About the Author
Matt Taibbi is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and a columnist for RollingStone.com. He is the author of The Great Derangement, Spanking the Donkey,Smells Like Dead Elephants, and The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap. (Bowker Author Biography)
Image credit: Tony the Misfit
Works by Matt Taibbi
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (2010) 935 copies, 42 reviews
The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion at the Twilight of the American Empire (2008) 662 copies, 21 reviews
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Taibbi, Matt
- Legal name
- Taibbi, Matthew C.
- Birthdate
- 1970-03-02
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Concord Academy
Bard College - Occupations
- journalist
columnist - Organizations
- The Moscow Times
The eXile
The Beast
New York Press
Rolling Stone
Boston Phoenix (show all 7)
Men's Journal - Awards and honors
- National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary (2007)
- Relationships
- Taibbi, Mike (father)
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- New York, New York, USA
Uzbekistan
Ulan Bator, Mongolia
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Moscow, Russia
Members
Reviews
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi
Taibbi does a very good job of maybe at least somewhat understandable the intricate details of financial shenanigans that led to the United States subprime mortgage crisis and other disasters of the financial crisis of 2007–2008. For me, this has three acts in this book:
I) The poor guidance of Alan Greenspan
II) Greed of international finance houses operating in unregulated markets, sometimes tracked to individual traders.
III) The fallout and bailouts.
The "military–industrial complex" show more was a warning from Eisenhower's farewell address. Taibbi warns:
I) The poor guidance of Alan Greenspan
II) Greed of international finance houses operating in unregulated markets, sometimes tracked to individual traders.
III) The fallout and bailouts.
The "military–industrial complex" show more was a warning from Eisenhower's farewell address. Taibbi warns:
I’m going to say something radical about the Tea Partiers. They’re not all crazy. They’re not even always wrong. What they are, and they don’t realize it, is an anachronism. They’re fighting a 1960s battle in a world run by twenty-first-century crooks. They’ve been encouraged to launch costly new offensives in already-lost cultural wars, and against a big-government hegemony of a kind that in reality hasn’t existed—or perhaps better to say, hasn’t really mattered—for decades. In the meantime an advanced new symbiosis of government and private bubble-economy interests goes undetected as it grows to exponential size and robs them blind.show less
Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America by Matt Taibbi
This is an important book. Especially now with an election coming up. Matt Taibbi, who managed to tolerate watching sausage being made, illustrates that the Blue vs Red split that dominates the narratives of the country is often just a distraction to keep Americans busy thinking they are addressing actual issues while they are being robbed by the real rulers of this country, an oligarchy of super-rich financiers to whom both parties are beholden.
The 2008 financial meltdown which seemed to show more some to come out of nowhere is just the most visible outcome of the daily operations of greedy individuals who continue to do damage years afterward.
It is hard to read this without feeling alternately enraged or despairing. Though his outrageous metaphors can be an amusing outlet for the feelings of we who are on the receiving end of the depredations, in my opinion they ultimately undercut the book's message. The facts can stand by themselves and the extra cutesy outrage, like a laugh track on a genuinely funny comedy, distracts from the jokes.
For me, the saddest part of the book is the chapter on Obamacare which, far from being the best we could get considering the opposing forces, turns out to be the result of a bunch of cynical backroom deals. While the pro and anti forces battled it out, the usual rich people end up the winners. show less
The 2008 financial meltdown which seemed to show more some to come out of nowhere is just the most visible outcome of the daily operations of greedy individuals who continue to do damage years afterward.
It is hard to read this without feeling alternately enraged or despairing. Though his outrageous metaphors can be an amusing outlet for the feelings of we who are on the receiving end of the depredations, in my opinion they ultimately undercut the book's message. The facts can stand by themselves and the extra cutesy outrage, like a laugh track on a genuinely funny comedy, distracts from the jokes.
For me, the saddest part of the book is the chapter on Obamacare which, far from being the best we could get considering the opposing forces, turns out to be the result of a bunch of cynical backroom deals. While the pro and anti forces battled it out, the usual rich people end up the winners. show less
Warning — This is a post about an historical political book. Normally, I don't do politics because it limits people. Well, I feel that it limits me. I hate it when my hackles rise when I'm trying to discuss a book. But this book is about politics, so I can't avoid it.
A momentous election, now ten years in the rearview mirror, Insane Clown President is a funny account of the lead up to the 2016 elections as told by Matt Taibbi, who was reporting for Rolling Stone at the time.
He's dead show more accurate about a lot of things that other media figures missed by a mile. This is a theme with Taibbi because he's willing to dig through the weeds and find details that other reporters miss. He's got a distinguished history of long-form journalism. Because he's in a relatively press privileged class, and a little older, he missed some shifting movements taking place both organically and astroturfed online. But, Taibbi has the rare journalist sense of what's authentic, and what's bullshit.
Reading this was cathartic for me. If Taibbi's deep distrust of our media, social manipulation, and the American political system could grow from the 2016 election, while still remaining true to his liberal ethics, so could mine. Political discourse and manipulation has always been bad, but it became toxic in the 1990s. The snake's tail began to rattle in 2016. Thankfully, Taibbi heard it. show less
A momentous election, now ten years in the rearview mirror, Insane Clown President is a funny account of the lead up to the 2016 elections as told by Matt Taibbi, who was reporting for Rolling Stone at the time.
He's dead show more accurate about a lot of things that other media figures missed by a mile. This is a theme with Taibbi because he's willing to dig through the weeds and find details that other reporters miss. He's got a distinguished history of long-form journalism. Because he's in a relatively press privileged class, and a little older, he missed some shifting movements taking place both organically and astroturfed online. But, Taibbi has the rare journalist sense of what's authentic, and what's bullshit.
Reading this was cathartic for me. If Taibbi's deep distrust of our media, social manipulation, and the American political system could grow from the 2016 election, while still remaining true to his liberal ethics, so could mine. Political discourse and manipulation has always been bad, but it became toxic in the 1990s. The snake's tail began to rattle in 2016. Thankfully, Taibbi heard it. show less
This stunning, in-depth look at the murder of Eric Garner by Staten Island police chokehold is an essential read to get behind and beyond the violent event itself. Matt really gets to know Eric, from all his neighborhood friends and his family, so we see the life of a man who lived in a trouble zone but went all out for his loved ones and was harassed on a daily basis by police needing to fill harassment quotas. And we see the underbelly of the rampant support of police by a bureaucracy show more manned by liberals (DeBlasio, Bratton, Bloomberg) who talked out of both side of their venal asses. And how the justice system is rigged from every angle, and EXACTLY, in all its disgusting glory, how Daniel Pantaleo, already guilty of multiple civilian complaints, got away with a pre-planned murder.
Quotes: "Just as everyone understands what we mean when we talk about order, so too do we understand that laws against things like vagrancy or suspicious behavior are really just tools police can use to maintain an indefinable standard."
"Ray Kelly, the city's police commissioner throughout the Bloomberg years, had told him openly that the goal was to change the psyche of young black and Latino men by "instill[ing] fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police."
"A popular meme in national conservative politics: that brutality cases like the Garner incident or Ferguson were in large part the fault of liberal politicians who had instilled in their followers a disrespect for police officers."
"The pressing fixation of Middle America thought: you could reduce an enormous quantity on the content on Fox News and afternoon talk radio to a morbid national obsession that could be summarized on a T-shirt: ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?"
"Racial tumult is buried deep in the body of American society. Because of slavery and the fallout from it, it is our original sin. But we're unable to face it." show less
Quotes: "Just as everyone understands what we mean when we talk about order, so too do we understand that laws against things like vagrancy or suspicious behavior are really just tools police can use to maintain an indefinable standard."
"Ray Kelly, the city's police commissioner throughout the Bloomberg years, had told him openly that the goal was to change the psyche of young black and Latino men by "instill[ing] fear in them that every time that they left their homes they could be targeted by police."
"A popular meme in national conservative politics: that brutality cases like the Garner incident or Ferguson were in large part the fault of liberal politicians who had instilled in their followers a disrespect for police officers."
"The pressing fixation of Middle America thought: you could reduce an enormous quantity on the content on Fox News and afternoon talk radio to a morbid national obsession that could be summarized on a T-shirt: ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?"
"Racial tumult is buried deep in the body of American society. Because of slavery and the fallout from it, it is our original sin. But we're unable to face it." show less
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