An Interview With Matt Taibbi
Rolling Stone's controversial chief political reporter on Campaign 2008, following Hunter S. Thompson, and his new book
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Democrats are trying to recapture some of their market share. It’s a cross-attacking of each other’s bases, like the Republicans going after Hispanics and the black vote. When I worked undercover as Bush campaign volunteer in 2004, we talked about how, if we could only take 10 percent of the black vote away from Democrats, we’d win every election for the rest of American history.
The Democrats are seeing where the Republicans are vulnerable, and they see that some religious conservatives feel betrayed that Republicans haven’t delivered on abortion, stem cell research, and that kind of thing. They’re going to appeal to that base, whereas they didn’t even try in 2000.
reason: Are you offended by Democrats implying things such as, “Jesus wants us to have universal health care”?
Taibbi: It’s all disgusting. You have to commit so many moral atrocities to be a Washington politician that any kind of religion you actually maintain after that experience has to be not entirely sincere. So when I see these guys invoking the name of God, it’s comical.
reason: You reported on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A lot of liberals say the government at all levels didn't do enough, but your chapter in Smells Like Dead Elephants suggests the government was way too active: preventing rescue workers from doing their jobs, not allowing civilians with boats—who were rescuing “dozens” more refugees than FEMA’s boats—to get to areas where people were stranded, “aiming guns at women in children.”
Taibbi: There was an enormous amount of hostility toward the government by the people left in New Orleans. The government sent in this massive force that treated everyone like they were criminals. The government’s response was so ineffective and so adversarial that it really drove people to distrust any program that they were offering. That kind of phenomenon in general is why more and more people are becoming disenchanted with the government and gravitating toward candidates like Ron Paul. They’re pissed off with a government that has become so distant from their actual concerns.
reason: In your Iraq chapter, you lay out how
defense contractors are bilking the American people out of billions
of dollars. Libertarians say that the military-industrial complex
is a bastardized capitalism, but liberals say that it’s the result
of an unregulated market. What’s your stance?
Taibbi: It’s not capitalism at all. It’s more like an
authoritarian socialism. It’s forcibly extracting money from the
customers and distributing the profits to companies that aren’t
selected by market choice but government fiat. Critics call it the
free market, but it’s not that at all. You can’t have a war that’s
realistically market-based.
reason: You say Republicans are perverts because they never had any fun as kids, and also that “the American left has no sense of humor and no sense of fun at all.” What is it about politicos that make them passionate about the issues but no other areas of their lives?
Taibbi: Anyone who is willing to put up with as much shit as necessary to become a U.S. senator or president has to be a sociopath. That’s why you see all these crazy behaviors popping up with Sen. Larry Craig [R-Idaho] and [former Rep. Mark] Foley [of Florida]. These people have to drive their true selves so far beneath the surface to present this clean face to the world, and that’s why they end up indulging in these subterranean weirdnesses.
reason: Speaking of weirdness, why does so much of the institutional left—including many who believe that marijuana should be legal—have a vendetta against tobacco and fast food? They demand freedom of choice and then want to punish the enjoyment of Marlboros and McDonald's.
Taibbi: That part of the left drives me crazy. Americans no longer feel the need to be ideologically consistent on anything. If you believe adults should be free to do drugs or engage in any sexual behavior they want, you should also believe they’re free to smoke or eat shitty food or do anything they want. You can’t just pick and choose which absolute freedoms you want to endorse. On the right, people say they want to have prayer in schools for instance but they don’t want to have anyone doing drugs in other states. We no longer have that consistent political orientation with broad underlying themes like individual liberty, and that’s unfortunate.
If this was Sweden or Great Britain I might say something different, but that’s not what America is all about. America is about getting the government off your back, a reprieve from having your life interfered with, and we keep forgetting that.
Marty Beckerman is author of Generation S.L.U.T. and proprietor of martybeckerman.com. Send comments to letters@reason.com.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
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Interesting to see his thoughts on Ron Paul. Will be even more interesting to see if it ever gets reflected in his ROLLING STONE political writing, in which he's been insultingly profiling every GOP candidate other than the one that should be of most interest to RS as a magazine that's made war and war-related coverage one of its specialities--that is, the mysterious antiwar Republican Ron Paul--is almost never mentioned, not even in the roundup sentences that mention all the others.
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Well, he'll make a fine Press Secretary in the Paul administration.
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Big fan of Taibbi. His review of Friedman's "The World Is Flat" was priceless:
http://www.nypress.com/18/16/news&columns/taibbi.cfm -
America is about getting the government off your back, a reprieve from having your life interfered with, and we keep forgetting that.
Hear, Hear! -
Reading Rolling Stone for its political coverage is like reading National Review to learn about great new rock bands.
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"Reading Rolling Stone for its political coverage is like reading National Review to learn about great new rock bands."
Yeah! How can Taibbi's columns be both entertaining and about politics? If it's not boring and/or full of shit, it's just not political enough for ya? -
Taibbi never actually answered the question regarding Marijuana. It is something that has always stuck in my craw about my liberal acquaintances and I've had a theory about it for some time.
Marijuana carries no onus for leftists for the reason that so-called "big tobacco" and "big junk" do because the latter two are parts of the massive capitalist corporate free market system that is, in truth, anathema to their ideology. Especially since it involves a plutocratic elite who prey upon the masses by feeding them opiates of one or another sort they are unable to resist.
Marijuana, on the other hand carries with it the opposite mythology. It is laden with the aura of populist agrarianism, and a romanticized pastoral crushed by the forces of corporate greed (The Hearst/DuPont conspiracy theory).
But mark my word, if Marijuana was ever legalized, and many cigarette companies are provisionally prepared for this with ad campaigns and the like, the tables will turn. Generations after the fact and when "big weed" is lobbying in Washington and advertising in Magazines, you'll see the heirs to our current crop of lefties lambasting Mary Jane with the same fervor as they do tobacco and Micky-D's today. -
Way off base Peter. For one thing anti-tobacco sentiment isn't just a "leftist" sentiment. I know a lot of lefties who smoke. In fact my guess would be that smokers as a group probably tend to vote to the left of the population as a whole. In the US the nanny state phenomenon is mostly driven by slightly left-of-center conventional types who apparently lack any real political conviction or vision and substitute hectoring the rest of us as an easy way to "make change happen."
To be perfectly frank, I blame the increasing participation of women in politics for the steady encroachment on our freedom to act irresponsibly. In my experience women of all poltical convictions, for whatever reason, tend to be more responsive to these sort of initiatives. Women drove the temperance movement, women drive PETA, lobby against drunk driving, complain about child safety, etc. Men usually oppose or don't really care either way. -
Bart Jones | November 9, 2007, 10:44am | #
Big fan of Taibbi. His review of Friedman's "The World Is Flat" was priceless
"Friedman is an important American.
He is the perfect symbol of our culture of emboldened stupidity."
Heh heh. Once in a while on the tube I'll see Tim Russert on his dark set interviewing Friedman and chatting about his latest book, and although I can't see below the table, I have an uneasy feeling they're holding each other's penis. -
Vanya,
I agree with you on your second points in general. I've noticed a few men have been nanny staters, and perhaps they just stand out for me because they've been my local politicians, and left wing, and vigorous smoking ban fanatics.
However, and this is simply among my social circle, I've noticed that all the left-wing smokers, while they smoke like chimneys, still favor bans, taxes, advertising restrictions and the like as well as the dogma behind them. But, once again, this has just been my personal experience. -
Matt says "Fuck" a lot in his writing, so you know that he is all edgy and down with the kids.
Actually, Me mum got me a subscription to RS for some reason. Matt's articles are the one reason I bother to open up the rag. -
I share in the enjoyment of Taibbi's palpable disdain for all things political. His book "Spanking the Donkey" about the '04 election was hilarious, especially the parts about wheh he dropped acid and interviewed the drug czar, and when he followed Kerry around in a gorilla suit.
Check out the website he co-founded when he lived in Russia, www.exile.ru, and another in which he sometimes writes now, buffalobeast.com.
Both well worth a look. -
As an acquaintance of mine says about politics:
"There's only one way to win a presidential race
these days and that is to have a team of political
consultants who can strike the winning balance of
issues whereby the president promises to punish --
through force of fines, guns, and jail -- those you
don't like in whatever ways you don't like them.
Get that in just the right combination for a
delicious pot of cannibal stew, and it's a winner
every time." -
"Taibbi dropped acid then interviewed the former chief of the Office of National Drug Policy-while wearing a Viking helmet."
What a total jackass. This guy's idea of edgy is using the word "fuck" in an article about Barack Obama. He is an asshat who spews the same tired old liberal platitudes, only laced with more profanity. What a hack. -
If this guy disdains politics, then why is his primary mission in life to write about it? He comes across like one of those people who isn't happy unless he is deeply offending someone--he says politicians are sociopaths, yet seeking to deliberately go out and offend people also indicates a pattern of pathological behavior. In terms of his marketing schtick, he is no different than Coulter or Olbermann--rudeness and offensiveness seems to sell. I've read a couple of the things he wrote in Rolling Stone, and he's not really that great a journalist. Yes, he knows how to paint a picture with his writing, but in terms of being an observer of what he's seeing, he seemed to not be able to get his own ego out of the way.
FYI--Sprinkling the word "fuck" throughout an article doesn't make you credible...it just makes you a schmuck.
Just a thought. -
Thanks