I think the career trajectory of Matt Taibbi is instructive here. He was a celebrated polemicist among the center-left for his reporting on the financial crisis. Then it was revealed that he had been shitty to women in the '90s while working as an expat journalist in Russia, allegations that surfaced at the peak of the #MeToo era. This largely cost him his reputation in the center-left and mainstream media publications that had sustained him. So he pivoted to becoming an anti-anti-Trump commentator as much out of self-preservation as anything else. His writing has become disingenuous, but the people who care about that kind of stuff already rejected him.
A generation ago, there wouldn't have been an alternative media for him to retreat toward — though the allegations against him probably wouldn't have harmed his reputation as much, either. I'd prefer a person like Taibbi being in the center-left tent pissing out, personally, but so it goes.
I have a personal beef against Taibbi from my days in 1990s Moscow. He created and wrote for a shock-jock newsletter/zine aimed at (male) expats, mostly rating Russian hookers and “exposes” of heroin use. It was modestly called “The Exile.” Everyone I know from those times was gobsmacked when he re-emerged in US and was taken seriously. His dad is a journalist — whether he’s a nepo baby or just talked his way into a serious role based on this resume, I can’t say. But he got his start in alternative media of a sort. And whether he actually did the scuzzy things he wrote about, I have no personal knowledge of that. But it’s not like “he harassed a female employee.”
I haven't read too much of The Exile outside of a couple of pieces here and there, but your assessment of it seems fair. I would say that his writing on politics and economics in the late 2000s/early 2010s holds up. And he had more insight into the Trump phenomenon in 2016 than did many of his peers.
You don’t happen to know how he got from there to here do you? It was like if some regular caller to the Howard Stern show suddenly popped up writing for The New Republic.
Thank you so much for a deep think piece and this is literally what I have been feeling towards journalists these days - and as a super conflict averse and apologetic Japanese, my pet peeve has been the social media’s inherent incentive to drive ppl away from acknowledging mistakes so I’m glad to see you mention this!!
I think the career trajectory of Matt Taibbi is instructive here. He was a celebrated polemicist among the center-left for his reporting on the financial crisis. Then it was revealed that he had been shitty to women in the '90s while working as an expat journalist in Russia, allegations that surfaced at the peak of the #MeToo era. This largely cost him his reputation in the center-left and mainstream media publications that had sustained him. So he pivoted to becoming an anti-anti-Trump commentator as much out of self-preservation as anything else. His writing has become disingenuous, but the people who care about that kind of stuff already rejected him.
A generation ago, there wouldn't have been an alternative media for him to retreat toward — though the allegations against him probably wouldn't have harmed his reputation as much, either. I'd prefer a person like Taibbi being in the center-left tent pissing out, personally, but so it goes.
I have a personal beef against Taibbi from my days in 1990s Moscow. He created and wrote for a shock-jock newsletter/zine aimed at (male) expats, mostly rating Russian hookers and “exposes” of heroin use. It was modestly called “The Exile.” Everyone I know from those times was gobsmacked when he re-emerged in US and was taken seriously. His dad is a journalist — whether he’s a nepo baby or just talked his way into a serious role based on this resume, I can’t say. But he got his start in alternative media of a sort. And whether he actually did the scuzzy things he wrote about, I have no personal knowledge of that. But it’s not like “he harassed a female employee.”
I haven't read too much of The Exile outside of a couple of pieces here and there, but your assessment of it seems fair. I would say that his writing on politics and economics in the late 2000s/early 2010s holds up. And he had more insight into the Trump phenomenon in 2016 than did many of his peers.
You don’t happen to know how he got from there to here do you? It was like if some regular caller to the Howard Stern show suddenly popped up writing for The New Republic.
Thank you so much for a deep think piece and this is literally what I have been feeling towards journalists these days - and as a super conflict averse and apologetic Japanese, my pet peeve has been the social media’s inherent incentive to drive ppl away from acknowledging mistakes so I’m glad to see you mention this!!
Devastating quotes (and context for the second one!), I loved it