Friday, March 20, 2009

Reading Assignment: Get Mad

Matt Taibbi's The Big Takeover.

If yesterday's assignment was a punch in the gut—knocking the wind out of you while you contemplate how screwed we are—then Taibbi's article is like a drink in the face and a finger in the chest...

It's fucking go time.

The people on Wall Street should give thanks that New Yorkers have no reason to own pitchforks. This makes me want to abandon any pretense of a bailout or rescue and burn the whole fucking thing down and sort through the ashes—no matter the cost. I'm now of the opinion we have nothing to lose. We're going down either way, I want some bankers to land on. And Joe Cassano and Phil Gramm's heads on pikes.

4 comments:

Toast said...

Lines like this are why I can't decide whether I even like Taibbi, to say nothing of whether I trust him:

"Cassano, a pudgy, balding Brooklyn College grad with beady eyes and way too much forehead"

Really, Matt? You're going to play on physical stereotypes to make your case? Because that describes a doctor I had once who I liked, several IT guys I know, and a host of relatives.

steves said...

I can't take Rolling Stone seriously at all. There days of any kind of decent jouranalism have long since past and now they lie in the same tier as the morons at World Net Daily. A few years ago they had an article on Cheney where they referred to him as a fucker 3 or 4 times. While I think one can make a good case for him being a fucker, I felt like I was reading some college freshman's blog.

Mr Furious said...

Agreed. Taibbi's style is more than a little too deliberately edgy and "cool"—he tries to hard, and it can get gratuitous. As a person who curses like he breathes, it's not THAT that specifically bothers me, but stuff like Toast points out.

That said, it's a bracing piece, and when the rest of the media still insists on putting quotes around the word torture, I like a little brutality in my exposés. Taibbi's writing about a bunch of fuckiing crooks, and he's not sh about saying so.

No problem here.

Mike said...

I agree, Furious. Taibbi marginalizes himself with his style, his references to drugs and that sort of thing. But he exposes and destroys sacred cows like nobody's business.

Guys like him have his place. Hunter S. Thompson didn't "break it open" like Woodward and Bernstein, but all the stuff he wrote in the early 70's had its role in why Nixon and his goons were disgraced.

Taibbi should keep this up, and he should do it the way he knows best. Other "serious" journalists will eventually wake up and get on this story.