{"id":190285,"date":"2009-12-14T18:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-14T23:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/14\/wanker-of-the-day-20\/"},"modified":"2009-12-14T18:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-14T23:28:00","slug":"wanker-of-the-day-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/14\/wanker-of-the-day-20\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanker of the Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Fernholz.<\/p>\n<p>He goes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.prospect.org\/csnc\/blogs\/tapped_archive?month=12&amp;year=2009&amp;base_name=oh_matt_taibbi\">goes after Matt Taibbi<\/a> on his latest article, which <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2009\/12\/another-jewel-from-taibbi.html\">I called a jem<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/trueslant.com\/matttaibbi\/2009\/12\/12\/on-obamas-sellout-bailout-tarp-rubin-goldman-sachs-robert-bob-tim-geithner-hamilton-project-derivatives-financial-reform-citibank\/\">Taibbi responds<\/a>, basically blowing him out of the water, and acknowledging one minor error, confusing diplomat James Rubin, and Robert Rubin&#8217;s son Jamie Rubin, though only by calling the latter a diplomat, Jamie Rubin&#8217;s role in assembling the Obama financial team is correctly depicted.<\/p>\n<p>If you want the short version, I would suggest that you review <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/felix-salmon\/2009\/12\/11\/fernholz-vs-taibbi\/\">Felix Salmon&#8217;s take on this t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate<\/a>, and Salmon&#8217;s take is the same as Taibbi&#8217;s: that Fernholz&#8217;s criticisms are largely conjured out of hysteria:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>In other words, it\u2019s worth cross-checking everything that Fernholz says against what Taibbi actually writes, because often Taibbi simply doesn\u2019t say what Fernholz implies that he says.<\/p>\n<p>All the schadenfreude over Fernholz\u2019s attack on Taibbi is particularly weird since they seem to actually agree with each other. Here\u2019s how Fernholz concludes&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>This is quite astonishing. Fernholz is basically saying that Taibbi is right, and that not only is he right but that he will now and henceforth utterly overshadow anyone else who\u2019s criticizing the Obama administration from the left. At the same time, however, despite Taibbi\u2019s astonishing ability to encapsulate and personify the entire group of people who criticize the administration, he\u2019s not even going to manage to \u201cmake a dent\u201d, because he\u2019s not going about his job in an evenhanded J-school manner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Major wankerdom.<\/p>\n<p>Matt Taibbi is clearly polemical writer, but he gets his facts right, and he does describe the truly sad state of affairs that is the Rubin\/Summers\/Geithner economic axis upon which the Obama administration spins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Fernholz. He goes goes after Matt Taibbi on his latest article, which I called a jem, and Taibbi responds, basically blowing him out of the water, and acknowledging one minor error, confusing diplomat James Rubin, and Robert Rubin&#8217;s son Jamie Rubin, though only by calling the latter a diplomat, Jamie Rubin&#8217;s role in assembling &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1002,1009,974,1129,979,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-good-writing","category-government","category-hack-journalism","category-journalism","category-wanker","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190285"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}