by matttbastard
Matt Taibbi continues his superlative coverage-of-2008-presidential-election-coverage with this Rolling Stone essay that examines slavering Beltway horserace journalism and the unquestioning digestion of “maddeningly nonspecific, platitude-filled verbal oatmeal that every candidate has spent the last year slinging in all directions”.
As Eric Alterman put it this past Friday:
Seriously, let’s cut the crap. Cover the candidates’ stands on the issues, please, so voters can make sensible decisions. This obsession with the horserace is only making everyone doing it look like a horse’s ass. Literally.
Related: In keeping with the meta theme, Blake Hounshell runs down the Ten Commandments of Punditry (my personal favourite: 9. Thou shalt not commit the sin of Common Sense); veteran UK political correspondent Godfrey Hodgson tries to fill the omnipresent talking head hot air re: the US electorate’s desire for “change” with something resembling substance in this thoughtful openDemocracy piece.
01.16: edited slightly for clarity/to add Alterman quote
3 responses so far ↓
Godammitkitty // January 15, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Love Matt Taibbi! So funny. His dispatches about the campaigns have been priceless. Particularly the Huckabee and Romney pieces–ow! my sides! His Giuliani piece was more frightening than funny. So glad that Rudy has fallen into Fred Thompson territory!
matttbastard // January 15, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Priceless and indispensible. Too many in the blogosphere (at times, myself included) have fallen prey to the very superficial tendencies endemic in the MSM that we used to decry back in the day.
Taibbi makes me resolve to try and give my bullshit the smell test before hitting “publish”.
KC // January 16, 2008 at 11:29 am
Taibbi’s pretty fair in hating both parties:
http://hamptons.plumtv.com/videos/matt_taibi_2008_election