In the last election cycle, Rolling Stone was one of the magazines to feature Obama covers repeatedly (one with a God-like aura). This might be the only reason why anyone would suggest to the magazine that Matt Taibbi's unhinged rants (badly disguised as political journalism) that they re-read Obama's speech in Tucson on civility.
The Houston Chronicle offers a handy summary of all of Taibbi's textual tantrums. The article is titled “Rick Perry: The Best Little Whore In Texas” and the subhead is “The Texas governor has one driving passion: selling off government to the highest bidder”. Amanda Russo noted "Taibbi compares the Republican presidential candidate to an undertaker, a prostitute, a male underwear model, a serial killer AND Adolf Hitler. Bet you’ve never seen all those things in one article before."
On Perry’s personal characteristics:
-- "Exceedingly well-groomed, but also ashen and exhausted, like a funeral director with a hangover.”
-- "Tall, perma-tanned, Bible-clutching Southerner with front-runner hair and the build of a retired underwear model.”
-- “On the human level he is a nonpersonality, an almost perfect cipher – a man whose only discernible passion is his extreme willingness to be whatever someone will pay him to be, or vote for him to be.”
-- “Rick Perry brings shallow to a new level. He is very gifted in that regard. He could be the Adolf Hitler of shallow.”
What on Earth does that mean, the "Adolf Hitler of shallow"? It's like Taibbi is pulling tabloidish scare words out of a hat. "Shallow" would seem to summon Snooki, not Hitler.
On Perry’s ethics:
-- “The candidate who is exponentially more willing than we’ve ever seen before to whore himself out for that money.”
-- "A human price tag.”
-- “Rick Perry has managed to set a scary new low in the annals of opportunism, turning Texas into a swamp of political incest and backroom dealing on a scale not often seen this side of the Congo or Sierra Leone.”
On Perry’s ups and downs in the presidential campaign:
-- “The governor went from presumptive front-runner to stammering talk-show punch line seemingly in the speed of a single tweet.”'
-- “Perry has mainly distinguished himself with a kind of bipolar wildness in the debates: sullen and reserved one moment, strident and inarticulate the next. He sweats profusely. He can’t stand still. When he does manage to get off a zinger, he cracks a smug grin, looking like he’s just sewn up the blue ribbon in a frat-house dong-measuring contest.”
-- "One of the all-time great marketing scams, a breathtaking high-wire act by a man who if nothing else certainly has the gigantic balls required for the most powerful job in the world.”
On Perry’s rise to power:
-- “The descriptions of Perry’s early political career all sound like the early chapters of true-crime books about serial killers, where nobody notices anything special about the protagonist until the bodies start piling up along the local riverbank.”
-- “Favors are the one consistent thread running through Perry’s political career. Throughout his time as governor, whenever his ideology or his religion comes into conflict with the need to give a handout to a major campaign donor, ideology and religion lose every single time.”
Taibbi might seem unglued to many, or at least a "wingnut" -- to borrow from CNN political analyst John Avlon. But Taibbi is a CNN regular...with honors. Appearing on CNN's Newsroom on October 12, anchor Randi Kaye introduced him with goo:
Rolling Stone editor Matt Taibbi wrote a fascinating article for the magazine about how to make this movement more powerful. He joins us live now from New York. Hi there, Matt. It really is a fascinating article, a great read, I recommend it to anyone watching right now.
So much for CNN "Keeping Them Honest" and civil. But then maybe they never meant to keep the journalists honest and civil.
