Oh and I don't have much respect for Matt Taibbi either....

[WCGreen]

He is a diminished version of Hunter S. and diminished I mean he adopted the style mostly without the depth...

Sure, he gets it right sometimes like he did with his comprehensive but overly technical expose of the Financial Industry.

But his latest snark fest about John Boner is just petty. No meat, just a lot of little carb factoids he tries to inflate into an exposes.

You can read it here...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/matt-taibbi-the-crying-shame-of-john-boehner-20110105

Nothing he talked about in that article was of real worth.

We all know Boner is a petty, venial hack of a congressman and we know even his friends know not to get in the path between Boner and a potential donor.

But then again it is Rolling Stone.

Maybe I'm getting too old to be moved by the banality and pointless sniggering that passes for political discourse these days.

It all seems almost surreal.

Perhaps Taibbi feels he has to be snarky in order to get attention and I guess that is a valid point. There are so many, and supposedly different, information outlets available today that the glitzy, in your face highly stylistic form is probably the only way to carve out a niche.

I guess form does trump function.

And that is the problem I have with this "new" journalism, that style more often than not shoves substance out of the way.

It's a paradox of our times, I guess, that the more information there is out there the less we really know.

The maddening part is we are being spoon fed from, god knows where, appointed pundits from both sides so that spin and strategy win.

If I hear one more time "This is how it will play beyond the beltway."

I guess that's why I went off a little about what was the motivation behind the KO incident from last night.

I just don't trust the pure motives of anyone in the media any more.

Living in an echo chamber isn't the best way to make informed decisions. But if there are only two echo chambers, where do people go?

To me, adopting the Fox model with a left oriented slant doesn't solve the problem. In fact it is the problem.

I know that because I questioned KO's motivation behind his leaving MSNBC that some people here will not think I am a liberal, but that just isn't the case.

It's not what KO or Matt say that is the problem but the way they say it, the way they slant it.

Look, if you want your news with a liberal slant, more power to you. That is certainly as valid as it comes.

But I feel I am confident enough in my ability to find the truth without someone framing it for me.

I would rather get to the truth than the truth as it seems.

If that makes me questionable to some people here on DU or for that matter anywhere else in this whole wide world, well so be it.

I quit looking to be the most popular person in the room way back in Junior High. Which probably goes a long way to explain why most of my friends from that era are highly successful and I am sitting here not five miles from where I was born tapping away at an old lap top on a Saturday night.

Peace, and I mean it.

[miscsoc]

1. clarify what you mean by snarkiness

and how it is displayed in this article, and how said snark is a bad thing.

[WCGreen]

3. Snarky to me in journalism in injecting personal observations and feeling

into the piece.

Well, snark, to me at least, devolves the discourse.

Hey if it floats your boat, go with it.

[hfojvt]

12. snarkiness, to me, is not just a personal observation or feeling

it would be something more along the lines of a "(supposedly) clever personal attack".

It is sort of like the equivalent of a pack of junior highers with a leader, and the leader says something cutting and cruel about or to some other person causing the crowd of sycophants to laugh uproariously. Unfortunately the whole discourse sorta gets lowered to the junior high level with each side flinger their zingers at the other side. Each side thinks they are righteous and clever in this way exposing the flaws and foibles of the other side, but often it does not convince anybody except the crowd of sycophants, or the members of various tribes.

But if you question one of the leaders you are just suspected of not being loyal to the tribe. "A real Jet would think Taibbi is the excrement."

[WCGreen]

38. Much better way of putting it...

the bad cliche in a John Hughes movie...

[ananda]

2. Cranky liberals are loveable too.

nt

[EV_Ares]

4. What, it is petty to hand out money on the congressional floor.

[WCGreen]

6. That is an example of Boner making the institution petty....

[EV_Ares]

9. Well you said the following about Tabbi:

But his latest snark fest about John Boner is just petty. No meat, just a lot of little carb factoids he tries to inflate into an exposes.

To me along with the other info he wrote about don't see Tabbi doing anything petty other than you may not like him.

[WCGreen]

15. Well, to me, at least it is petty because....

All that has been reported before.

[EV_Ares]

19. Oh, so you think everyone in the country was aware of Boehner doing that among the other

stuff he did. Yeah, now I see who is snarky.

[WCGreen]

31. I just don't think that one should depend for all their news on opinionated

pieces purporting to be Journalism.

Of course there are valid points in his stuff as I took pains to point out.

He has talent.

Again, I'm not a journalists nor am I proclaiming to be one.

And I am posting on an opinion board.

So the level of my validity lies in the strength of my argument.

You don't agree, and that is fine.

[provis99]

5. how ironic. Snarky OP complains about snarkiness.

[WCGreen]

16. Again, I am not presenting what I write as journalism.

[October]

17. LOL!

Really funny!

Was it really necessary to post this diatribe on Taibbi because he's snarky? Rolling Stone is at least addressing issues that local and national news isn't paying attention to. Unfortunately, we don't have that many venues for left-leaning voices any more. KO is gone, NYT has been disappointing since GWB, NPR is afraid of its shadow... and on and on it goes.

I don't have to always agree with the "liberal" voice/author or his/her style -- but others might, and they might help someone understand an issue that they might not otherwise read about. Colbert and Stewart use comedy -- but how sad a commentary on our society is it that we get our real news from a cable funny network? I think we have to understand that our word has to get out any which way it can. Our old standard methods have all but evaporated.

[WCGreen]

28. The reason I decided to bring this into the discussion is because

he is similar in style to KO.

I also thought it was a good example to point out what I see as the diminishing of journalism.

It should never be about taking sides it should always be about telling the truth.

Taking sides is for the editorial page.

But then again, I am old fashioned.

Far too many people on both sides take comfort in living in a bubble where only one slant prevails.

I find that Colbert and Stewart are much more valid because they sling arrows where ever they see something that doesn't seem right...

[October]

43. Yes, I just enjoyed the little bit of irony

And I agree with much of what you're saying. I, too, am old-fashioned (having been raised by my grandparents).

Taibbi is a polemic journalist -- and I think the piece on Boehner was in keeping with his style. That's not to say I always like or agree with him, but he is consistent in style. As soon as you think he's in your 'camp,' however, he'll turn on you (or your guy). He has attacked Obama, as well, for example -- whilst in the middle of slamming a republican.

Bill Maher has a similar manner he'll be speaking the truth one minute -- throw in an insult -- and end by saying something I totally disagree with.

Perhaps we can agree that we just miss news and reporters because it seems everyone on TV and in print is only about having an opinion on the goings-on rather than reporting the goings-on.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

7. You call them the way you see them.

Your honesty is refreshing.

Recommended, even though it doesn't show.......yet.

[WCGreen]

8. I just don't feel I should deify anyone just because they appear

to agree with what I believe...

[sabrina 1]

20. Who is deifying anyone?

Do you remember MSNBC before Keith Olbermann's show began, back in the days when the entire MSM became a version of Fox News and anyone who even whispered a question about Bush's lies was gone permanently from the air?

CNN turned into Fox Lite, MSNBC couldn't fire their truthful voices fast enough, talk radio was 90% cheer-leading for war and demonizing of Muslims everywhere.

Meet The Press became a platform for Condi, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al to peddle their lies.

The U.S. Media was rated so low on the World Free Press scale that we resided next to third world dictatorships in the news dept.

Then one night I tuned into to MSNBC and recognized Keith Olbermann. He had been around during the Clinton/Monica era and had quit, I read somewhere in disgust at the climate and the state of the media's reporting on the Clinton presidency.

For the first time it seemed I was hearing some pushback against the lies. I expected him to be gone in about two weeks.

Yes, his show was of necessity an ANSWER to the pervasive propaganda that was all around us. No one was telling the truth about Bush's wars, so to simply do that would leave the lies unanswered.

In a different climate he could have reported the truth but as one of the very, very few voices attempting to do that, he also had to challenge the lies.

It was an oasis in a desert making it safe to be able to turn TV on again, even if only for one hour a day and hear someone trying to beat back the lies.

Deifying? Being grateful for one voice, and he then helped add others like Rachel Maddow, of reason in a world of madness and lies that was the MSM at the time, isn't deifying anyone. Remaining grateful to him for being among the first to make it safe to listen to a TV talk show host again, isn't deifying anyone. It's simply what it is. Thankful that someone did slowly begin the process of turning around the daily propaganda machine and introducing some reality to the political debate that had maybe already gone too far for it to be ever possible to undo the damage.

[WCGreen]

35. Almost everyone on this board jumped to the conclusion that KO

was fired and that he was the victim in all of this and that ComCast was behind it all.

As the day turns into night, more information is dribbling out that the relationship between KO and MSNBC hadn't been good for a long time.

It wasn't all about his opinions because why else would they have hired Cenk and Rachel and Ed?

So yes, a lot of people here were treating him like someone above the plane of mortal existence and that he could do no wrong.

The last time I looked that sounded a bit like deification to me.


Deify - To idealize; exalt.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/deify

[sabrina 1]

40. Well, I disagree that making assumptions about how his show

ended has anything to do with 'deification'. It is simply making assumptions that are somewhat based on recent history regarding the silencing of liberal voices on the air. That it is Keith's show being terminated this time, doesn't mean anything more than it is HIS show this time.

It could have been Ashley Banfield or Donohue, or Aaron Brown, or anyone of the other silenced liberal voices in the recent past.

Sorry, but I think YOU are over-reacting to people simply reacting to yet another liberal voice going off the air and without all the facts, basing their opinions on what they do know, that being liberal in America is not exactly a safe thing to be.

It may turn out that he left because he had conflicts that could not be resolved, but O'Reilly eg, was not fired after basically admitting to sexual harassment charges.

For Liberals, there is no network to back them up as Fox backs its rightwingers. Liberals iow are an endangered species in today's American so people do get a little excited when a prominent and successful liberal goes off the air.

[hlthe2b]

10. Why is it that many of us seem to pick apart those who are

at least somewhat more likely to present a liberal side and to actually come out and critique conservatives, rather than deal in false equivalencies all the time. Our "own" are supposed to hold to some standard that we'd never even begin to apply to the right wing. So, the RW laughs as we eat our own and has US for lunch. :shrug:

[EV_Ares]

11. Agree, read that article among many Tabbi has written and have never

found him to be petty at all.

[WCGreen]

14. Again, it's the way I see it...

He injects his personal observations into his writing. That's my biggest beef.

[Ohio Joe]

13. WCGreen... I may or may not always agree with you...

and I may or may not always be able to follow what you are talking about :D But I will always believe you are a liberal!

It is true, we no longer get any NEWS from anywhere, it is all OpinioNews... bleh, I agree, I would rather just get the facts, my own slant will look at it from the left and decide on it's goodness or badness.

On the other hand though, I would like to keep some of the OpinioNews people from the left because.... I'm just not as funny as some of them are and they make me laugh :D

[WCGreen]

18. Thanks....

I remember when I ran for the Ohio Senate back in 1996 and some powerful local people came up to me and two groups approached me and said they would raise a lot of money for me if I...

Came out against Abortion.

Came out in favor of legalize gambling here in Ohio.

Here I sit, far removed from the political arena.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

22. You were not willing to sell your soul.

That takes integrity.

Once that's gone...well, it's like losing your virginity.

It cannot be retrieved.

[EV_Ares]

21. What Tabbi reported was fact. What the OP is upset about it had been he says

reported before. How many people do you think may have reported something that has been reported in the past?

[WCGreen]

24. It was a lazy piece....

He also injected his personal opinion in the piece so those are my reasons.

[EV_Ares]

25. Your opinion, not the opinion of many. You have injected your own

personal feelings for whatever reason into this and have not provided one single supporting fact about the article. Regardless, Tabbi has much respect in the journalism world and the same with those who are knowledgeable about him from his article in Rolling Stone among other pieces.

Your rant is just that, what it is & doesn't carry much weight for whatever your reasoning is and also your right to see it as you see it.

[WCGreen]

32. Don't have too....

It's an opinion piece on an opinion message board.

You either like it or you don't.

You either agree or you don't.

[EV_Ares]

34. Where I read it it was not an opinion piece, it was a factual account of some

of the past about Boehner. None of that is opinion but facts of what he did. Maybe you read it on a message board, don't know. It is quite obvious you did not like what he said about Boehner. Sorry about that but he did those things and it is not hard to check it out.

[WCGreen]

37. I agree with what he said about Boner....

But this particular piece he was phoning it in, I guess would have been a better way to put it.

And again, that is my opinion.

And why would you ever surmise that an almost ten year veteran of DU would not like boner being slammed?

Hell I'm from Ohio and am embarrassed by him.

[EV_Ares]

39. Well, maybe I was wrong in how I said that exactly. Regardless it is something

we can both agree to disagree on this. I just feel he is a good investigative journalist, have read other things he has done including one of his books. Also, with this thing about Olbermann, just feel like we don't have enough people like him on our side.

Other than that, will leave it there and look forward to some of your other postings here. Nothing personal on this. I probably was not in the right mood to have read your post.

[WCGreen]

42. I tend to post contrary things now and then.

I love to make people think outside the box, consider alternatives.

I think the main problem with our country now is that we have been basically shoved into two hunkered down enclaves that can't bridge the gulf because of the rhetoric coming from each camp.

Although it is far stronger and far more scary coming from the right because of their inclination to view people who don't agree with their mindset as unchristian or evil. That is nothing short of dangerous.

And for what it's worth, I blame Newt for all of this vitriol that has tainted our discourse.

As far as Taibbi is concerned, I have always question when people are elevated out of the mainstream for whatever reason and presented as something different. I have been disappointed so many times. I just don't think he lives up to the expectations or the praise.

[EV_Ares]

45. Good enough, everyone should think outside of the box. As for your opinion of Taibbi,

feel you are very wrong, that is OK, your opinion but with his reputation and other stuff he will be doing, he will do just fine s he is doing and will have the respect he does for it.

As for those who don't like him, no problem with that, your opinion. Have a good evening.

[Peregrine Took]

46. +1. Exactly.

[Dappleganger]

36. That is the style of today's journalism.

Whether you like it or approve of it doesn't really matter, except you get to choose whether to tune in or not. Opinion-based journalism is here to stay and it gets the message out. I happen to appreciate Taibbi's style (and his books) as do many others. You can complain about it ad nauseum but it isn't going away anytime soon.

[EV_Ares]

23. We need a lot more investigative journalists like Tabbi who does his research,

is very knowledgeable about what he is reporting on and reports the facts as they are.

[inna]

26. jeez, what sickening tripe. Keith was fired, btw, fyi. unrecd, ignored.

[WCGreen]

29. when you ignore someone who doesn't agree with you 100%...

then you are retreating into a bubble.

Your choice..

[EV_Ares]

30. Right on inna.

[QC]

27. My grandfather thought there was never another car half as good as the Model A of his youth. n/t

[Dappleganger]

33. Betchya the Flintstones un'recced that as well.

Fucking newfangled floorboards and round wheels, ya know. ;)

[QC]

41. Damn whippersnappers, with their flibbertigibbit and fooferaw! n/t

[catabryna]

44. You get nothing but peace from me...

From your post:

"But I feel I am confident enough in my ability to find the truth without someone framing it for me."

I couldn't agree more!

:hi: