Workin’ for the Weekend #22: The Taibbi Files, Kennedy’s Krushing, and the Webathon Marathon
Remember: Tell ‘em who sent ya!
So you may have heard about that Matt Taibbi kid in the news (as discussed on #384, after yet another 45 minutes agonizing over a certain homeless-looking anti-Semite). Well, the Musk-dump recipient has been on The Fifth Column twice in the past, very memorably both times—in #226, when he talked about why he was taking his talents from Rolling Stone to Substack; and in the just-after-the-Rooskies-invaded-Ukraine #348, in which we got the critic of American empire theeeees close into becoming a neocon.
* We mentioned on the pod the disparate media treatment between 2022 Taibbi and 2013 Glenn Greenwald, and sure enough, the strident Brazilian resident (and vet of #183, #197, and #211) reacted in typically unsparing fashion:
* Remember last week’s teaser trailer of Kmele’s appearance with Glenn Loury (#121 & #188, #366), Shelby Steele, and Robert Woodson, on a Reihan Salam-moderated panel about “The Ethics of Black Identity”? Well, you can now listen to the whole enchilada.
* We also referenced briefly the federal government’s intrusion into a possible railway strike; I talked about that + COVID restrictions on Thursday’s episode of Kennedy, and then competed (badly!) against Jessica Tarlov and Jimmy Failla in a contest of “Name That Goon”:
* Speaking of America’s libertarian girlfriend, she’s killing it in the ratings:
* Over at my day job, it’s our annual Webathon fundraiser time. As per holiday tradition, I am not rattling the cup here; just requesting that those who do toss some shekels in the guitar case take advantage of the little feedback form to say something like, oh I dunno, I CAME HERE FROM THE FIFTH COLUMN; ISN’T IT GREAT THAT THE FIFTH COLUMN EXISTS? GOD, SURE LOVE THAT FIFTH COLUMN. Also, for those who enjoy the work of my colleagues, here are some Twitter threads of 2022 work from Billy Binion, Christian Britschgi, Emma Camp, C.J. Ciaramella, Fiona Harrigan, Joe Lancater, Scott Shackford, and Robby Soave (#332). If you want to (for a change) watch the dynamite personal chemistry between me & Nick Gillespie (SD 72, #379) & Peter Suderman & Katherine Mangu-Ward (#75), you can viddie our Reason Roundtable Webathon Ask-Us-Anything epi below:
Awwwright pals, see ya next weekend, and in the meantime, let’s get this Christmas party started!
Matt -- Gaylord Perry has died. As much as I know you love baseball, his mid-career 1974 autobiography Me and the Spitter is totally worth the read. It's hilarious.
Thought the entire panel discussion on the Glenn Show covered some interesting topics, some of which I think apply not only to black Americans, but are perhaps elements of the human condition that we're all working our way through.
I also caught Kmele's debate about the relevance of public radio and thought it was really good. I recently read Neil deGrasse Tyson's new book, Starry Messenger, and he makes the point that technological advances happen exponentially rather than linearly and I think we experience this in life and aren't always sure when something has become obsolete because our emotional attachments make us suckers for a sunken-cost-fallacy valuation, rather than a cold and emotionless assessment of whether something provides us a sufficient first step forward into the future. Kmele did a great job discussing the relevant particulars and I like that his arguments presented a reasonable case without even really having to take any shots at the other guy's position. I think that seems like the least assailible way to debate something.