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October 15, 2007
Smells Like Damn Good Gonzo Journalism
Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire
By Matt Taibbi
Published October 2007
“Bush in person always strikes me as the kind of guy who would ask a woman for a hand job at the end of a first date. He has days where he looks like she said yes, and days where the answer was no.”
–Matt Taibbi
Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire is the best book I’ve read all year, and that’s not surprising, as it’s the long-awaited follow-up to 2005’s Spanking the Donkey, the book that started everyone referring to Matt Taibbi as “The New Hunter S. Thompson.”
While he may still be perfecting the beautiful art of Gonzo Journalism, Taibbi is, if anything, more focused than Thompson. This may simply be a by-product of the perpetual shit flood pouring out of Washington these days, or it may be an after-effect of Taibbi’s years in Russia, but either way, Taibbi’s reporting hearkens back to the skull-bashing, chop-busting ruthlessness of Thompson’s best work, and you don’t have to stop every five minutes to talk about sports gambling and abusive hotel bills.
The secret to Taibbi’s writing is not simply his abundant candor or his vicious humor, but his genuine and ever-present outrage at the corrupt, greedy, senseless idiocy that will forever pollute the legacy of the Bush administration. It’s the same shocked rage that a mother might find upon returning from a trip to the supermarket to discover that her house is on fire because her five-year-old dropped his crack pipe while her husband was fucking the babysitter. It’s a baffled and appalled “what the hell happened while I was away?” kind of feeling.
Which is understandable, because Taibbi really was out of the loop for a while. In 2002, Matt Taibbi returned to the United States after 11 years of bumming around the remains of the then-newly-collapsed U.S.S.R. Still reeling from culture shock, he jumped headfirst onto the 2004 campaign trail and, with the aid of LSD and a gorilla suit, managed to write Spanking the Donkey, the best campaign book since Thompson’s Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72. Throughout Spanking the Donkey, you could tell that Taibbi hadn’t quite gotten his America legs back. After all, he left at the dawn of Bill Clinton, the Internet, and grunge rock, and returned to find it all crushed under the weight of the post-9/11 Bush administration. This is a transition that was scary enough to observe gradually, and for Taibbi to get it all at once, it’s astonishing that he didn’t catch the next flight straight back to Moscow.
In Smells Like Dead Elephants, released last week, Taibbi continues his quest to understand what the hell is happening to the United States. He writes of his paranoid quest to decipher the secrets of the nefarious conspiracy underpinning all the monstrosities of Karl Rove, Enron, and every other stupid, mean mess of the last six years.
“But in the end I understood that there was a good reason that I never tapped into what the hidden truth of the Bush years was, and the reason for that is that there never was anything to tap into. The tragedy of the Bush era is that there was never any depth under its absurd surface — and when the ridiculous exterior washed away, in scandal and indictment and disaster and failure and ignominy, we were left with nothing but emptiness, disorganization, and chaos.”
Here you will find scathing (and completely appropriate) critiques of the 109th Congress, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, Joe Lieberman, and the thievery beneath the Hurricane Katrina “reconstruction” effort. And while his analysis is consistently insightful, Taibbi is at his best when he follows the pure Gonzo ethos of throwing himself into the story he’s covering. Particularly brilliant is his coverage of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, in which Taibbi teams up with Sean Penn and a black Baptist minister named Reverend Willie Walker to rescue survivors in the Ninth Ward.
“Here we are in the midst of the worst flood in the country’s history and I am in the middle of an armed convy, holding a plunger.”
However, the coup de grace of the entire book is Taibbi’s five-week tour of Iraq in the summer of 2006. Not content with simply riding alongside army caravans, visiting forward operating bases, and investigating the excesses of civilian subcontractors, Taibbi takes things a step further and eventually wanders off with a creepy mustachioed commando who proceeds to lock him up in Abu Ghraib prison for three days.
You want to know how Gonzo Matt Taibbi is? This is how Gonzo Matt Taibbi is:
“The Commando dumped me in an abandoned cell block and shut the door behind me almost immediately upon arrival. […]
“You go where I go,” he said on the first day. “And don’t ask any fucking questions. In the meantime, stay here and don’t move.”
He shut the cell door. I stood for a moment in the middle of my cell, staring at the white concrete walls; it took exactly ten seconds for me to burst out laughing.”
It gets better from there.
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September 23, 2007
A Nasty Man Deserves a Nasty Review
Giuliani: Nasty Man
By Edward I. Koch
Published in 1999; Re-printed with new material in 2007.
“Mayor Giuliani is a good administrator, but he’s not a decent human being.”
–Ed Koch, March 15, 1996, The New York Post.
What’s the best way to determine if a person should be president? Simple: ask someone who was there the last time they were in charge of something.
Candidates spend a lot of time talking about their past achievements, saying things like, “I voted for such-and-such a bill,” I initiated reforms for this-’n-that in my home state,” “I sided with so-and-so in his crusade for better cogs and sprockets,” and so forth. It’s all very nice, and almost entirely pointless. If you don’t believe me, then try listing all the times you’ve completely fucked up on your resume the next time you’re job hunting, and see where it gets you. Presidential candidates lie on the campaign trail as often as your average barfly lies when he wants to get laid on the first date. It’s human nature to point out your successes and omit your failings, and the problem with politicians is that they are not immune to human nature. The best way to get around this is to ask for references. Ask someone who has paid attention to their earlier endeavors, be it their supervisor, secretary, vengeful rival, or, if available, a previous one-night stand. As citizens of the United States prepare to elect a leader brilliant enough to clean up George Bush’s mess, it’s relevant to wonder who might make a reliable character witness for the candidates.
For leading GOP candidate and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, the man to ask is former New York City mayor Ed Koch. In 1994, shortly after Rudy took office as the new mayor of New York, Mayor Koch began writing columns about him in The New York Post and The New York Daily News. Koch, a proud New Yorker, followed Rudy’s career closely, and felt compelled to weigh in on just about any newsworthy item involving Giuliani’s administration. The collective texts of those columns, which ran from 1994 to 1999, serve as an insightful running commentary on Giuliani’s actions as leader of one of America’s most complicated and diverse cities. Of course, acquiring half a decade of old daily newspapers is not a pleasant task for the average voter, even in the age of eBay.
And then, in 1999, when Giuliani was battling Hillary Clinton for the New York Senator’s seat, Koch had a brilliant idea. He gathered up all of those old columns and put them in an excellent little book called Nasty Man, to show just what a creepy bastard old Rudy really was. It was a clever tactic, and might have proven useful to the Clinton camp, but then Giuliani was diagnosed with prostate cancer, dropped out of the race, and Hillary won with ease.
Koch’s book, meanwhile, transformed overnight from a clever criticism of a powerful politician to a harsh attack on an old guy with cancer. That’s how campaign publishing goes, of course; one day you’re on the bestseller’s list, the next you’re remaindered for fifty cents at The Strand. After the September 11th attacks, Rudy was dubbed “America’s Mayor,” his approval rating soared, his cancer went into remission, and he was ready for a long, prestigious retirement. But no, Rudy wanted to go another round, this time for the presidency. And like an opportunistic phoenix, Mayor Koch’s book came back into print this year, equally ready for another round.
The book starts out on a positive note, Koch having endorsed Rudy as the best man available for the job, following the disastrous administration of Mayor David Dinkins. Shortly thereafter, it gets ugly. On February 17, 1995, Koch writes in The New York Post, “What’s happening to Rudy Giuliani? Here he is, 14 months into his term, and he’s fighting with everyone.”
Koch goes on to describe Giuliani’s battles with the city’s Police Commissioner and Schools Chancellor, which stirred up a good deal of conflict and controversy. He goes on, exasperated, declaring, “I believe in a strong mayoral presence, and one that leads by example. But leadership based on fear breeds resentment and mounting anger.”
The following year, October 6, 1996, Koch refers to Giuliani as a “control freak,” and laments Giuliani’s penchant for petty dishonesty. “When someone in public life engages in a string of false statements on small matters,” Koch writes, “they will ultimately fail the test of probity on larger matters because it’s become a way of life.”
Koch’s columns increase in frequency over the following three years, detailing examples of Rudy’s interference in the city’s judicial appointments, and his declaration that he “runs the NYPD,” micro-managing the city’s police force in much the same way that G.W. is always running around calling himself the “Commander-in-Chief,” as if that weren’t a sickening slap in the face to true military leaders. Koch takes us through classic mid-‘90s controversies, railing at Rudy’s attacks on critics and his inability to admit error.
The picture that develops is a frightening one, depicting a devious creep that must have his way, no compromises accepted. This, I would argue, is the exact opposite of what the United States needs in an administrator right now. On the other hand, Koch never fails to give credit where credit’s due, frequently mentioning Mayor Giuliani’s great achievements in reducing crime and prosecuting the Mafia. An administrator that can effectively battle crime (and terrorism) is certainly what the United States needs. It’s a serious conundrum, because what we’re looking for here is an effective balance. In other words, it boils down to a question of who can stop al Qaeda without getting us into a half-dozen wars. Giuliani may be good at fighting crime, but he sucks at making friends.
The repackaging of Koch’s columns for future consumption and education is illuminating in the same style as Paul Slansky’s fantastic book on Ronald Reagan, The Clothes Have No Emperor. This is a form of reporting that I would like to see expanded during this election season. Are there any columnists for New Mexico newspapers that have been keeping an eye on the five years of Bill Richardson’s time as governor? Who’s the Arkansas journalist that’s been dutifully watching Mike Huckabee’s every move since he took office in 1996? And while we’re at it, I’ll bet there’s an enterprising columnist in Alaska that’s got some great stories to tell from Mike Gravel’s 1969-1981 senatorial term. Please, all of you, compile those archives and start publishing books right away. America deserves reliable witnesses.
In the meantime, Nasty Man is on sale in bookstores now. Do your fucking homework, America.
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