvious that users and advertisers do not want to use a platform alongside racists. or why it would want the responsibility of a user fomenting an insurrection.
How could the guy who wrote vampire squid trust a billionaire? I'm flabbergasted. These men just don't seem ok. maybe twitter killed them, in the end.
It's heartbreaking from start to finish. There is a definite pattern of a certain genre of (male) iconoclastic barn-burning leftist drifting rightward and it's very disturbing and we need to figure out what the hell is going on there...
I’ve been talking a bit with other folks who loved Tiabbi and Greenwald. I do think Tiabbi definitely lost his way after getting metoo’d. He spent his early career in the gutter and unfortunately it followed him into the future when he was doing serious work. Instead of taking responsibility, it’s the radlib medias fault! I think it’s safe to say it’s Matt that ruined his career, but I do agree that we can’t destroy people over parts of their past life and that’s when things went off the rails. Why was Al Franklin destroyed ? A combination of overzealous “gotcha” and politician hit job, combined with men having a real inability to create a real apology and reckoning.
However, I also think there’s something else obvious going on. And Greenwald outs himself right here:
“The minute you declare yourself nonbinary or trans," Greenwald declared, "you catapult up the ladder of oppression that absolutely confers concrete benefits."
What’s going on with these men? Well, they aren’t being centered anymore. It’s not all about them anymore. I think it really can be as simple as that.
Why does Bernie never gain traction? because these men want to break down everything on the basis of economics. They don’t want to talk about race because now it’s not all about them. I really think that’s a huge part of it. The world isn’t revolving around these white men and they can’t share space . Even formally “left-leaning” champions. It strikes too hard at their ego. And it’s no surprise they also have a misogynistic past, like Tiabbi. They are angry and that was fine as long as it was about them and the economy. It’s not anymore and it’s untenable.
Greenwald has always had spectres in his history. I didn't find out until years later but before he was a journalist he was a lawyer, who got into trouble, and defended an extreme and violent white supremacist.
I think Greenwald allows himself to be used as a shield for bigots and terrible people because he thinks that in protecting the worst scum he's protecting everyone. That's my best-case read on him. At worst, he has a massive blind spot to far right hate and violence that he has no interest in acknowledging.
Taibbi I think has just been consumed with rage and it makes him easy to manipulate. He described writing Hate Inc as like a long series of vents that eventually turned into a book. He's a man looking to swing a wrecking ball at an industry that he thinks has abandoned himself and other people from my read. If that means being pals with Musk, because Musk gives him a massive metaphorical axe to swing, he's willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of things because that axe looks fucking sweet.
As always, I appreciate this beautifully written article.
However, I’m still very confused on why people see The Twitter Files as being so significant. As far as I can see, it doesn’t tell us anything we as the public shouldn’t already know or at least expect from the federal government.
After 2016, foreign election interference was a big problem. Social media was being used as a tool to spread lies and incite conflict. The government was expected to do something about it, and they did.
They told us they would partner with private companies. They told us they would flag individual accounts. Why is anyone shocked that they did exactly that?
That's fair. I wasn't shocked by the Twitter files exactly, and I would like to sit down and really go through the claims given various discrepancies and sloppiness. But a lot of this, to me, goes beyond targeting malicious foreign actors. The Hunter Biden laptop story remains the most troubling example of this to me. The laptop itself does not matter, but the suppression--I don't like it. As I understand it, the Twitter files exposed just how coordinated that suppression was
I started to read this article because I like your writing but honestly I cannot waste this much time on Matt Taibbi. He’s just an arrogant asshole and not worth all of this analysis. even when he was further to the left his arrogance was revolting. Whether he’s killed or quietly disappears or something in between makes no difference to me. I’ll catch you on the next one.
Totally get that--he has become kind of the worst and if I wasn't in mourning for this dumb bird app I just quit I might not have written something this long about it (or anything at all)
I have no idea what is going on with Matt now. He absolutely does not seem as dumb as he’s acting these days, which makes me wonder - does he really believe this now? Did he really get this stupid? Was there lead in the paint of his new house? I honestly always assumed he just wanted a real media job and was acting how one acts when you want to be part of the mainstream journalism club. But the more I’ve read lately, the more I think he’s just lost perspective, does not understand the world anymore and vaguely resents young people who do. It’s baffling and depressing, and it’s strange to see how far he’s drifted from former colleagues like Mark Ames, John Dolan and Yasha Levine.
Did actually mean "finance" on this one, maybe I should change it to "financial issues" to make it more clear. Taibbi's beat was the financial sector and how he managed to make that exciting and fun to read I will never fully understand
Typo corrections are always welcome: spelling is not my strong suit and I tend to write these very quickly.
I saw a couple of other typos but I would feel better flagging them behind the scenes if you tell me how to do that. They are not important. People will understand what you're saying. Copyediting is on the level of a manicure: it makes a subliminally better impression on that shrinking subset of people who still are familiar with English's perverse spelling quirks.
After reading the article, I deleted my other comments about typos and homonyms. My generation will die out soon, and then people can spell things however again, like Shakespeare, and no one will know the difference, and that will be fine.
Thank you for this comment... If I wasn't broke and distrustful of every single thing on the internet, I would send you a gift basket of tea and handmade shortbreads just for reminding me of some of my favorite teachers, who were kind and thoughtful for no other reason than they knew they should be.
And her writing is really is superlative, even if this was rushed and overly long. I get the frustration with journalism, but there's no reason Taibbi should be living in her head rent-free.
Audio is up!
@Matt Taibbi you’d probably hate this article quite a bit but you might like the ending, consider reading it and telling me why I’m wrong (I am aware he will never see this, yes)
Excellent article. It makes me want to think and comment but I need time to digest it before really getting into it.
Taibbi is weird and sad and infuriating. I subscribed to him when he first started on substack. I read his serialized first draft of Hate Inc and it legitimately changed, on a fundamental level, the way I consume media to this day, I would like to think for the better. His analogy of big media being essentially cigarette breaks makes intrinsic sense to me. If I had to pick between him and Greenwald for "journalist I used to respect but turned heel", I think I'd probably pick Taibbi.
I didn't dig a lot into the Twitter files but Taibbi was so rabid to tear into them that he left a *lot* of factual errors behind him from other peoples' critique and left a lot of things that feel ethically questionable to me in them, including personal details. It bothered me he was so pumped to work the story he never stopped for a moment to wonder if he was getting curated views of Twitter or everything, unvarnished. Like you said, he never questioned the reasons *why* Musk has done what he has done. He didn't want to dry up the spigot of what he probably thought was career-defining.
I've said elsewhere that Musk loves making the grand, over the top bonkers gesture, and I can see how that could be catnip to someone like Taibbi. It's surprising and sobering to me to watch him walk into the mouth of the beast with a grin on his face and barely a second thought.
Yeah, the lack of nuance was extremely upsetting to me. Like, dude, this really IS a big story, why wouldn't you DO it like a big story? But he didn't. He charged in and made propaganda for the richest man on earth
God damn it
I used to read everything by Matt Tiabbi. I really thought he was speaking truth to power. But then, like green Greenwald, I guess they saw another source of income. Shilling for the far right. I have a hard time understanding how the man who wrote Griftopia behaved that way during the eXile years and now so aggressively seeks negative attention on twitter.
Maybe I’m not surprised. Insecure men ultimately behave in predictable fashion. I haven’t quite figured out why him and Greenwald are so vocal denouncing Russian actions…often wondered of the existence of a Kompromat back from those days in Moscow. But it could be as simple as there being more money fanning the flames of right wing angry outrage than writing for rolling stone, or going on democracy now like Greenwald. Maybe white men are just not ok. Maybe he just never recovered because we know those days were not "satire", but are irredeemable to being a real journalist. He was a hero to me for awhile, I'll never forget the piece he did on how the venture capitalists stole the pensions of public employees in RI.
I have not been able to take the twitter files seriously. Because i never believed for a minute that Elon believed in free speech. I certainly don't think twitter did things well, but I cant understand why it's not obvious that users and advertisers do not want to use a platform alongside racists. or why it would want the responsibility of a user fomenting an insurrection.
How could the guy who wrote vampire squid trust a billionaire? I'm flabbergasted. These men just don't seem ok. maybe twitter killed them, in the end.
It's heartbreaking from start to finish. There is a definite pattern of a certain genre of (male) iconoclastic barn-burning leftist drifting rightward and it's very disturbing and we need to figure out what the hell is going on there...
I’ve been talking a bit with other folks who loved Tiabbi and Greenwald. I do think Tiabbi definitely lost his way after getting metoo’d. He spent his early career in the gutter and unfortunately it followed him into the future when he was doing serious work. Instead of taking responsibility, it’s the radlib medias fault! I think it’s safe to say it’s Matt that ruined his career, but I do agree that we can’t destroy people over parts of their past life and that’s when things went off the rails. Why was Al Franklin destroyed ? A combination of overzealous “gotcha” and politician hit job, combined with men having a real inability to create a real apology and reckoning.
However, I also think there’s something else obvious going on. And Greenwald outs himself right here:
“The minute you declare yourself nonbinary or trans," Greenwald declared, "you catapult up the ladder of oppression that absolutely confers concrete benefits."
What’s going on with these men? Well, they aren’t being centered anymore. It’s not all about them anymore. I think it really can be as simple as that.
Why does Bernie never gain traction? because these men want to break down everything on the basis of economics. They don’t want to talk about race because now it’s not all about them. I really think that’s a huge part of it. The world isn’t revolving around these white men and they can’t share space . Even formally “left-leaning” champions. It strikes too hard at their ego. And it’s no surprise they also have a misogynistic past, like Tiabbi. They are angry and that was fine as long as it was about them and the economy. It’s not anymore and it’s untenable.
Greenwald has always had spectres in his history. I didn't find out until years later but before he was a journalist he was a lawyer, who got into trouble, and defended an extreme and violent white supremacist.
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2019/05/the-pontifex-maximus-and-his-lawyer.html
I think Greenwald allows himself to be used as a shield for bigots and terrible people because he thinks that in protecting the worst scum he's protecting everyone. That's my best-case read on him. At worst, he has a massive blind spot to far right hate and violence that he has no interest in acknowledging.
Taibbi I think has just been consumed with rage and it makes him easy to manipulate. He described writing Hate Inc as like a long series of vents that eventually turned into a book. He's a man looking to swing a wrecking ball at an industry that he thinks has abandoned himself and other people from my read. If that means being pals with Musk, because Musk gives him a massive metaphorical axe to swing, he's willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of things because that axe looks fucking sweet.
Brava! This is why I send you money. Brave , incisive and self-aware. Matt should read your work.
After reading this I had to subscribe!
Super glad to have you here!
Laura you're killing it. Great article.
As always, I appreciate this beautifully written article.
However, I’m still very confused on why people see The Twitter Files as being so significant. As far as I can see, it doesn’t tell us anything we as the public shouldn’t already know or at least expect from the federal government.
After 2016, foreign election interference was a big problem. Social media was being used as a tool to spread lies and incite conflict. The government was expected to do something about it, and they did.
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-director-christopher-wrays-statement-at-press-briefing-on-election-security
They told us they would partner with private companies. They told us they would flag individual accounts. Why is anyone shocked that they did exactly that?
That's fair. I wasn't shocked by the Twitter files exactly, and I would like to sit down and really go through the claims given various discrepancies and sloppiness. But a lot of this, to me, goes beyond targeting malicious foreign actors. The Hunter Biden laptop story remains the most troubling example of this to me. The laptop itself does not matter, but the suppression--I don't like it. As I understand it, the Twitter files exposed just how coordinated that suppression was
I started to read this article because I like your writing but honestly I cannot waste this much time on Matt Taibbi. He’s just an arrogant asshole and not worth all of this analysis. even when he was further to the left his arrogance was revolting. Whether he’s killed or quietly disappears or something in between makes no difference to me. I’ll catch you on the next one.
Totally get that--he has become kind of the worst and if I wasn't in mourning for this dumb bird app I just quit I might not have written something this long about it (or anything at all)
Catch you next time!
I have no idea what is going on with Matt now. He absolutely does not seem as dumb as he’s acting these days, which makes me wonder - does he really believe this now? Did he really get this stupid? Was there lead in the paint of his new house? I honestly always assumed he just wanted a real media job and was acting how one acts when you want to be part of the mainstream journalism club. But the more I’ve read lately, the more I think he’s just lost perspective, does not understand the world anymore and vaguely resents young people who do. It’s baffling and depressing, and it’s strange to see how far he’s drifted from former colleagues like Mark Ames, John Dolan and Yasha Levine.
My working theory is "advil"
Whatever it is, it's fucking sad. He didn't used to be like this
Yeah that was weird. It made me ask "hangover"?
Also, I wanted to say this is a great article, Laura. Encapsulates many of mu thoughts about Matt but is much more eloquently put.
"Taibbi did it with finance. " Typo for finesse?
Did actually mean "finance" on this one, maybe I should change it to "financial issues" to make it more clear. Taibbi's beat was the financial sector and how he managed to make that exciting and fun to read I will never fully understand
Typo corrections are always welcome: spelling is not my strong suit and I tend to write these very quickly.
Ah! I see 😄My misreading.
I saw a couple of other typos but I would feel better flagging them behind the scenes if you tell me how to do that. They are not important. People will understand what you're saying. Copyediting is on the level of a manicure: it makes a subliminally better impression on that shrinking subset of people who still are familiar with English's perverse spelling quirks.
After reading the article, I deleted my other comments about typos and homonyms. My generation will die out soon, and then people can spell things however again, like Shakespeare, and no one will know the difference, and that will be fine.
Thank you for this comment... If I wasn't broke and distrustful of every single thing on the internet, I would send you a gift basket of tea and handmade shortbreads just for reminding me of some of my favorite teachers, who were kind and thoughtful for no other reason than they knew they should be.
And her writing is really is superlative, even if this was rushed and overly long. I get the frustration with journalism, but there's no reason Taibbi should be living in her head rent-free.