An Interview with Matt Taibbi

The former editor of the eXile and contributor to New York Press, Taibbi has caused two major controversies: he published a cartoon that satirized the 9/11 attacks (a woman pleasuring a businessman notices the airliner outside his WTC office window and screams, “OH GOD, IT’S SO BIG!”), and wrote a March 2005 column titled “The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope,” which drew condemnations from Senator Hillary Clinton and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The Press canned him shortly thereafter, but Rolling Stone picked him up as a regular.

 

Taibbi’s politics are all over the map. He has described himself as a libertarian but favors heavy environmental regulation. He despises the religious right but wants Roe v. Wade overturned. He opposes the Iraq War but doesn’t feel that gay people (or anyone else) should have federal job protections. More than anything, Taibbi believes that investing actual emotion into the ideals of American democracy is “digging for hope in a shit mountain.”

 

MB: You’re often compared to Hunter Thompson and P.J. O’Rourke, who both previously occupied the Rolling Stone National Affairs desk. Do you welcome those comparisons or distance yourself from them?

 

Taibbi: I’m so sick of it. People throw that term around, “gonzo journalism,” but it’s synonymous with Hunter Thompson. He is gonzo journalism.  … The guy I really grew up admiring was [H.L.] Mencken.

 

MB: Mencken has been called the first libertarian. In one interview, you said: “I’m never comfortable when people call me a lefty. If anyone were to ever ask, I’d say I'm probably more of a libertarian than anything else. I believe in capitalism, small government, etc.” That might surprise a large chunk of your Rolling Stone fan base.

 

Taibbi: My political views shouldn’t be important. I’m more comfortable describing other people than talking about what I really think. I have different beliefs that are all over the place. I think Roe v. Wade should be overturned because I believe in the federalist model; I believe that states should be able to make their own drug laws. The more democracy you have, the more people can make decisions for their own communities, the more freedom people have.

 

MB: The standard reply to that is: “What about slavery? What about Jim Crow?” Can you have a country where some states recognize certain people as married couples and others don’t? At what point is it 50 tiny nations, not one cohesive nation?

 

Taibbi: Obviously if we didn’t have a strong federal government, we probably wouldn’t have had the civil rights movement in the ‘60s. Occasionally you do need that bully pulpit that fixes injustices, but I think you can push it too far. That’s one of the reasons that there’s so much resentment in the south and the red states for liberalism—this idea that liberals know better and make decisions for everybody. While I certainly don’t believe there should be prayer in school and that’s unconstitutional, if people in Mississippi feel otherwise, I don’t see why it’s important for us to make that decision for them. I certainly don’t want people in Mississippi making decisions about whether I should be allowed to smoke marijuana. So citizenship involves compromises. You can’t have slavery; you can’t lynch people. But is prayer in school going to radically threaten the integrity of the country? I don’t think so.

 

MB: Turning to campaign 2008, there’s this weird overlap where Ron Paul has an increasing left-wing fan base, and many conservatives support Barack Obama because—even though they don’t necessarily always agree with him—he represents a kind of classic, constitutional Americanism. Is this a turning point in American politics, or just two mavericks that don’t represent a sign of anything bigger?

 

Taibbi: This is a new thing. People are steadily growing disenchanted with red state versus blue state—this really aggressive storyline where if you’re conservative, you have to hate liberals, and if you’re liberal then you have to hate conservatives. For the first time on the campaign trail that I’ve seen, people are saying, “I haven’t spoken to my liberal brother in years but … we’re actually talking now because we’re both disappointed in our respective parties, and we’re both getting behind Ron Paul,” or Dennis Kucinich. There’s more on-the-ground energy for Ron Paul than there is for the rest of the candidates combined. People are not excited anymore about the mainstream choices and they’re looking for something different.

 

MB: The GOP has completely betrayed those who care about individual liberties. Do you feel that libertarians should build a new alliance with “liberaltarians” in the future—and exchange their economic principles for greater personal freedoms—or try to rebuild the right from scratch?

 

Taibbi: When they chose this coalition with the right, they expected to have a government that wouldn’t spend very much, but then the Bush Administration spent more money than probably any other in American history. So it was a more activist government than we’d ever had before. There are Republicans now calling for a return to limited government like Chuck Hagel, but there is probably more room and enthusiasm for that on the other side at this point. … I think there are going to be more politicians like Bernie Sanders in the future.

 

MB: You speak of the modern GOP turning its back on “traditional Republican values,” which Reagan is supposed to embody, but he was obsessed with the religious stuff, cracked down on porn and drugs, and spent like crazy. Why is he held up as this golden boy for the limited government right?

 

Taibbi: I don’t know. He borrowed more money than any other president. Nixon was also quite activist as a president, with a health insurance program and the EPA—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—but who was the last Republican president who actually acted like a Republican?

 

MB: You wrote that Rudy Giuliani’s takedown of Ron Paul was “a Rovian masterstroke” by “a fascist ex-mayor itching to take his prostate pain out on the world.” Do you see Giuliani as the heir to Bush’s legacy, or are all the candidates in their own way?

 

Taibbi: No, Giuliani is the one who would continue this whole business. Even more than Bush, he believes this stuff, that we have to be actively interventionist abroad, and if he were to become president he would continue the secrecy and using government power for questionable ends. This is a guy who is much more power-hungry—and is really turned on by the exercise of power—than the rest of the candidates, and he’s the one I would really worry about.

 

MB: You call the Clintons “political cowards,” but what do you make of this meme that Hillary—despite being a soulless machine—is at least a competent soulless machine?

MB: So the base is sick of the party?

 

Taibbi: The base is tired of the DLC. The DLC was created in order to allow the Democratic Party to attract fundraising money from sources other than their traditional ones—like unions and special interest groups—because they wanted to get the corporate money so they could compete with Republicans on a national scale. The result of that obviously was their policies changed significantly in terms of domestic politics, so now there’s a schism where half of the Democratic Party is run by professional DLC types whose main allegiance is to their fundraisers, and the other half are people like Ned Lamont or Howard Dean who appeal to the voters directly.

 

MB: A cynic might say that they need to make those compromises and sell-outs in order to win. 

 

Taibbi: If you’re making a compromise to get into office, you’re defeating your own purpose. If you have to compromise your identity to get someplace then what’s the point? … Howard Dean did great initially, appealing directly to voters. There’s some kind of forum for electoral success there.

 

MB: You called Barack Obama “the greatest bullshit artist since Bill Clinton.” Is he appealing to the people in that direct way?

 

Taibbi: I like Barack Obama. He’s a great speaker. You can listen to him for half an hour and not know what the hell he’s talking about and you’ll still be very charmed by him. My editor met him and said, “I’d fuck him.” He’s a good looking guy. He’s the only candidate out there who has the effect on people, who has that personal magnetism. My impression of him is that he’s the one guy who can charm the socks off voters.

MB: When you worked undercover on the Bush-Cheney campaign in Florida, pretending to be a Republican, you concluded that Republicans—even though they’re gullible Neanderthals—were actually nicer people than snooty, elitist, status-obsessed New York liberals. Did that change your perceptions of conservatism itself?

 

Taibbi: No. They’re all extremely nice to each other, but what unifies them is fear and paranoia about outsiders. It’s a toxic paranoia. If you scratch the surface, there’s a lot of meanness and fear underneath. They were really nice to me but if I had challenged them on anything, the situation would have been a lot different. Their general demeanor is accepting, even if you’re not very bright. ... I grew up around left-wing politics, I spent a lot of time at peace marches, and whenever you go to one of these meetings, nothing can ever get done because everybody has his own idea and they’re so concerned about expressing themselves that you never get down to the nitty-gritty of committing to a joint action. With Republican gatherings, nobody is like, ‘I have a speech to make.’ One of the reasons that Republicans were so effective over the last 20 years is because they were able to mount a collective, atomized movement. They’re able to subvert their individuality a lot better.

 

MB: Giuliani and Romney are the Republican frontrunners. Giuliani is a social liberal and Romney is clearly pretending to not be one anymore. Do you think the era of the religious right is over, or are they still powerful?

 

Taibbi: They don’t have an effective champion now in mainstream politics. It’s not going to be Fred Thompson. The Republican Party’s been pushed into a circumstance right now where they have to nominate a candidate who can win the general election... they see that they’re so vulnerable after seven years of Bush who has more pull with swing voters. It’s the same position that Democrats have been in for the last two elections, under enormous pressure to get someone with military credentials—Wesley Clark, John Kerry—and exactly the reverse thing is now happening with the Republicans. Once the Republicans reassert their control over Washington politics, you’ll start seeing those religious conservatives come back because that’s the base of their party.

 

MB: Right-wingers have embraced the tactics of the P.C. left with this mantra of you can’t criticize religious fundamentalism because it offends “people of faith,” as if they’re a protected class like “people of color.” At the same time, Democrats are now appealing to religious voters using theocon language, such as Obama speaking about bringing the kingdom of God to earth. The right is trying to co-opt the language of the left and vice versa. What do you make of these two trends? Where did that come from?

 

Taibbi: The people in charge of putting together the messages of these parties are professionals. They sit around analyzing every single word that comes out of the mouths of these speakers. If they see a tactic that works for the other side—that’s successful—they’re going to try to implement it. The religious right casting themselves as victims, using the language of liberal victimhood, the people in the upper echelons of the religious hierarchy are doing that consciously. … Everywhere I go I hear people talking about how they give Muslims prayer mats in schools and special privileges but if a Christian wants to pray, he can’t. ‘We’re the only ones who’ve had our rights taken away.’ This whole language of victimhood has really seeped into the American political culture.

 

Democrats are trying to recapture some of their market share. It’s a cross-attacking of each other’s bases, like the Republicans going after Hispanics, going after the black vote. When I worked [undercover] for Bush we talked about how, if we could only take 10 percent of the black vote away from Democrats, we’d win every election for the rest of American history. They would pass out [literature] outside black churches. So the Democrats are seeing where the Republicans are vulnerable, and they see that some religious conservatives feel betrayed that Republicans haven’t delivered on abortion, stem cell research and that kind of thing. They’re going to appeal to that same of base, whereas they didn’t even try in 2000.

 

MB: Are you offended by Democrats implying things such as, “Jesus wants us to have universal health care”?

 

Taibbi: It’s all disgusting. … You have to commit so many moral atrocities to be a Washington politician, any kind of religion that you actually maintain after that experience has to be not entirely sincere. So when I see these guys invoking the name of God, it’s comical.

 

MB: It’s like with Jack Abramoff—the guy owns a kosher restaurant, he keeps his head covered, but he’s a lying thief. He’s religious in all the ways that don’t matter.

 

Taibbi: Take [Mitt] Romney. His company was fined for defrauding the federal government. Romney accepted his fee for that transaction, but he refused to be involved with Artisan Entertainment because they marketed R-rated movies. Classic example of religious morality in an American politician; you can defraud the federal government, but…

 

MB: But if Janet Jackson’s titty falls out…

 

Taibbi: Exactly.

 

MB: You saw the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. A lot of liberals say that free-market economics were responsible for the disaster because the government wasn’t there to do anything, but from reading your chapter, it seems that the government was doing too much: preventing rescue workers from doing their jobs, not allowing civilians with boats—who were rescuing “dozens” more refugees than FEMA’s boats—to get to areas where people were stranded, “aiming guns at women in children.” One cop was more concerned that you stole his donuts than with helping anyone. You call it “a historic, and historically lethal, bereaucratic fuck-up.”

 

Taibbi: There was an enormous amount of hostility toward the government by the people left in New Orleans. The government sent in this massive force that treated everyone like they were criminals. … The government’s response was so ineffective and so adversarial to the general population, it really drove people to distrust any program that they were offering. … That kind of phenomenon in general is why more and more people are becoming disenchanted with the government and gravitating toward candidates like Ron Paul. They’re pissed off with a government that has become so distant from their actual concerns.

 

MB: In your Iraq chapter [in Smells Like Dead Elephants], you lay out how defense contractors are bilking the American people out of billions of dollars. Libertarians would say that the military-industrial complex is a bastardized capitalism, but liberals say that it’s the result of an unregulated market. What’s your stance?

 

Taibbi: It’s not capitalism at all. It’s more like an authoritarian socialism. It’s forcibly extracting money from the customers and distributing the profits to companies that aren’t selected by market choice but government fiat. They’ve called it “capitalism,” they’ve called it use of the free market, but it’s not that at all. You can’t have a war … that’s realistically market-based.

 

MB: You were at Cindy Sheehan’s campout in Crawford. You say nice things to say about her, but criticize the people around her—the Code Pink crowd, the “cause-chasers”—but it seems like they would be more your thing than the slick, focus-grouped Clinton types.

 

Taibbi: The thing that bothered me was that even though what she was doing was really genuine, a really genuine protest with a single concrete message that she wanted to send about the war, and then within a day every run-of-the-mill lefty political cause is represented at Camp Sheehan: the Mumia people, the Cuban Five people…

 

MB: I’ve been to pro-choice marches where people are waving the Palestinian flag...

 

Taibbi: Exactly. You need to have some kind of collective discipline if you’re going to do it effectively. The 9/11 truther people were there. These right-wing radio talk show hosts show up and interview all these yahoos with totally irrelevant messages and discredit the whole thing. The general problem with the left is that they’re unable to unite collectively around a single issue.

 

MB: You say Republicans are fucked-up because they never had any fun as kids, and also that “[t]he American left has no sense of humor and no sense of fun at all.” What is it about politicos that make them passionate about the issues but no other area of their lives?

Taibbi: Anyone who is willing to put up with as much shit as necessary to become a U.S. senator or president has to be a sociopath. That’s why you see all these crazy behaviors popping up with Larry Craig, Foley, and those types. These people have to drive their true selves so far beneath the surface to present this clean face to the world, and that’s why they end up indulging in these subterranean weirdnesses. ... These extreme right-wing politicians are the ones who keep getting caught in these scandals.

 

MB: Wilhelm Reich, Freud’s star student, proposed that sexual repression at an individual level breeds fascism at a societal level.

 

Taibbi: That makes a lot of sense. How can you be as aggressive and ruthless as Roy Cohn unless you have some serious, messed-up, totally repressed sexual thing going on? That’s why I’m cautious about politicians who are really aggressive on the surface—we don’t know what’s going on underneath.

 

MB: You’re obviously not a drug warrior, but so much of the institutional left—even though they support marijuana legalization, or the decriminalization of more harmful drugs—have this vendetta against tobacco and fast food companies. Why do you have those disjointed positions?

 

Taibbi: That part of the left drives me crazy. Americans no longer feel the need to be ideologically consistent on anything. If you believe adults should be free to do drugs or engage in any sexual behavior they want, you should also believe they’re free to smoke or eat shitty food or do anything they want. You can’t just pick and choose which absolute freedoms you want to endorse. On the right, people say they want to have prayer in schools for instance but they don’t want to have anyone doing drugs in other states. We no longer have that consistent political orientation with broad underlying themes like individual liberty, and that’s unfortunate. … If this was Sweden or Great Britain I might say something different, but that’s not what America is all about. America is about getting the government off your back, a reprieve from having your life interfered with, and we keep forgetting that.

 

MB: The book is called Smells Like Dead Elephants. You’re saying that the Bush era is over, they’re finished. It seems like nobody has told Bush and Cheney.

 

Taibbi: That’s the problem. They’re still technically in office. Their momentum culturally is gone. They no longer have that cultural juggernaut but they’re still in office.

 

MB: Why are the Democrats letting them get away with this?

 

Taibbi: They’re so afraid of looking weak, and it’s because the DLC is guiding the policy positions of these candidates. It’s the DLC line, and the DLC is heavily funded by military contractors. The Democratic Party advocates for the status quo, and the status quo is not that far away from what Bush is doing.

 

MB: A lot of doctrinaire libertarians see campaign finance reform as a crackdown on free speech, and believe that corporations should be able to give unlimited amounts to candidates. I don’t get that personally; it seems like bootlicking from supposed rebels. How do you feel?

 

Taibbi: There was a Supreme Court ruling that money was speech, and I don’t necessarily agree with that. It has such an insidious effect on politics.

 

MB: Even with the reforms, you get these groups like Swift Boaters for Truth. Is there any way to ever get the money out of the system?

 

Taibbi: Give people free airtime. There isn’t any way to really get it out, but there should be some effort to even the scales because currently elected officials work exclusively for their financial patrons and that’s all they do. All they’re working for is their campaign money. As soon as they get into office, they don’t have any time to advocate for their actual constituencies. Something has to be done because it’s gotten totally out of control.

 

MB: Okay, last question. What will be the funniest thing about the death of this pope?

 

Taibbi: [Laughs.] Oh, I think I got in enough trouble last time.

 

MB: I’d say, “The maggots crawling into his humongous wrinkly eye bags.”

 

Taibbi: That’s good. Yeah, that works.