Over Time with Bill Maher, September 13, 2013

Bill's back! And as usual, lots of stuff happened while he was away.

Ep. 293 September 13, 2013 - Overtime

Over Time with Bill Maher, October 19, 2012

Okay, I love Matt Taibbi, and Godie Taylor is a hoot. But that guy who was waving his hand in her face has to go. And John Fund? To paraphrase Taggart Romney, I'd like to punch him in his perpetually smiling face. Such an asshole. But it was an enjoyable show.

Ep. 263: October 19, 2012 - Overtime

Andrew Breitbart Eulogized by Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi

This guy was only 43? Image from source, Rolling Stone.

This is perhaps the most honest, forthright appraisal of Andrew Breitbart you'll read anywhere. And since it's by one of my favorite writers, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone, I had to share.

(And, please, read the article before jumping on me too hard.)

[Excerpt]

Andrew Breitbart: Death of a Douche


So Andrew Breitbart is dead. Here’s what I have to say to that, and I’m sure Breitbart himself would have respected this reaction: Good! Fuck him. I couldn’t be happier that he’s dead.  I say this in the nicest possible way. . .

Read more (it's really good) at: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi on "Batshit Crazy" Michele Bachmann

Matt Taibbi and Crazy Eyes

There are few journalists I remember by name, but few journalists are like Matt Taibbi. First, since he works at Rolling Stone magazine, he gets to write really in-depth articles, and he gets to swear.  But he knows precisely when to do it, and his articles are always entertaining, even when they scare you to death. He's also telegenic, so MSNBC should worry about Keith Olbermann nabbing him for a show on Current TV.

What Matt says about Michele Bachmann is something important to keep in mind: she's endlessly fun to make fun of; but she shouldn't be underestimated. Or maybe I should say misunderestimated, if you catch my drift. Sarah Palin is a similar character, but not nearly as driven. I get no sense that Palin actually really has much of an ideology, only snappy--and often wrong--things to say to increase her popularity. There is no depth to Palin. Bachmann either believes what she says--equally often wrong--or faked sincerity so long that it's the same difference. Bachmann is bonkers, but she's crafty bonkers. Of course, I worried about both Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee for their scary-but-sellable message, and they washed out. I hope Bachmann does too.  Because the truth is, Bachmann is only well known because of her gaffes and howlers. I've got to believe there's a difference between notoriety and popularity.

[Excerpt]

Michele Bachmann's Holy War

Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh. . .

Read more at: Rolling Stone

Better Late Than Never: OverTime with Bill Maher, February 18, 2011

Oops, I forgot. . .

Ep. 203: February 18, 2011 - Overtime

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's Take on House Speaker John Boehner

Image from source, Rolling Stone

He goes by many names. The Weeping Orange Boner, Oompa Loompa, Agent Orange. But we all have to accept that John Boehner is now the Speaker of the House; third in line for the White House.  It's a bit baffling, frankly, that such a clownish fellow has ascended to such heights. He's got a facial twitch that no one seems to notice, maybe because he has a facial hue that is very distracting. He often gets overtly emotional to the point of tears over unlikely topics. He even often seems somewhat drunk while speaking on the house floor. So what, it was just his turn or something. This is the best you've got, GOP? Really?

Matt Taibbi, a reporter at The Rolling Stone (and a fantastic one at that) has done the legwork to get the facts behind some of my more subjective opinions. As always, it is great reading, but will leave you deflated and depressed. Read on anyway, you've gotta know this stuff.

[Excerpt]

Matt Taibbi: The Crying Shame of John Boehner

John Boehner is the ultimate Beltway hack, a man whose unmatched and self-serving skill at political survival has made him, after two decades in Washington, the hairy blue mold on the American congressional sandwich. The biographer who somewhere down the line tackles the question of Boehner's legacy will do well to simply throw out any references to party affiliation, because the thing that has made Boehner who he is — the thing that has finally lifted him to the apex of legislative power in America — has almost nothing to do with his being a Republican. . .

Read (much) more at: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi and His Take on the Tea Party

Image from source, Rolling Stone

This article is quite a read, and validates my own impression of the Tea Party phenomenon. Ordinarily, I like to write my own take on any article I'm excerpting, but it would pale in comparison. Just read.

[Excerpt]

Matt Taibbi on the Tea Party

It's taken three trips to Kentucky, but I'm finally getting my Tea Party epiphany exactly where you'd expect: at a Sarah Palin rally. The red-hot mama of American exceptionalism has flown in to speak at something called the National Quartet Convention in Louisville, a gospel-music hoedown in a giant convention center filled with thousands of elderly white Southerners. Palin — who earlier this morning held a closed-door fundraiser for Rand Paul, the Tea Party champion running for the U.S. Senate — is railing against a GOP establishment that has just seen Tea Partiers oust entrenched Republican hacks in Delaware and New York. The dingbat revolution, it seems, is nigh. . .

Read more at: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi Rips a Bad Journalist

Image from source, Rolling Stone

Remember that story in Rolling Stone that ended General McChrystal's career? Matt Taibbi is a different reporter at RS, a darn good one, and he has a great piece up taking a journalist to task for saying that the magazine should've sat on that big juicy story.  It's good stuff.

[Excerpt]


Lara Logan, You Suck


Lara Logan, come on down! You're the next guest on Hysterical Backstabbing Jealous Hackfest 2010!


I thought I'd seen everything when I read David Brooks saying out loud in a New York Times column that reporters should sit on damaging comments to save their sources from their own idiocy. But now we get CBS News Chief Foreign Correspondent Lara Logan slamming our own Michael Hastings on CNN's "Reliable Sources" program, agreeing that the Rolling Stone reporter violated an "unspoken agreement" that journalists are not supposed to "embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter. . ."

Read more at: Rolling Stone

Bill Maher's New Rules, May 8, 2009

Last night's Real Time with Bill Maher was one of the best episodes of the season, or last several seasons. The guests were Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi (one of my favorite journalists), Naomi Klein (one of my favorite writers), and Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane (one of my plain-old favorites). Bill also interviewed James Carville--who I can take or leave--but it was an entertaining interview.

New Rules was again kind of breezy until Bill got to the final one, which is pretty great. Take a look.

Michelle Bachman is So Crazy. . . (How Crazy is She?)

The headline is meant to evoke the old Match Game running gag, and Rolling Stone magazine's Matt Taibbi supplies the answer it a spectacular way: ". . .I saw a guy huffing glue out of a paper bag, and he was making more sense than Michelle Bachmann." (at 1:50) And he gets another good dig in after that too. Enjoy.

Matt Taibbi's Scary Piece on the Financial Meltdown

Photo from Media Bistro

If you've been mostly "going with the flow" during this financial crisis, just hoping it will all work out, you probably don't want to read this piece. Matt Taibbi, one of my favorite journalists, has a handle on the whole thing, but it isn't a pretty read. Hold on to your hat (and your wallet).

[Excerpt]

The Big Takeover

It's over — we're officially, royally f**ked. No empire can survive being rendered a permanent laughingstock, which is what happened as of a few weeks ago, when the buffoons who have been running things in this country finally went one step too far. It happened when Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was forced to admit that he was once again going to have to stuff billions of taxpayer dollars into a dying insurance giant called AIG, itself a profound symbol of our national decline — a corporation that got rich insuring the concrete and steel of American industry in the country's heyday, only to destroy itself chasing phantom fortunes at the Wall Street card tables, like a dissolute nobleman gambling away the family estate in the waning days of the British Empire. . .

Read more at: Rolling Stone

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi's Palin Rant

Photo from Mother Jones

In theory, I'd be about as willing to write blog posts about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Nicole Ritchie as I would be to write about Sarah Palin. That is to say, in a normal world, I wouldn't. But Paris and the other celebutards have no affect on my life. They're less than periphery.

But Sarah Palin has the--thankfully, diminishing--possibility of affecting my life greatly, and in a very negative way. Her entire worldview--which I suppose you could call "The Palin Doctrine"--is the opposite of what I believe. What makes her scary to me, is that she's completely unqualified, and yet absolutely certain of herself. That scary combination was present in George W. Bush, and I think we can all agree, that didn't work out so well.

Fortunately, Palin is almost impossibly easy to criticize, easy to lampoon, and very entertaining to pick apart. But I've done that in this space already, and have been leery of beating it to death.

So, I was glad to find a fantastic article by a writer that is much more up to the job than I am. Matt Taibi writes for Rolling Stone magazine, but I confess that I became familiar with him from his appearances on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher. He's an incredibly sharp, witty writer, and his take on Sarah Palin is devastating. Check it out.

[Excerpt]

Mad Dog Palin

. . .Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States. As a representative of our political system, she's a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove. But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power. Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she's the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way. All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be j**ked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation. . .

Read more at: Rolling Stone

Matt Taibbi's New Book: The Great Derangement

Rolling Stone columnist and frequent Real Time with Bill Maher guest, Matt Taibbi has written a new book about deception in American media and politics. If this preview video is any indication, it should be a real page turner. Check it out.



Source: The Great Derangement

Bill Maher's New Rules, February 22, 2008

I'm a huge fan of Real Time with Bill Maher, and Maher himself. I don't agree with him on everything, but that just makes him more interesting. His show is in its second week having its writers back, so the New Rules are back as well. It is usually the best part of the show, unless the guests are particularly engaging. This week, with two conservatives, and a quiet liberal woman, the panel discussion part of the show wasn't terribly good.

I've gotta say though, I'm really digging their roving reporter, Rolling Stone magazine's Matt Taibbi. Love his wry sense of the absurd, and his willingness to jab conservatives across the table. I hope they keep bringing him back.