* Taibbi wrote one of the best books on the 2008 debacle (Kleptocracy) and Ames wrote the only serious book on the mass shooting phenomenon (Going Postal). Ames was for many years the editor of the Exile, the best English-language newspaper about Russia (although it did have a nakedly supremacist streak and a good deal of the content was freakshow-watching, “look at those crazy goyim, ha ha they sure are poor”), there was still very good, unique journalism. The Exile was shuttered by Putin but Ames was still objective enough after that to point out that Putin was not the bad guy in the Georgian-Ossetian situation. Ames also vociferously defended LAPD burnout Dorner, who was criminally overreacting to very real problems in the department which the major media decided to ignore.
Attacking these real journalists who stand above an ocean of glow-in-the-dark intel operatives and airheaded liars — on the grounds that they sometimes chat like men — is simple witch-hunting.
* I remember a mysteriously venomous piece that Taibbi wrote in 2005 for a now defunct free paper called the NYPress, in which he made fun of the dying Pope John Paul II.
It was called “THE 52 FUNNIEST THINGS ABOUT THE UPCOMING DEATH OF THE POPE.”
Here’s how it began:
52. Pope pisses himself just before the end; gets all over nurse.
51. After death, saggy, furry tits of dead Pope begin inexorable process of melting away into nothingness, like coldest of Sno-cones under faintest of suns.
50. Pope survives just long enough to be acquired by Isiah Thomas for Stephon Marbury, 2005 #1 pick and cash considerations. “We feel like we’ve made ourselves younger and more competitive,” Thomas says.
49. After beating for the last time, Pope’s heart sits there like a piece of hamburger.
48. Whole world waiting until the last minute for a sudden improvement of his condition. Long lines of girls in the Philippines kneeling and praying. Catholics everywhere with ears pressed to radios, transfixed. Pope gives one last groan, spits, dies.
For more such hilarity, you can check out the rest.
