I doubt anyone care, but I’m the resident Matt Taibbi observer, so AMA.

tldr; Walter Kirn is a big lolbertarian anti-Covid lockdown and suck-up of Jay Bhattacharya, the current director of NIH and anti-lockdown “doctor” (he’s an economist and does not practice medicine). Matt Taibbi’s substack “Racket News” hired a Emily Kopp - a reporter that’s too crazy for even the current MAHA movement. She’s digging into the ongoing gain-on-function research at NIH even under the current administration. Being a MAGA suck-up Walter disagree with Matt Taibbi’s substack challenging the current administration and their grift podcast is no more.

  • micnd90 [he/him,any]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
    9·
    2 months ago

    Matt spent his early career in Russia and he published the book “The Exile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia” in 2000 which is some sort of memoir about Russian society and life as American expat during the fall of Soviet Union era. The book was co-written with another expat US journalist in Russia Mark Ames. Supposedly these are “fictional” memoirs, but they’re both too dumb and literally use their real names. The book includes this excerpt

    Talking about their other American colleague (Kara) in Moscow

    We’d never given her any respect or credit. We were glory hogs and obnoxious jerks. Worst of all was our sexism. Our sexism and sexual harassment of the Russian female staff, as well as the sexism in our newspaper, was too much for her. Watching us harass the young female staff had to be the most painful part—because we’d never, in a million years, have thought of harassing her. “You know I’m not PC. But there’s a limit. You go too far. You’re always trying to force Masha and Sveta under the table to give you blow jobs. It’s not funny. They don’t think it’s funny,” Kara complained. “But . . . it is funny,” Matt said. We have been pretty rough on our girls. We’d ask our Russian staff to flash their asses or breasts for us. We’d tell them that if they wanted to keep their jobs, they’d have to perform unprotected anal sex with us. Nearly every day, we asked our female staff if they approved of anal sex. That was a fixation of ours. “Can I fuck you in the ass? Huh? I mean, without a rubber? Is that okay?” It was all part of the fun. Fun that Kara was no part of.

    Obviously when 2017 and #MeToo came around, Matt got called out. His defense was these were fictional accounts. No accuser ever came forward against him but he was cancelled anyway (lol) - deservedly so. The controversy happened during his book tour and completely gadoosh’d his #GoodLib book “I can’t breathe” which is about the killing of Eric Garner and systemic racism in police work. All major outlets cancelled their interview with him. The book might literally sold only 10 copies, was a massive flop and it ended his career as mainstream book writer. Everything Matt does afterward is “self-published”