November 2008
El Chico Malo Del Periodismo Yanqui
(The Bad Boy of Yankee Journalism)
By Nathaniel S. Berke

Matt Taibbi Describe la America Post Bush
(Matt Taibbi Describes Post-Bush America)

This article was orignally written in English and translated to Spanish for the Peruvian cultural magazine Dedomedio. The article was subsequently published in English in the alternative newspaper Eat the State! (Seattle, Washington) under the title "Mencken's Spawn: An Interview with Matt Taibbi". Below is the unedited article as submitted to Dedomedio.

Rolling Stone chief political reporter Matt Taibbi captures a generation's anger towards American politics with all the swagger and punch of a barroom brawler. He has become the pundit of choice for the embittered class, disenchanted by modern campaigns that suffer from a malignant pettiness. His writing frequently draws comparisons to other bad-boys of journalism, including Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke (who were his predecessors at Rolling Stone), but he says he’s really  “copying” the granddaddy of them all: early-20th century journalist/satirist H.L. Mencken. In addition to his gig at Rolling Stone, he appears as a regular commentator on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher and has authored three books on American politics.

In his latest book, The Great Derangement, the National Magazine Award-winner aims his hyperbolic vitriol at the fringes of the American electorate. From the nation’s Christian wing-nuts to September 11th conspiracy theorists, he explores the growing disconnect between regular Americans and the realities of a complex world – and the way that disconnect has fueled a new fundamentalism on the political stage.

With the election of Barack Obama, Taibbi can finally breathe easy after tirelessly covering the longest campaign in United States history. This was his second presidential campaign, following his coverage of the 2004 race between George W. Bush and John Kerry, during which Taibbi dropped acid, donned a Viking helmet and interviewed the former chief of the Office of National Drug Policy.  Now he is turning his attention to his latest project, a book examining the influence of money in politics. Looking further to the future, Taibbi says, “Eventually I’ll quit journalism and work exclusively on books, but probably not for ten years or so. Then after that I’m going to get seriously fat and spend my golden years collecting royalties and watching football.”

Dedomedio caught up with Taibbi just after the elections to get his insights on the campaign, his opinion on what the world should expect from America in the coming years, and on what Change We Can really Believe In from President-elect Obama.

American politics 101: Quickly describe the electoral process, and explain how it is that someone like George W. Bush, or Sarah Palin, or the countless others of that ilk, can get elected?

The United States has a two-tier or two-round electoral system. In the first round, political parties (which for some time in American history have chiefly meant the Democrats and Republicans) choose their candidates through a primary process, in which each state votes for whichever candidate they want to represent their party in the main election. So if you are a Democrat and you live in New York, you vote in the New York Democratic party primary -- you might have voted for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Republicans might have voted for John McCain or Rudy Giuliani. Once those nominees are chosen (through a complex process that counts the results of those state-by-state primaries), there is a general election in which the nominees of the major parties face each other. In our case this year it was John McCain versus Barack Obama.

You write often about Karl Rove and Rovian politics. Who is he, and why has he had so much influence over American politics over the last eight years?

Rove is the American version of a character that is a constant of political histories of all countries – the Svengali or Rasputin, the man who has the ear of the king, whispering behind the throne. Rove is/was Bush's chief strategist. He is best known for his ruthless and dirty politics; he is perhaps most famous for the South Carolina primary race in 2000, when he helped Bush defeat McCain by spreading rumors that McCain a) had an illegitimate black child and b) had gone insane while a prisoner in Vietnam.

Rovian politics is a shorthand term that describes these dirty smear tactics – for instance the “Swift Boat” scandal in 2004, when Rove spread rumors that Democrat John Kerry had falsified his military records in order to win a medal in Vietnam. Rove is very good at winning elections but has a poor understanding of how to govern, which was ultimately his undoing. An example might be the invasion of Iraq, which helped Bush win an election but ultimately sank his presidency when Iraq proved impossible to govern.

The real reason Rove has so much influence in the past eight years is that Bush was a remarkably ineffectual president who deferred a great deal to his subordinates, people like Rove and Dick Cheney. Also, the Bush presidency was driven almost entirely by its desire to win re-election and remain in power, and since this was Rove’s expertise he was consulted on all matters, not just campaign matters.

So the elections are finally over, and McCain-Palin lost. Many are now saying Sarah Palin is the future of the party and will be a candidate in the next presidential election. So… Palin 2012?

I think so. She drew enormous crowds and is a classic neoconservative Republican – fundamentalist Christian, uneducated, intellectually uncurious. Basically she is Bush, only female and genuinely middle-class (as opposed to Bush, who was wealthy but pretended to be middle-class). She’s got a big future.

America’s voter turnout is normally abysmal compared to most democracies, but this year a record turnout of 136 million Americans voted on Tuesday. As many as 66 percent of registered voters – the most since 1908. Is this part of a radical transformation of American politics, as some media outlets are describing it? Will it last, or is it a historical blip?

It’s a historical blip, due almost entirely to two things: the almost unprecedented unpopularity of the president and the rock-star iconic status of Barack Obama. The trend generally has been turnout going down every year, often dramatically so. Turnout for midterm congressional elections never rose above 40 percent from 1986 to 2006.

In both 2000 and 2004 there was a huge amount of publicity regarding a youth voter block that, in the end, simply never materialized. But this time they did.

Turnout for young voters is notoriously difficult to predict. I think the high turnout this time had a lot to do with the financial power of the Obama campaign, which had enormous resources devoted to getting the vote out. Unless there are changes in the way we vote – a motor voter law, for instance, which registers everyone with a driver’s license, has been considered – it’s unlikely we’ll see a permanent return to high turnout among young people.

In the eight years since the 2000 voting debacle, Americans have been cynical towards the electoral process. Many people, particularly on the left, did/would not believe an Obama victory would happen, despite all indications in the run up to the elections. "Fearing to hope,” as it has been called. Does Tuesday’s results now vindicate the process? Is the cynicism a thing of the past?

There is still plenty to be cynical about in American politics – most particularly the influence of money, which allows the business world to dominate the policies of both parties. Barack Obama getting elected was amazing because of his race, but he is no political radical. If he fails to solve some of the problems caused by the monopoly of power in Washington, people will be very disappointed and the cynicism will return. In particular, if he fails to properly regulate Wall Street after the crash – and there’s no guarantee that he will enact the needed tough laws, because he took a lot of money from Wall Street firms – people will be very disappointed.

In a recent article you indicated that you thought we might be nearing the end of the Era of Rove. With the election of Barack Obama, are you ready to declare its death?

Well, let’s hope so. What I meant by that is that John McCain not only lost but was humiliated after running a campaign based almost entirely on racial appeals to nervous middle-class white voters – he tried to make white people afraid of the black candidate. And the tactic failed monstrously. My guess is that these tactics won’t be used so much in the future – not because politicians have become more moral, but because they’ve seen that this stuff is ineffective.

What would you say in a eulogy for the death of Rovian politics?

I would say that for a period of about twenty years, Karl Rove understood America better than anyone on the planet. He understood that you could elect anyone or anything president – he could have gotten a donkey or a llama into the White House – so long as you find a way to make middle-class white Americans afraid of the alternative. Tell them the opponent is a communist, a traitor, or loves terrorists, or looks French, and you can elect even George Bush, a man who can barely read, to the most powerful office on earth. He was a living testament to the almost unfathomable depths of human unscrupulousness. And now his time is up, and I hope he spends the rest of his life picking strawberries in Siberia.

What is the future of a Washington press corps that has been battered and cowed by eight years of aggressive handling from the Bush administration?

It’s always a bad situation when the press admires a president. There is going to be a strong temptation for reporters to go easy on Obama, because he is so popular and also because the reporters seem to like him personally. The only thing I can hope is that Obama uses this influence over the media in a positive way. If, for instance, Obama decided to encourage the press to cover problems like poverty more enthusiastically, he might have some success there. I’d rather have the press taking cues from an Obama about what to cover than to leave them to take their cues entirely from the open market, which will have us covering Madonna’s divorce or pro-wrestling scandals instead of real issues.

In you’re writing, you’ve fluctuated between sounding somewhat enthusiastic about Obama as an inspiring candidate/agent of change and the position that he’s the same kind of establishment figure as the other candidates – particularly in the case of political donors and corporate influences. You even wrote, “No matter who's in the White House, the direction of the government has remained remarkably stable. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. In sickness or in health, the faces may change, but the money remains.” With a President Obama, what things will change and what things won’t?

I have no idea. I’m curious about that myself.

As time has gone on I’ve become more impressed with Obama. I think he is extremely thoughtful and a genuine intellectual. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose intellect was used mainly to focus on the problem of how to stay in power – he had a gift for finding and occupying the exact political middle of every issue – I think Obama is more motivated by other concerns. I think, for instance, that he really believes that government can solve problems like poverty and inequities in the criminal justice system. That said, he is also a very cautious person. He’s obviously a gifted politician, but we have to find out whether his gift is for creating an inspirational image or whether it’s for actual governing and leadership. I hope it’s the latter – I’m beginning to suspect it is.

What’s the future of the war in Iraq?

I think we’ll get out of there within three years, and you know why? Because we can’t afford it. The bailout cost almost as much as the entire expenditure for that war, and the government has been plunged into so much debt it simply can’t afford to keep 150,000 men deployed in a foreign desert. Even most Republicans now favor a staged withdrawal.

One of the dominant narratives in this campaign was that Barack Obama, as an inspirational figure and an embodiment of the American story, will repair the image of our nation abroad. Does the president-elect shore up confidence and support abroad simply by virtue of his blackness, youth and strong oration?

I think so. I remember being in Pakistan a few years ago and having people there ask me if the police still use fire hoses on black people. There are a lot of serious misconceptions about America out there. The election of a Kenyan Muslim’s son to the American presidency will blow the minds of a lot of people in the third world, and in a good way. Although our policies have sucked in recent years, Americans as a whole are a lot more progressive than people give us credit for.

In your latest book, The Great Derangement, you went undercover as a religious nut in an evangelical church with a politically connected leader to see what these people were about, and how it is that they’re such a force in American politics. Many people overseas think it’s strange that there’s such a religious current in the U.S., and somewhat disturbed that they’re so interconnected with politics. How did it come to be this way? What, if anything, does it say about America?

America is a unique country in the sense that we are enormously powerful around the world without having a lot of actual contact with the rest of the world. Our geographical situation makes it possible for most Americans to live their lives without speaking another language or seeing much of the outside world. At the same time, we live in an era when the economy is increasingly global and the lives of ordinary middle-class Americans depend more and more on developments in the rest of the world – an auto worker in Michigan might lose his job, for instance, because his factory has been moved to Mexico or China. A small-town shopkeeper will have to close because he can’t compete with the buying power of Wal-Mart, which also has the advantage of buying cheap goods manufactured in second-world countries like China and India.

Some Americans understand these changes and are willing to face them head-on, but there is a large percentage that has reacted another way – it fears these changes and has decided that, instead of learning about the world, it is easier to retreat from it. This is the appeal of fundamentalism; it helps people lead simplified lives in a world that in fact is quite complicated. It’s the same reason that fundamentalism blossoms in other countries: it’s almost always driven by fear of the future and a desire to return to a simpler time. This doesn’t often happen in wealthy industrialized countries because the population is usually too educated to let it happen. But America, again, is unique in that it is wealthy and powerful without being particularly well-educated. These days a lot of our power is based on military might. If you read [George Orwell’s] 1984 you’ll see passages that describe a society where all the science and free inquiry is devoted to military innovation or innovation in police espionage – America is a little like that. A lot of our citizens are troubled by the disappearance of the simple life we used to have, and these religions are the beneficiaries.

Other than the characterization of all Latinos in the narrative of the border-hopping Mexicano, not many Americans know much about their southern neighbors, and the region is largely left out of the public debate. Why do you think this is?

Well, Americans don’t know much about anybody, not just Latin Americans. If you want Americans to be interested in you, I would suggest flying a plane into a New York skyscraper. You’ll get plenty of interest then.

What do you think of celebrities that meet with controversial leaders of other countries as if they were diplomats? As an example, Kevin Spacey, Sean Penn and Danny Glover have all had meetings with Hugo Chavez – who is seen as a tyrant by many of his Latin American neighbors.

I think actors who have meetings with foreign leaders should get over themselves. You’re actors, not heads of state. Stay home and learn to juggle or something. Buy a cat. Don’t visit Hugo Chavez. It’s just stupid.

Throughout its history, Rolling Stone has earned a reputation as a platform for innovative journalism that melds politics and culture. What kind of advantages – for readers, writers and political discourse in general – does this kind of journalism offer?

I would say the two advantages are: 1) A cultural magazine doesn’t have to worry about being nice to the government in order to keep access. So we can be a lot harsher about politicians – if they shut us out, who cares? We’ll just spend more time covering music. 2) We have more space and more time to do our stories. Cable TV reporters have to do five hits a day, so they can’t go into any depth at all. We can, and the ad revenue we get from all the music coverage allows the magazine to spend money on more in-depth investigative journalism. Not many media outlets have that luxury.

Is there anything Rolling Stone editors would not let you say?

Sure. All the time. I think they have a very specific idea of what they want, and they don’t like me to deviate from that very much. I’d probably do a lot more stuff that was purely comic and less serious if I were my own editor, as I used to be. They wouldn’t want me to cover the president in a gorilla suit, for instance, but that’s the kind of thing I like to do.

What do you say to critics who argue that your writing – with its gratuitous language, name-calling, and scatology – is divisive, juvenile and does nothing to help inform readers or sway voters?

I'm not trying to inform readers or sway voters. My only concern is if the writing is good. If people find it entertaining and provocative and interesting to read, I’m happy. I grew up reading a lot of very rude writers, people like H.L. Mencken and Hunter Thompson. Those people didn’t write to make me a better person. They wrote for their own reasons – they certainly weren’t trying to be public servants. Any writer who is interested in the literature of social intent is bound to be a crappy writer.

 

SIDEBAR: Verbal Abuse

Taibbi’s sharp observations combine with a violent, foul-mouthed wit – leading to some great rhetorical ass-kickings. Here are a few examples:

On President George W. Bush: “A high-tech engine of ruthless neocon capitalism wedded to a half-literate aristocrat dunce hiding his alcoholism in born-again Christian platitudes.“

On Vice Presidential pick Sarah Palin: “This rifle-toting, serially pregnant moose killer who thinks God lobbies for oil pipelines” is “completely without shame and utterly full of shit.” She is a “provincial tyrant … a raging baby-making furnace of middle class ambition” to whom “injustice is the woman next door owning a slightly nicer set of drapes or flatware.”

On the late Russian leader Boris Yeltin: “The Motherland's drunken, bloblike train wreck of a revolutionary leader” was “always good for a laugh … [like] a retarded nephew who could always be counted on to pull his pants down at Thanksgiving dinner. “

On former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani: “Virtually neckless, all shoulders and forehead and overbite, with a hunched-over, Draculoid posture … the vestigial stoop of a once-chubby kid who grew up hiding tittie pictures from nuns .. [is] a shameless opportunist with an outsize ego who doesn't even bother to conceal the fact that he's had a hard-on for the presidency since he was in diapers.”

On Senator John McCain: The “chameleon-like” presidential hopeful has a “creepy Count Chocula smile” and is an “aneurysm-in-waiting.”

On Senator McCain’s home state of Arizona: “Thank God John McCain has declared that he wants to wallpaper the continent with new nuke plants, because now the chances are better that this wretched slab of hot, birdshit-covered asphalt they call a state will be blown to hell in an accident someday. I hate this place.”

On Senator Obama’s political success: “The historical seas literally parted for this Obama guy, with inconceivable idiocy and villainy littering the political shores on either side of him as he ascended to the pantheon of all-time American heroes simply by walking straight ahead and not being a dick.”

On Wall Street brokers and the financial collapse: “They were supposed to safeguard our money and instead they gambled with it like a bunch of coke addicts. You know how a coke addict goes from having money to buy his own coke, to selling the shit in his house to buy coke, to stealing items from his mother's place to buy coke, and then finally ends up … sucking cocks to get the money to buy the coke? Well, these guys in Wall Street were about fifty stages past that. They were promising to promise to suck a cock to get the money to buy the coke. This crash happened when the dealer finally decided they weren't good for it.”