67 Comments
User's avatar
⭠ Return to thread
NothingButNet's avatar

👍 Matt is a true liberal - gathering all the facts, analyzing them through an unbiased lens and speaking truth to power, regardless of who that power represents. Keep up the good the great work, Matt!

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

There is no such thing as an unbiased lense. Whenever someone claims to be without bias then I know for certain they speak for the ruling class.

Taibbi is not unbiased. He doesn’t pretend to be unbiased either. And that’s why, though I find his current trajectory somewhere between asinine and abhorrent, he isn’t lying to me.

Maybe he lies to himself - that’s his problem. But he isn’t bullshitting us - even when he sucks.

Expand full comment
Ellen's avatar

Then why are you reading? Or bothering to comment?

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

You Racket commenters really are religious about Taibbi.

How dare anyone utter a discouraging word about Taibbi’s blog!

I like having a front seat to Taibbi’s changes over the past few years. It’s fascinating to observe an otherwise intelligent person become a standard issue American idiot.

The shit he writes about now is breathtaking in its myopia.

Guess that’s what happens when you’re your own editor.

He has succumbed to the contemporary cultural and political anxieties of the moment as he rails against “gender ideology,” “lockdowns,” etc. He is a voice in the current organized right wing politics. He is a voice that helps the organized political groups mainstream far right discourses and synthesize nationalism with a radical form of libertarianism.

The pandemic lockdowns served as the perfect space to accomplish this synthesis. While pandemic restrictions halted immigration the contention over the border pivoted to restricting the movement of nefarious Others to liberating “the people” from their own internal constraints.

Now we have all these far right social media influencers, shit like Racket, all these self-employed small business owners, hucksters of alt medicine and wellness products, anti lockdown protesters.

So here we are. The mainstreaming of fringe lunacy like Malthusian population controls to the “Great Replacement…” these are currently the language of everyday life.

Critiques of pandemic lockdowns have turned to warnings about a dystopian future of climate lockdowns.

Taibbi can not get away from these binaries: truth and lies, nationalists and globalists, freedom fighters and totalitarians (his absolute fave cause he’s the hero!) the suburbs and the city, workaday motorists and climate protestors.

Anyway…sure this is all lost on you idiots because it isn’t rephrasing Taibbi.

Expand full comment
Ellen's avatar

You really are deranged. Since you've absolutely nothing useful, intelligent, or amusing to say, why don't you simply talk to yourself in a mirror, and spare the rest of us your useless, senseless drivel. Are you 4?

Your hatred of small business owners would indicate you are very unAmerican. If you are unAmerican, or not American at all, just STFU if you've nothing useful to add to the conversation.

Expand full comment
Scott's avatar

Some people just like to hear themselves talk. Having a point is irrelevant. Actually, I can picture little CI rehearsing this rant in front of a mirror

Expand full comment
DaveL's avatar

I believe he is talking into a mirror. Good command of the language, but no specific examples of where Taibbi has gone wrong.

Expand full comment
Bonnie Blodgett's avatar

Actually she (assuming Curling Iron is female) did give examples. Lots of them. While I personally think nations must reassert themselves and globalization was a huge mistake because it was used to enrich the global elites and impoverish the rest of us, and while I despise the DNC's habit of using race and sex to mask the real issues dividing us and at the same time making the race and sex tensions worse, and while I am so revolted by both political parties I may not vote at all, I applaud anyone who is subtle enough to see how easily a disillusioned leftie such as Matt can swing harder to the right than perhaps even he realizes he has. I read Matt because he is the funniest and most linguistically facile political writer out there, not because he isn't human. If I were in danger of losing my livelihood because of DNC censorship, I would probably feel as he does. Thing is, I already have. I was removed from the pages of two large-circulation dailies because my criticism of the same things Matt criticizes (and always has) hit too close to home. I became a threat to the dailies' enormously rich owners. The end of my career was devastating to me but I was not as famous as Matt. His high profile will protect him. He's too influential and beloved to take down without huge repercussions. Even the DNC isn't stupid enough to want to turn him into a martyr. They will tolerate Matt and at the same time try to marginalize him by discrediting and mocking him. Unfortunately his tendency to align himself with a few of Trump's more extreme positions will provoke some of us to scratch our heads, but so be it. He is a HUGE thorn in the side of people we all detest more than we like the only alternative we seem to have (Trump) owing to both parties' corruption. To get at the roots of this, Citizens United is a good place to start.

Expand full comment
furies's avatar

thank you

I like Matt fine...he writes like an angel and I enjoy the literary discussions; his rather 'libertarian' point of view is repugnant to me

Expand full comment
Bonnie Blodgett's avatar

He also reports like a fiend obsessed. I mean that as a compliment, Matt. Your writing wouldn't be wroth half as much without all those facts. I've learned a ton from you and look forward to learning more every time I open Racket News.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Me and the other Antifa super soldiers will be executing small business owners on Thanksgiving Day in towns and cities all over this vile country.

BLM Marxist cadre will also go door to door emptying white American households of all turkeys, stuffing and green bean casserole. Cadre will redistribute this to undocumented migrants while we all enjoy a meal and watch Futbol.

Expand full comment
NothingButNet's avatar

Damn, someone must have cracked your skull with a curling iron. You’re spouting the intolerance and hate that has become representative of the left over the past 20-30 years. Get help, buddy.

Expand full comment
ruck95's avatar

Gee, you don't think too highly of yourself, do you?

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Do you really subscribe to John McWhorter’s substack?

I guess somebody has to?

Expand full comment
Ellen's avatar

I don't, but the man has an impressive intellect. Which you clearly do not.

Expand full comment
Lightwing's avatar

So your problem is heterodoxy? Speaking truth to power? You really thing there is an absolute right side and an absolute wrong side? You lack wisdom, my friend. You are either a troll or a spewing LLM bot. Either way, I pity you.

Expand full comment
Savi_heretic33's avatar

Religious? No, I don't believe in Matt as my savior, he's just a good journalist. It's pretty basic. He's bucked the system and left the plantation. His independence has freed him from the shackles of corporate media, allowing him to actually report the truth. Something you don't get much of these days.Matt's a trail blazer. He's harnessed the new media, and for this reason I'm informed. Democracy can't flourish without an informed public.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Sure. That’s it. We need an informed public.

Depends on the information. Doesn’t help when this so called informed public repeats Exxon talking points about a climate hoax.

Expand full comment
Savi_heretic33's avatar

Matt is not obsessed with climate crisis as liberals are. They're the alarmist party. It's the only way they can rally their base to vote. Make them scared or outraged. Matt's focus is more on the Russia/ Trump hoax, censorship of the party that supports "freedom" lol. I'm sure you agree the "Trump is a Russian agent" is indeed a hoax, proven to be false with the publishing of the Durham report. I'm sure you've read it.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

The notion of a POTUS being an agent of a foreign government is about as dumb as thinking a billionaire landlord POTUS would make this country even halfway livable.

Expand full comment
Savi_heretic33's avatar

Are you talking about Trump? Restoring my sex based rights is pretty viable to me and half the population. I’m sure you have no clue what I’m talking about.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Oh yeah. “Sex based rights” is a dead giveaway. You’re stuck in the grips of the latest cultural anxiety.

That’s cool. Have a good time sliding further into early onset dementia. It’s not a big deal, you could still be president.

Expand full comment
Savi_heretic33's avatar

You know you’re dealing with a liberal when they spew insults just like their boogeyman, Donald Trump. Women are being raped in female prisons by transfers from the male to female prison. Yes that causes anxiety, but as an Incel, we know you get off on violence against women. You’re in the right party!

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

If you mean that the Democratic Party will restore the rights to proper medical care, I.e. abortion, ask yourself why when Dems controlled Congress and the Presidency that they did nothing to codify these rights? I wish the Dems were hardcore about this issue but they aren’t.

But maybe that’s not it. In this neighborhood I’m prepared for “sex based rights” to be something weird about bathrooms, women’s sports and generally how trans people don’t exist and gays are pedophiles.

Hey. Maybe not. Maybe you’re not a weirdo. To quote everyone’s favorite ghoul, S. Crowder, change my mind.

Expand full comment
Savi_heretic33's avatar

Women’s rights were always based on sex, not the religious belief of gender identity. Biden/Harris changed that and screwed gay people over as well since being gay is a sane sex issue.How can a person not exist? Gender non confirming people have existed since the beginning of time. Nothing’s changed except the definition of sex that was changed by Biden on day one of his administration via executive order. So you support a women’s right to choose an abortion but not other rights of women that were fought for and won? We can end this exchange now since I can predict every word that will come out of your mouth on this subject. You’re in the party of the handmaiden that mandates women be subservient to men in their female spaces. Including women in prison. I know the drill. You’re as predicable as rain on a cloudy day. This conversation is over. You’re just a troll.

Expand full comment
Lightwing's avatar

Hyperbolic much? I can feel your spittle, sir.

Matt is yanking TPTB's chain and letting them know that there are people out there who see what they are doing. He has always done this. Don't you remember the "vampire squid?" And he's doing it in spite of being harrassed and threatened and villified. He's an old school liberal (like me) who's pissed off at the current antics of the left and who is trying to expose how they are using corrupt practices to control the media narrative in this country.

I don't see anything that you are asserting in his reporting. He is definitely NOT right wing. He may be in alignment with their outrage but any American of no matter what political stripe should be outraged right now. TPTB are out of control and not serving ordinary Americans at all. They are treating this country like their own personal playground. This has been ramping up for a long time as the elites bend power and policy toward their interests and leave the little guy in the dust. It's just reached a head at present. It is a boil waiting to burst.

Expand full comment
Tolerance Is Lazy's avatar

So, you put gender ideology in parentheses. Sort of makes me want to put “you” in parentheses because you sound as informed as a ChatGPT bot.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Do you know what parentheses are?

Expand full comment
Wm. S. Loder's avatar

What a bunch of esoteric bullshit.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

“Esoteric” is how I also describe things I am unwilling to comprehend. Especially if such esoterica challenges my point of view.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Or in case you don’t like reading or learning anything that isn’t Taibbi or some other pod blog idiot:

Taibbi isn’t grifting, he isn’t working for some conglomerate with an interest in selling bombs (NBC.)

I do not like most of what he writes. I also don’t like Longfellow but I like poetry so I read him.

Taibbi is an important voice no matter how boring, insipid and myopic he is.

I care about the matters of the day and the place where I live. And Taibbi, as loathsome as I find him, is part of that.

Expand full comment
Nick's avatar

Criticise if you must, but do so with some measure of skill or accuracy, otherwise it comes off as bluster and scattershot anger about various unrelated things.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Hey, I’m just trying to fit into the neighborhood.

Expand full comment
Starry Gordon's avatar

Actually I'd like to see a critique — "opposition is true friendship" — but I seldom see one. Namecalling doesn't count.

Expand full comment
Kendall Frazier's avatar

In case anyone was wondering where all that Kamala donation money was going it is to fund shithead disinformation asshole whores like this guy.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

She could pay a lot better. The Chinese Communist Party pays way better.

Hamas doesn’t pay at all. But their situation is less stable.

Expand full comment
RAO's avatar

Sucks? How so?

Expand full comment
Keith Jajko's avatar

What a worthless dolt. Moving on.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

I know. Even the smallest nudge against your precious Taibbi and his “unbiased” writing has you calling me names.

Expand full comment
James Martucci's avatar

I’m sorry we “idiots” and “morons” have called you names. People who use words like that in comments should be ashamed of themselves.

Jim

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

I am ashamed.

Jimmy, thank you for helping me.

I’ve been a worthless dolt. I was a fool to disagree with the fearless fighters against woke Dem totalitarianism.

For once I was blind and now I see.

Expand full comment
James Martucci's avatar

Take it easy on yourself. Please do not focus your anger internally. It is not healthy.

With much love,

Jimmy

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Thanks, Jimmy.

It’s good to know someone is looking out for me.

Expand full comment
Gogs's avatar

You know for certain...dangerous words. For you, that is. You may noticed - or turned a blind eye - that no one has liked any of your pontifications so far.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

I’m pretty bummed a bunch of right wing morons don’t give me likes.

Expand full comment
Robert Campbell's avatar

I think your comment is biased.

Expand full comment
DaveL's avatar

Apparently feldspar has been replaced.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

I am pleasantly surprised to find that some of you Matt Fans still have a sense of humor.

Expand full comment
Robert Campbell's avatar

We do indeed; but we are laughing AT you, not WITH you. You’re not as clever and amusing as you think.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

I am more clever and amusing than you.

Expand full comment
Max Dublin's avatar

Don't feed the monster. He's a legend in his own mind. Let him stew in his own juices.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Pandemic lockdown becomes climate lockdown.

Your trajectory is studied and well known.

We can no longer allow you to see or speak the Truth.

This is your final warning.

-The Marxists

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

All Curling Irons are liars.

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Am so.

Expand full comment
Victor Toso's avatar

We have a local hair stylist who might grant you more lucidity for your vacuous critiques. Her shop name: Curl Up and Dye. Go girl!

Expand full comment
Curling Iron's avatar

Grant me more lucidity for my vacuous critiques…

When I fail to understand something I also call it dumb and vacuous.

Expand full comment
Chris's avatar

Where do you think his trajectory is headed? What parts are abhorrent or asinine?

Expand full comment