A political realignment is underway. The left-right paradigm was oversimplified and misleading to begin with, and now it is completely outdated. Now we are seeing people who believe in the values of classical liberalism and Constitutional rights --some "liberal" and some "conservative"-- on one side, and people who want some form of authoritarianism and/or identitarianism on the other side. Authoritarian progressives now call people like Taibbi and Greenwald "right wing" for sticking to their classically liberal principles. Conservatives call the Democrats "socialist" when they are increasingly fascist. The country is ruled by a single party that pretends to be two parties, and many on the "left" and "right" don't believe the government represents them or people like them.
Fascism and socialism are more alike than they are different. Both are authoritarian, collectivistic (family and church are competitors and must be destroyed) and oppose free market and civil liberties like right to own property, free speech etc. One thing socialism excel in, which the fascists never mastered, is the art of gaining control of people's minds through indoctrination, notably in the education system and mass media. For all the violence from fascist groups like Antifa, it's the mind control that scares me most. Especially because most Americans are unable to recognize it as a strategy. Rod Dreher wrote "Live not by lies" after being enlightened by socialism survivors. He's also done several interviews and podcasts. Can definitely recommend.
Vasiliy Grossman described this very well in Life and Fate, how soviet society used social ostracism very effectively, in addition to the brute force they’re better known for. Also, one of Matt and Walter’s talks speculated ostracism from the “Club” is what has very effectively shut down the news media currently. Sounds plausible to me.
I forget which podcast it was, but the idea is a journalist will be excluded from various events, contacts, etc. unless they toe the line. It’s a valid explanation for why the work Matt is doing with the Twitter files is not reported anywhere. (Wall Street Journal finally mentioned it today.)
The description Vasiliy Grossman made is really good, it explains how some suppression doesn’t even need a conspiracy, it runs itself.
"The description Vasiliy Grossman made is really good, it explains how some suppression doesn’t even need a conspiracy, it runs itself."
It's a very interesting feature to find in societies that provide the latitude for individual self-expression and civil rights protection- that lacking the forcible imposition of authoritarian oppression from above, a large number of individuals opt to voluntarily organize into partisan cliques, and then view everyone who doesn't assent to every last item in their particular embraced groupthink agenda as an existential threat, to both the proper workings of the social order and to their personal well-being.
I urge you to study up a bit more on the subjects "fascism" and "socialism" before commenting again. And Rod Dreher and "enlightenment" are two distinct, mutually exclusive, entities. Good day.
I assume that you disagree but are unwilling or unable to explain why. I can refute or accept rational arguments, not feelings. You apparently dislike Rod Dreher but I have read his book and his depiction of the horrors of socialism through eye witnesses are factual and correct.
Refer to Glenn’s Venn diagram and commentary that elected representatives of both parties have much more in common with each other than with the voters they profess to represent. The performative political charades they unabashedly act out when the cameras are rolling is no different than watching a televangelist working an adoring crowd, promising salvation for a modest fee.
Orwell's selected Essays Oxford Press 2021 is a must read in 2023.
Nationalism right now is more important than the constitution that Scalia deliberately subverted.
Do I have to draw the lines between the Quebec of 1774 and the Fifth and final intolerable Act.?
The ACT of toleration of 1689 made America Democratic and gave all religion rights but Catholics had fewer rights because their oaths of allegiance were always suspect. Jefferson wrote a Bible for America.
He was a Deist not a Christian or a Roman Catholic or Mormon, or an American Evangelical or even a "liberal Puritan" like Milton. For Jefferson Jesus was a brother.
Allow me here to assess several things at once: one, the meaninglessness of 95% of anything Nassim Taleb has ever uttered or scrawled, and two, that there has always been a "left" and "right" and there will always be a "left" and "right." Currently in the U.S. these designations have provoked much tiresome and churlish debate.
What is currently true is that both "left" and "right" now consider the other "side" to be "fascist" or "authoritarian," usually a combination of both. What's a neutral observer to make of this?
(And a bonus three): One thing is historically certain too: the libertarians are still assholes, have always been assholes, and will always be assholes.
I believe this is the turning point we need in our country, the silent majority from all political opinions uniting to expose the corruption that has plagued our nations leadership since the creation of the Federal Reserve. It is happening because individuals with many different political beliefs are standing up for the truth and their values.
That's the problem though. There needs to be consensus about what an alternative would be, and there isn't one. The two political "tribes" no longer speak to each other, and see each other as enemies. A lot of people don't believe in civil rights for those who don't hold the same views. Until that changes, I don't see how some form of authoritarianism is escapable.
Interesting you mention Steve Cordasco. Used to love listening to him on Saturday mornings in Philly. He was the first person, in 2007 & 2008, who talked about something is very wrong in our financial markets and economy. He was the first person who mentioned Taibbi..and his Rolling Stone articles, who I had never heard of before.
I wonder it Matt considers himself a liberal. He’s always leaned left (like me), but never shied away from following the evidence where it leads. The reason liberals call him a right winger now for publishing the “Twitter Files.”
As a fellow who worked as a newspaper reporter and editor from the mid 60s until the end of the 70s ....
My old guy judgement about Matt's body of work was that he did not pick sides in the battle of the parties, at least not during the time I began to read his missives here on Substack. Thus I decided to support him on an annual basis.
I’ve told dozens of friends: when a right-wing American evangelical starts thinking Bernie supporters, anti-war married-gay men, Clinton era feminists, evolutionary biologists, and Canadian psychologists* make sense, the world is janked.
*i.e., Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Wolfe, Brett Weinstein, Jordan Peterson
They all make sense to me because I am totally warped.
I am totally logical, and many may believe there is something called normal.
I have a label.
I am autistic I have a right not a privilege not to be normal in Quebec.
I was born in Quebec before the revolution.
We were a theocracy and we had no right not to be normal.
Jordan Peterson interned at the Douglas Hospital in Verdun. It is a hospital for psychopaths. Jordan was a great scholar./
He knows normals when he sees em.
The last time I saw a psychologist he said I was the sanest person he ever met and much as he enjoyed my government sponsored visits he had clients he could help.
"What I most wanted to do.....is to make political writing an art."Orwell
Orwell was an artist
Don't mistake schools of journalism with style and substance.
American journalism is all about style.
Art is about subjective truth and logic.
It is metaphysical like Blake and Donne and Escher.
I forgive Americans because they were never told their history. I cannot forgive Peterson he grew up in Fairview a picturesque Alpine Village in Alberta a place of incredible generational privilege.
I believe Freeland not Taibbi but I know Peace River not American journalist culture Post post Watergate.
In America journalists must entertain and entertainers must inform on what Americans call late night television.
Here in Quebec we don't censor independent media we sponsor it.
The job of media is to inform number. Number two is Shit.
As Vince Lombardi once said entertaining isn't the most important thing it is the only thing.
There was a time when I would have likely asked how one could be a Reagan Conservative, but these days it's far more baffling to me how one can be a Biden Liberal.
I am reading Selected Essays George Orwell Oxford Press 2021
The essay on nationalism has the taxonomy of political speech and language. It is a long essay it should an opening semester in every college and university. Orwell opposed Newspeak. He led a Crusade in his Quixotic quest.
Reagan was a National Socialist. His time for choosing speech was radical not conservative and he was a fascist.
Biden is same old same old. That is the definition of conservative like the old Communist politburo of the Soviet era. He is a corporatist from the gilded Age. Delaware has more Corporations than people. Biden is a conservative conservative politically and socially.
I feel like Alice must have felt meeting Humpty Dumpty on his side of the looking glass.
"When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean---no more no less."
Wrote one very good very funny book that caught and rode the strong current of the time, a fairly entertaining political book that offered no real political insights, and whose gifts for self-promotion was his real genius. Not a thinker but a tinkerer, and ultimately one of the great overestimated and overrated authors of the 20th century. He will be completely forgotten in 30 years.
Would you still consider yourself a Reagan conservative now? I get that you were in the past, but knowing what you do now, would you have made that same choice.
Reagan wasn't a conservative. He was a National Socialist like his sponsors Walt Disney and Fred C Koch co-founder of the John Birch Society. I guess you only read American press.
George Orwell tells us political philosophies in his essay on Nationalism.
Orwell was the linguist in proper classifications of political and social philosophies.
It can be found in George Selected Essays Oxford Press 2021
It should be required reading when describing political and social philosophy.
Let us start with taxonomy
Reagan condemned the period between 1933-1964 as America's worst nightmare.
That is rather unconservative. Reagan was an anarchist. Reagan was a nationalist. Reagan's policies were fascist. He was not a conservative.
Speaking of Walter Kirn, whose name had been totally unfamiliar to me, I was hugely impressed to learn from a recent podcast that he was the author of "Up in the Air" - a movie I have enjoyed three times, and one that I found thought-provoking, sensitive, and heartwarming. A movie Hat Trick. Let me amend "impressed" to say "tremendously impressed"!
As a newspaper guy in the 1980s, who often used "TK" and its spelled-out version: "to kum," I actually loved the TK News moniker.
Can't say I'm in love w/ the Racket, as the connotation is not always positive, but your post just made me like it a little bit more. Hopefully it will grow on me with time.
Wonder if he considered other names, or considered inviting subscribers to participate in a naming contest. (You know, put it out for a vote, like Elon.) Personally I'd love to see something that connotes the objective and independent approaches that to me are Matt's trademark and brand.
With a name of "Racket," please consider as a frontispiece Eric Hoffer's quote about how "great causes start as movements, become businesses, and degenerate into rackets."
The new logo does remind me of Spy Magazine, which was great in its day. Didn't know Walter Kirn worked there. Spy's two founders, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, have certainly taken different paths in life - amazingly, Carter has become the *less* annoying and pompous of the two.
Yes, you are correct. Light, witty, effective. Now Kurt Andersen has become a droning anti-Trump bore. Heavy-handed, off-putting, and not effective at all.
I've wondered why there's never been a documentary or book on SPY? It was amazing while it lasted and deserves a Drunk, Stoned Brilliant, Dead type treatment.
"I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs. I'm talking about a dishonest cop, a cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him." (Michael Corleone.)
Yes. By all means, Taibbi. We live in the age of rackets. Have at it.
departing from an abbreviation that in at least one community stands for 'team kill' and taking on one that's guaranteed gonna get carpet bombed for 'grift', but congrats on graduating to more than a placeholder name
What a strange world, a Reagan Conservative loving the content of a former Rolling Stones reporter! Strange Dayz!
A political realignment is underway. The left-right paradigm was oversimplified and misleading to begin with, and now it is completely outdated. Now we are seeing people who believe in the values of classical liberalism and Constitutional rights --some "liberal" and some "conservative"-- on one side, and people who want some form of authoritarianism and/or identitarianism on the other side. Authoritarian progressives now call people like Taibbi and Greenwald "right wing" for sticking to their classically liberal principles. Conservatives call the Democrats "socialist" when they are increasingly fascist. The country is ruled by a single party that pretends to be two parties, and many on the "left" and "right" don't believe the government represents them or people like them.
Excellent comment.
I've been saying similar things both in Substack and Twitter. We've moved from Left'Right to citizens and facists.
Fascism and socialism are more alike than they are different. Both are authoritarian, collectivistic (family and church are competitors and must be destroyed) and oppose free market and civil liberties like right to own property, free speech etc. One thing socialism excel in, which the fascists never mastered, is the art of gaining control of people's minds through indoctrination, notably in the education system and mass media. For all the violence from fascist groups like Antifa, it's the mind control that scares me most. Especially because most Americans are unable to recognize it as a strategy. Rod Dreher wrote "Live not by lies" after being enlightened by socialism survivors. He's also done several interviews and podcasts. Can definitely recommend.
Vasiliy Grossman described this very well in Life and Fate, how soviet society used social ostracism very effectively, in addition to the brute force they’re better known for. Also, one of Matt and Walter’s talks speculated ostracism from the “Club” is what has very effectively shut down the news media currently. Sounds plausible to me.
What is the "Club"?
I forget which podcast it was, but the idea is a journalist will be excluded from various events, contacts, etc. unless they toe the line. It’s a valid explanation for why the work Matt is doing with the Twitter files is not reported anywhere. (Wall Street Journal finally mentioned it today.)
The description Vasiliy Grossman made is really good, it explains how some suppression doesn’t even need a conspiracy, it runs itself.
"The description Vasiliy Grossman made is really good, it explains how some suppression doesn’t even need a conspiracy, it runs itself."
It's a very interesting feature to find in societies that provide the latitude for individual self-expression and civil rights protection- that lacking the forcible imposition of authoritarian oppression from above, a large number of individuals opt to voluntarily organize into partisan cliques, and then view everyone who doesn't assent to every last item in their particular embraced groupthink agenda as an existential threat, to both the proper workings of the social order and to their personal well-being.
I should be a teacher.
Wow.
I am amazed that someone could cram that much...non factual material...into one post.
Bravo?
I urge you to study up a bit more on the subjects "fascism" and "socialism" before commenting again. And Rod Dreher and "enlightenment" are two distinct, mutually exclusive, entities. Good day.
I assume that you disagree but are unwilling or unable to explain why. I can refute or accept rational arguments, not feelings. You apparently dislike Rod Dreher but I have read his book and his depiction of the horrors of socialism through eye witnesses are factual and correct.
Refer to Glenn’s Venn diagram and commentary that elected representatives of both parties have much more in common with each other than with the voters they profess to represent. The performative political charades they unabashedly act out when the cameras are rolling is no different than watching a televangelist working an adoring crowd, promising salvation for a modest fee.
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”
― George Orwell, The Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell
Orwell's selected Essays Oxford Press 2021 is a must read in 2023.
Nationalism right now is more important than the constitution that Scalia deliberately subverted.
Do I have to draw the lines between the Quebec of 1774 and the Fifth and final intolerable Act.?
The ACT of toleration of 1689 made America Democratic and gave all religion rights but Catholics had fewer rights because their oaths of allegiance were always suspect. Jefferson wrote a Bible for America.
He was a Deist not a Christian or a Roman Catholic or Mormon, or an American Evangelical or even a "liberal Puritan" like Milton. For Jefferson Jesus was a brother.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/how-thomas-jefferson-created-his-own-bible-5659505/
The King James version started the bloodiest war in British history and if things keep up your Evangelicals will use it to destroy us all.
"identitarianism." Zoroastrians with a taste for mainline Episcopal rituals?
I THINK WE NEED TO TAKE THIS UP WITH THE ARCHBISHOP.
PIE IN THE SKY WHEN YOU DIE IS SO IRANIAN IT MAY NOT FLY IN FLORIDA WHERE LIFE ON EARTH IS OF SO LITTLE CONSEQUENCE.
AFTER ALL NEVER NEVER LAND IS SO ORLANDO.
MAYBE PETE CAN SING US A SONG ABOUT THAT OLD TIME RELIGION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBtSFhbxBTg
Just to add, Nassim Taleb commented on the meaningless “Left” vs. “Right” dichotomy years ago.
Allow me here to assess several things at once: one, the meaninglessness of 95% of anything Nassim Taleb has ever uttered or scrawled, and two, that there has always been a "left" and "right" and there will always be a "left" and "right." Currently in the U.S. these designations have provoked much tiresome and churlish debate.
What is currently true is that both "left" and "right" now consider the other "side" to be "fascist" or "authoritarian," usually a combination of both. What's a neutral observer to make of this?
(And a bonus three): One thing is historically certain too: the libertarians are still assholes, have always been assholes, and will always be assholes.
'there will always be a "left" and "right." Currently in the U.S. these designations have provoked much tiresome and churlish debate.'
I can't agree more.
I believe this is the turning point we need in our country, the silent majority from all political opinions uniting to expose the corruption that has plagued our nations leadership since the creation of the Federal Reserve. It is happening because individuals with many different political beliefs are standing up for the truth and their values.
That's the problem though. There needs to be consensus about what an alternative would be, and there isn't one. The two political "tribes" no longer speak to each other, and see each other as enemies. A lot of people don't believe in civil rights for those who don't hold the same views. Until that changes, I don't see how some form of authoritarianism is escapable.
I was a fan even before it was cool https://billlawrenceonline.com/steve-cordasco-rolling-stone-goldman-sachs/
Interesting you mention Steve Cordasco. Used to love listening to him on Saturday mornings in Philly. He was the first person, in 2007 & 2008, who talked about something is very wrong in our financial markets and economy. He was the first person who mentioned Taibbi..and his Rolling Stone articles, who I had never heard of before.
2009! LOL 🤣
I was Taibbi when Taibbi wasn't cool
I'm not saying he's "cool", but that he is a fair and professional journalist. Worthy of consideration. He's still a liberal.
I wonder it Matt considers himself a liberal. He’s always leaned left (like me), but never shied away from following the evidence where it leads. The reason liberals call him a right winger now for publishing the “Twitter Files.”
Why can’t we be both? Some of my beliefs are liberal, some are conservative. It’s the lies that we’re told by both sides that I detest most.
As a fellow who worked as a newspaper reporter and editor from the mid 60s until the end of the 70s ....
My old guy judgement about Matt's body of work was that he did not pick sides in the battle of the parties, at least not during the time I began to read his missives here on Substack. Thus I decided to support him on an annual basis.
Honest reporting is becoming increasingly rare.
I don't even know what a conservative or liberal is anymore.
The "cool" thing was just a rift on a country song from way back.
Conservative has become a 'dirty' word in America. Wonder why that is? Lots of conservative democratic countries all over the world.
Another one who has been divided and conquered.
Good luck with that.
Used to read the “eXile” in Moscow many moons ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it!
Since a bit of nostalgia has crept in--Racket Weekly Reader! Printd
I was a Reagan Conservative who loved read Rolling Stone. Even when I thought they smoked too much weed over there.
Seconded
shit's getting neocon as fuck
I’ve told dozens of friends: when a right-wing American evangelical starts thinking Bernie supporters, anti-war married-gay men, Clinton era feminists, evolutionary biologists, and Canadian psychologists* make sense, the world is janked.
*i.e., Matt Tiabbi, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Wolfe, Brett Weinstein, Jordan Peterson
They all make sense to me because I am totally warped.
I am totally logical, and many may believe there is something called normal.
I have a label.
I am autistic I have a right not a privilege not to be normal in Quebec.
I was born in Quebec before the revolution.
We were a theocracy and we had no right not to be normal.
Jordan Peterson interned at the Douglas Hospital in Verdun. It is a hospital for psychopaths. Jordan was a great scholar./
He knows normals when he sees em.
The last time I saw a psychologist he said I was the sanest person he ever met and much as he enjoyed my government sponsored visits he had clients he could help.
That was 40 years ago.
Sane and normal are not synonyms.
Sometimes they are antonyms.
Read Orwell on Nationalism
https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/notes-on-nationalism/
"What I most wanted to do.....is to make political writing an art."Orwell
Orwell was an artist
Don't mistake schools of journalism with style and substance.
American journalism is all about style.
Art is about subjective truth and logic.
It is metaphysical like Blake and Donne and Escher.
I forgive Americans because they were never told their history. I cannot forgive Peterson he grew up in Fairview a picturesque Alpine Village in Alberta a place of incredible generational privilege.
I believe Freeland not Taibbi but I know Peace River not American journalist culture Post post Watergate.
In America journalists must entertain and entertainers must inform on what Americans call late night television.
Here in Quebec we don't censor independent media we sponsor it.
The job of media is to inform number. Number two is Shit.
As Vince Lombardi once said entertaining isn't the most important thing it is the only thing.
John Ralston Saul the Canadian philosopher is the world expert on journalism and he has given up on Western Culture.
And vice-versa
Maga4ever
There was a time when I would have likely asked how one could be a Reagan Conservative, but these days it's far more baffling to me how one can be a Biden Liberal.
Rob it is quite easy.
I am reading Selected Essays George Orwell Oxford Press 2021
The essay on nationalism has the taxonomy of political speech and language. It is a long essay it should an opening semester in every college and university. Orwell opposed Newspeak. He led a Crusade in his Quixotic quest.
Reagan was a National Socialist. His time for choosing speech was radical not conservative and he was a fascist.
Biden is same old same old. That is the definition of conservative like the old Communist politburo of the Soviet era. He is a corporatist from the gilded Age. Delaware has more Corporations than people. Biden is a conservative conservative politically and socially.
I feel like Alice must have felt meeting Humpty Dumpty on his side of the looking glass.
"When I use a word it means exactly what I want it to mean---no more no less."
Humpty Dumpty
What did you think of Hunter S Thompson? I loved everything he wrote and he wasn't exactly a conservative. LOL.
He wouldn't be happy with what has become of the Left.
I wish George Carlin were still around to eviscerate these fools.
Back in the day, all of the counterculture icons were on the left.
They'd all be disgusted by how the 'Left' has become nothing more than a Orwellian Fascist state.
Jon
The counter culture? What is the culture it is counter? It is an independent culture have its own culture.
Orson Wells got an Oscar for What's wrong with getting along.
Is it always right to be Right?
Orwell defined politics and society in his essay called Nationalism.
Orwell warned us about Newspeak.
Orwell would call Reagan and Israel fascists and National Socialists.
The essay can be found in Selected Essays George Orwell 2021 Oxford Press. Orwell was not Orwellian.
Nailed it.
Wrote one very good very funny book that caught and rode the strong current of the time, a fairly entertaining political book that offered no real political insights, and whose gifts for self-promotion was his real genius. Not a thinker but a tinkerer, and ultimately one of the great overestimated and overrated authors of the 20th century. He will be completely forgotten in 30 years.
He was a terrible human being. Entertaining as all hell but he had no principles except to stoke chaos.
I don't think he was a terrible human being but I do think he was drunk or lit or both for most of the waking day.
Concur
Would you still consider yourself a Reagan conservative now? I get that you were in the past, but knowing what you do now, would you have made that same choice.
Maybe a Reagan Democrat like James Roosevelt :-)
Believe it or not, I voted for Anderson in 1980.
Reagan wasn't a conservative. He was a National Socialist like his sponsors Walt Disney and Fred C Koch co-founder of the John Birch Society. I guess you only read American press.
George Orwell tells us political philosophies in his essay on Nationalism.
Orwell was the linguist in proper classifications of political and social philosophies.
It can be found in George Selected Essays Oxford Press 2021
It should be required reading when describing political and social philosophy.
Let us start with taxonomy
Reagan condemned the period between 1933-1964 as America's worst nightmare.
That is rather unconservative. Reagan was an anarchist. Reagan was a nationalist. Reagan's policies were fascist. He was not a conservative.
https://www.amazon.com/Selected-Essays-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0198804172
You're right. Words mean nothing.
bobD111
I am just repeating Charles Dodgson Oxford Professor of Logic AKA Lewis Carroll.
When you go chasing rabbits and you know your going to fall and you just ate some kind of mushroom
Humpty Dumpty is not down the Rabbit hole . He is the other side of the mirror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnJM_jC7j_4
I had the vinyl, I am an old man.
I live in Quebec I know what the dormouse said.
The dormouse is not a mouse it is a mouse that sleeps soundly.
A mouse that sleeps.
Yesterday was Robbie Burns day.
the best laid schemes o'mice and men gang aft agley.
"Most peculiar momma............ "
*Monkees reporter
Ha! I thought it was Taibbi-Kirn (TK).
That is what I thought too.
Ditto
Ditto
If interested theres been a TK News channel on YouTube for some time
Speaking of Walter Kirn, whose name had been totally unfamiliar to me, I was hugely impressed to learn from a recent podcast that he was the author of "Up in the Air" - a movie I have enjoyed three times, and one that I found thought-provoking, sensitive, and heartwarming. A movie Hat Trick. Let me amend "impressed" to say "tremendously impressed"!
Not Taibbi and Kompany?
Well, it's certainly not Taibbi-Kern with that new title image.
n.b., it's much better today.
Yep! Y’all beat me to the punch...
Me Too - no pun intended 🙄
I love the noir connection. “"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."
One of my favorite lines
“Silence fell like a wet blanket over the city, muffling its cries. Time to rest, I thought. Time to drink.”
Dig the new branding Matt - keep on rockin’ in the dystopian world. 🤘🏻
I like it!
WHO'S MAKING ALL THAT RACKET?
It's Matt at Racket!
As a newspaper guy in the 1980s, who often used "TK" and its spelled-out version: "to kum," I actually loved the TK News moniker.
Can't say I'm in love w/ the Racket, as the connotation is not always positive, but your post just made me like it a little bit more. Hopefully it will grow on me with time.
Wonder if he considered other names, or considered inviting subscribers to participate in a naming contest. (You know, put it out for a vote, like Elon.) Personally I'd love to see something that connotes the objective and independent approaches that to me are Matt's trademark and brand.
My thoughts immediately went to "Ruckus". Then you even have a theme song!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRhRNgqPlyk (Lyrics warning!!)
So the other day, my 92-year-old father said, "You know that guy you read on the computer? The one who's father is on the Boston TV station?"
Yes, Dad, Matt Taibbi is Mike Taibbi's son.
"Well, he had an article in the Wall Street Journal. He's a hell of a writer."
Yes, he is.
Keep up the good work, Mike Taibbi's son.
-30-
Do you have a link to the article? Would like to read it.
Sorry. No.
Dad gets an actual newspaper--and has never set up his online access. I don't even know the date.
Ok, thanks.
I did search through Google and through the WSJ (which I also get) and I don't see anything. Bummer!
With a name of "Racket," please consider as a frontispiece Eric Hoffer's quote about how "great causes start as movements, become businesses, and degenerate into rackets."
Perfect. I wish I thought of that.
Will "America this Week" still be part of Racket?
Will "America this Week" still be on Apple podcasts? Will it be under "Racket" or "TK News" at Apple podcasts?
LIBRARIANS need to know.
The new logo does remind me of Spy Magazine, which was great in its day. Didn't know Walter Kirn worked there. Spy's two founders, Graydon Carter and Kurt Andersen, have certainly taken different paths in life - amazingly, Carter has become the *less* annoying and pompous of the two.
SPY was incredible. Never realized either that Kirn was an editor! One of the best magazines ever. Looking forward to another great year of reporting.
IIRC, that was where the 'short fingered vulgarian' tag was first hung on DJT.
Yes, you are correct. Light, witty, effective. Now Kurt Andersen has become a droning anti-Trump bore. Heavy-handed, off-putting, and not effective at all.
My favorite SPY article.
https://marzbonfire.blogspot.com/2012/11/twinkie-failure-testing-spy-magazine.html
To quote the late, lamented Walter Monheit: "Oooof!"
I loved Spy. Was disappointed to see it go. Nice to learn of Walter’s contribution to its excellence.
I've wondered why there's never been a documentary or book on SPY? It was amazing while it lasted and deserves a Drunk, Stoned Brilliant, Dead type treatment.
There was a book: "Spy: The Funny Years Hardcover – October 25, 2006"
Not all the humor still works; comedy is perishable. Some of it is still funny, however.
The Twinkie research article was timeless.
If you have several days to kill, the entire run of Spy Magazine is archived at Google Books.
I have a trove on 70s copies of Nat Lamp that I occasionally go through, and I find that the ads are as interesting as the articles.
I'm guessing the back issues of SPY would be the same. The ads give you a real dose of the culture at that time.
"I'm talking about a cop that's mixed up in drugs. I'm talking about a dishonest cop, a cop who got mixed up in the rackets and got what was coming to him." (Michael Corleone.)
Yes. By all means, Taibbi. We live in the age of rackets. Have at it.
We've always lived in a world of rackets; you can see them better now but... only if your eyes are open and your mind is open and you choose to look.
I’m now a member of the Racket Club. I’ve finally made it.
“It’s Matt from Racket. Care to comment…?” Words to strike fear in the hearts of racketeers….
Good point! Yeah, that will get them to spill the beans...
departing from an abbreviation that in at least one community stands for 'team kill' and taking on one that's guaranteed gonna get carpet bombed for 'grift', but congrats on graduating to more than a placeholder name
In re BLACK MASK, just gonna leave this here. It dates back to when the internet was still kind of good.
https://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html
Excellent!
And by all means do be careful in what you choose to read in the Miskatonic rare books collection!
Come to the conventacle, bring along your pentacle, don't get dragged off by a tentacle.
^(,;,,;,)^
I’m new to Substack and a big fan of yours! I thought or just assumed that TK stood for Taibbi - Kirn!
“He didn’t know the right people. That’s all a police record means.”
Actually, I think a modern noir magazine would be an interesting read.