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Posted by T.LaFauci

I Never Thought The Leopard Would Eat MY Face: Matt Taibbi Edition

A play, in three parts. 

Act one in which the protagonist teams up with a known nefarious character in an effort to bolster his own reputation.

Act two in which the protagonist must justify this decision and struggles mightily to do so, owing these struggles largely to any sort of preparation whatsoever.

Act three in which the protagonist's useful idiocy has run its course and the villain promptly discards his damaged goods, much to the chagrin of said protagonist. 
Thus is the woeful tale of one Matthew Colin Taibbi.

Sorry, did I say woeful? I meant HI-LARIOUS!

Because this is exactly what Taibbi deserves. For the past decade, he has been slowly degenerating into a poor man's Glenn Greenwald right before our eyes. Whether it's Russian kompromat, a need to appeal to GOP audiences, an affinity for grifting, or any combination of the three, the Matt Taibbi of 2013 would hardly recognize the Matt Taibbi of today. There was a time and place where Taibbi followed journalistic ethics and followed good practices like fact-checking his work, but those times have long passed us by. Taibbi has become nothing more than a propagandist for Elon Musk and Vladimir Putin and by doing so he has turned his back on any sort of journalistic integrity he might have once had. This past week has been a culmination of his follies; a week where his overblown ego and sense of self-worth led him down a path where he failed to recognize that is both a pawn and a patsy in someone else's game.

Taibbi knew that Musk handfed him material for the Twitter Files but he didn't care. He was a useful idiot, wanting to own the libs and to make a name for himself in the meantime. But when the Twitter Files rightfully flopped, Taibbi was forced to double down on his dubious reporting. While his invitation to testify before Jim Jordan's committee was intended to rally up the Republican base, what it actually did was poke several holes in Taibbi's alleged reporting. When MSBNC's Medhi Hasan called out Taibbi on Twitter, Taibbi's ego felt compelled to respond and accept Hasan's invitation to his show this past week. If you thought that two-minute clip was painful to watch, imagine that times 15 and you'll get a sense for exactly how badly the entire interview went for Taibbi. Hasan not only poked gaping holes in Taibbi's Twitter Files reporting but also challenged him to denounce Elon Musk for censoring Indian journalists, the exact type of thing that Taibbi has claimed to be against. When Taibbi refused to say anything negative about Musk, Hasan proved his point: Taibbi truly was nothing more than Elon Musk's personal scribe.

But like all scribes to wannabe kings, they are easily replaceable. This is what Taibbi learned over the weekend when Musk placed restrictions on Substack, the platform that Taibbi uses to promote his work. Without having access to the increasingly right-wing audience of Twitter, Taibbi lashed out and took his ball and went home, vowing to leave Twitter permanently and Musk, always the adult in the room, responded by blocking users from searching for the Twitter Files. In just over four months, Taibbi had become someone who doubled his following on Twitter to someone whose "revolutionary" reporting could no longer be viewed. Meanwhile, Elon Musk continued his monomaniacal quest to rid himself of any and all allies, this time taking Taibbi down after he no longer saw any use for him. Dance with the devil and you're gonna get burned.

Stories will be written on the failings of American media during the Trump years. While the embrace of Trump and the unprecedented about of media coverage he received can and should be front and center, what we can't ignore are the willful grifters who sold out their souls and their country to make a quick buck. Taibbi now finds himself in a category with the Michael Traceys and Glenn Greenwalds of the world as someone whose transformation from legitimate journalist to Republican stenographer raises more questions than it does answers. Is Taibbi compromised? Has he drunk the GOP Kool-Aid? Or is he simply a grifter who thought that latching onto someone like Elon Musk would somehow catapult him into a radical new strata of professional journalists? Whatever the answer may be, we know one thing: trusting Elon Musk to further your career was a disastrous decision.

But it is one that Taibbi willingly made. No one forced him to team up with Bari Weiss to take on the Twitter Files. No one forced him to testify before Congress. No one forced him to clap back at Medhi Hasan and join him on his show. These were all decisions Taibbi made in hopes that he would continue to gain a following in the right-wing blogosphere. What Taibbi failed to realize is that outside of the already zombified Republican base, nobody cares about these issues that Jim Jordan and his ilk are raising. Taibbi bet big on himself and his seemingly mutually beneficial relationship with Elon Musk, failing to realize that he needed Musk much more than Musk needed him. When a one-sided relationship occurs, it's only natural for the lesser partner to be cut loose when times are tough. And with Musk being such a loose cannon, it was only a matter of time before Taibbi's work on the Twitter Files was seen as expendable and thus removed overnight from the platform. 

In the end, this play is no Greek tragedy. Matt Taibbi is no hero being struck down by the gods of Olympus. He is simply a shallow man who sold out any and all integrity he had to soothe his own ego. He's become a fraud and a phony and someone unworthy of continuing to be taken seriously. This past week has shown us that Taibbi has lost all credibility and that Elon Musk is a friend to no man. Going all in with him, was simply the latest in a series of terrible decisions that Matt Taibbi has made to completely throw away his entire career. He knows better, he has simply reached a point where he doesn't care.

And it has ultimately led to his much-deserved downfall. 

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