You know all that dreadful ghastly misogynistic crap Matt Taibbi wrote about his time in Russia? Where he and his co-conspirator bragged about raping and harassing young women? He’s claiming now that it was a work of fiction, despite the clear statement in the book that all of the characters and events depicted in this book are real
.
Even if it was all a lurid, revolting fantasy with no basis in fact, I have a tough time forgiving him for it. It was a glimpse into his mind, and it’s an ugly nest of snakes in there. I said this past summer that I’d never read Taibbi again, and that resolve is unchanged, even if he is now changing his story. And if he is changing his story now, that makes him a liar, and why should I trust a journalist who publishes books he retroactively claims are all lies?
I believe him. The eXile was a satire magazine, and there’s no reason to think these things happened.
The thing about satire is that you aren’t supposed to admit it’s satire. This is Spinal Tap pretends to be a serious documentary, A Modest Proposal pretends to be a serious essay, etc.
mawbts:
Or like the Cohen Bros and Fargo, with the ‘all true!’ business, yeah. All that granted, it doesn’t address the content of the satire. Spinal Tap was funny, A Modest Proposal brilliant, Fargo, freaky enough to be believable. What, exactly, does one say about Taibbi and his buddy? That harassment and assault are oh so fucking funny, har har? That the content is excusable because satire? If, at the time, he was looking up to Andrew Dice Clay, somewhere in his head, there should have been a little voice, questioning his sense of humour.
I’m not sure what to think about this. On the one hand, my brain comes up with some pretty fucked up shit now and then, fantasies I would never in a million years actually do in real life, and so I can’t really agree with the “ugly nest of snakes” comment PZ made. I think all people have had instances where they have imagined engaging in violence or other illegal and immoral behavior, and almost all people make sure it stays in the fantasy realm. The human brain is truly capable of being the most beautiful and the ugliest object I can think of, and often the same brain is capable of both the best and worst of humanity. Now this situation is a bit different because Taibbi publicized the contents of his mind, and no author has control of his content after it goes public, so there is a risk of this inspiring real sexual violence. And I am not one of those free-speech absolutists who will claim that no matter what harm people do with what you create, you are morally in the clear – people need to own the predictable outcomes of saying or writing certain things, and thus if people are harmed as a direct result of this text, Taibbi has moral culpability.
Furthermore, although Taibbi has publicized feminist positions in the past and seems to be a decent ally to women (note that I cannot claim more than a moderate familiarity with his work though, so I could be missing some information), the ambiguity about this is troubling; I don’t think one can ever be 100% sure that there aren’t real victims out there after a book like this is released. And even if this is satire (i.e. fantastical, nothing ever happened that even inspired the immoral and heinous acts described in the book, total fiction), it’s not really GOOD satire since Poe’s law is clearly in play. Satirists have to be less true to reality if they don’t want “difficult questions” asked about their past. The behavior Taibbi and Ames get up to is actually believable. Therefore, if someone actually came forward and claimed that they were victimized in the ways described in this book, I would believe them, and chalk up Taibbi’s most recent statements to some furious backpedalling.
Caine @2:
I can tell you what I thought when I read The eXile back in the day. It had the best journalism (mostly by Taibbi, IIRC) that I was aware of on what was happening in Russia at the time (late 90s to early noughts: basically, capitalist and overtly criminal vultures invited to feed on the corpse), which put mainstream Western media happy-happy coverage to shame. It also had skeevy misogynistic crap.
I’ll keep reading Taibbi because he’s good at his job, not because he’s an admirable human being.
Holy fuck. After reading the link… I don’t care even if it was written to make some kind of a point (which is not at all obvious in any way), i find it deeply disturbing. Seriously gross and wrong.
He regrets “putting [his] name as a co-author”. So I’m guessing his actual regret is not using a pseudonym.
The only question is the acceptable level of consequence. There are pictures documenting serious sexual harassment at their little enterprise – wet tee shirt contests and such. Some of it happened, how much is unknown.
It’s sad because he has done a lot of important work, including his reporting from Russia during that period (countered the idiotic narrative that Communism was coming back to Russia; described the oligarch-kleptocracy that exists now).
But that doesn’t undo this shit. I’m curious what people think. What is the consequence for this? Should he never have an outlet again? Some censure? I mean this legitimately. I have no idea what the proper response is, here.
Well, he’ll use the same argument so very many hacks use when they get caught out on their “based on a true story” stories being made up. It’s “hinting at a deeper truth” than mere facts can provide. The deeper truth that he’s a creep.
Very convenient that the alleged victims are probably unaware of the original book and the current disclaimer.
I think it’s supposed to be shocking and transgressive. Plus it captures the time in a microcosm (at least as the eXile saw it): the West was descending on the ruins of the Soviet Union, like barbarians pillaging Rome.
Whether it works as satire is debatable: it seems Taibbi no longer thinks so. He’s saying “yeah, we tried to be Hunter S Thompson, we failed.”
Fair enough. Shock-value satire is like the Mickey Mouse voice: everyone thinks they can do it, and most people can’t. At least he’s grown up and moved on. There’s sixty year olds still trying this same shtick, and that’s just sad.
We’ve been here before, and we will be here again.
Every 2-3 years someone discovers that book for the first time, pulls some quotes out of context, blasts “MATT TAIBBI IS A RAPIST, LET’S GET HIM FIRED” across social media…and then the movement dies on its feet after everyone realises there was a joke they weren’t in on.
In a few years the cycle will repeat. Lots of people thought Spinal Tap was a real rock band, too.
Aren’t jokes supposed to be funny? If not, how do we know Taibbi isn’t joking when he now says the vile acts described in his book were fiction?
Can one of these social degenerates actually outline the satire at some point?
I don’t believe it’s satire because of the statement that the characters are real. Either way there is a social cost to looking like liars and should be more of a cost to being sexual assaulters.
Satire eh? Okay, let us assume for the sake of argument that none of the things he describes actually happened. Let us assume that all of it was made up. The thing about satire is that it’s supposed to be… well, funny is a good start, but also clever, witty and at least implicitly condemnatory of the flaws of people and society. Just saying awful things for the sake of it is not satire. Not even Juvenalian satire, which very much deals in highlighting human awfulness and exaggerating vice to a grotesque level.
Satire should have a certain cast of unreality about it – be that an elevated, poetic style as Juvenal used, an Aristophanic pantomime ridiculousness, a burlesque disjunct of form and content like Swift, or the kind of stagey, supercilious comic delivery you see in Private Eye or on American late-night shows these days. There should be some element that alerts you to the appropriate register in which to take the piece. Writing a trashy, offensive magazine in the style of a trashy, offensive magazine for the sort of people who like trashy, offensive magazines does not achieve this in any way.
“I am myself indifferent honest, but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. I am very proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them in, imagination to give them shape, or time to act them in… We are arrant knaves, all.” -Hamlet
I also have done things which keep me awake at night and hope that how I live my life now, in some way, can make up for my past actions.
Tough crowd.
When people tell you who they are, listen. When they come back later, after they’ve received blowback and say “no, I was just kidding,” accept that for what it is: Bullshit.
You’re never going to convince me that this was satire. If I’m wrong, I can totally live with that.
LykeX:
I think what convinces me it wasn’t satire is that Taibbi is a good writer, he certainly knows how to do proper satire, and as Cartomancer points out @ 13, there isn’t an actual drop of satire to be found in it.
To me, two things completely discredit him as a journalist:
1. From his book Exile: … in the New Russia, Copyright 2000 by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi
“This is a work of nonfiction. While all of the characters and events depicted in this book are real, certain names and identifying details have been changed.”
Yesterday: “It is fictional.” And then he implies, to avoid responsibility as a writer, that he merely “made an editorial decision” “by putting my name as co-author.” This is deception passed off as being sorry.
Taibbi does not have a journalist’s commitment to the truth or to the responsibility of the job.
2. His statement that his misogynist book doesn’t represent his views appeared only today. After 17 years (of ignoring or ridiculing objections published by individual women writers). After two weeks of unusually public widespread condemnation of sexual harassment AND on the eve of his new book tour.
Taibbi is transparently self-serving (which is not journalism) and is irresponsible about the effect of his work. His manipulativeness for the sake of his sales is not ethical behavior for a journalist.
Give me a break.
I find these discussions of Taibbi’s “prehistory” at eXile interesting, as I thought everyone was familiar with it. Like Rob Grigjanis, I read the online edition pretty regularly back in the late ’90s – for the often good journalism on events in Russia (yes, mainly by Taibbi) that could be found under all the layers of misogyny, occasional ethnic slurs, and generally not-funny attempts at satire. So I had no illusions about Taibbi and Mark Ames (his partner in crime at the paper), and was pleasantly surprised when I saw Taibbi’s pieces in the Rolling Stone about 10 years ago – they were well-written and informative, and mostly not peppered with “biting” (and mostly irrelevant) asides like his eXile work.
All that said, I basically agree with saleta @17: he may truly regret those aspects of his work at the eXile back then (I kind of doubt it, though), but I think his statement now is a just a self-serving attempt at damage control.