Has American journalism degraded so far that a magazine with a circulation of over 1 million would allow one of its columnists, in an article about a Republican nominee for president, to refer to a popular albeit controversial author as a "skanky bitch-whore?"

Such was the case in the most recent issue of "Rolling Stone" wherein Matt Taibbi, in a tremendously defamatory piece about John McCain, also took the opportunity to vulgarly attack Ann Coulter whilst regularly besmirching conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

For those with a strong stomach and/or a masochistic strain, the hits in this rancid pile of detritus came early and often (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Rusty Arnold, vulgarity alert!):

Terminally tasteless Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi has a new piece in the February 7 edition proclaiming Hillary Clinton is "The New Nixon." The article comes complete with a cartoon of Hillary with Nixon's ski-lift nose. (Earth to Rolling Stone: the Weekly Standard beat you to this punch by at least a decade.) Taibbi is so far left that both Hillary and Barack Obama are on the right. The pull quote reads "It's Kennedy-Nixon redux -- two superficial conservatives selling highly similar politics."

The longer quote in the text is this: "In Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, we've basically got Kennedy-Nixon redux, and I mean that in the most negative possible sense for both of them -- a pair of superficial, posturing conservatives selling highly similar political packages using different emotional strategies." I quote this not because Taibbi is worth reading, but because his political radar is so mangled.