Matt Taibbi explains Matt Bai by...taking a shot at The Prospect?
Bai is one of those guys -- there are hundreds of them in this business -- who poses as a wonky, Democrat-leaning "centrist" pundit and then makes a career out of drubbing "unrealistic" liberals and progressives with cartoonish Jane Fonda and Hugo Chavez caricatures. This career path is so well-worn in our business, it's like a Great Silk Road of pseudoleft punditry. First step: graduate Harvard or Columbia, buy some clothes at Urban Outfitters, shore up your socially liberal cred by marching in a gay rights rally or something, then get a job at some place like the American Prospect. Then once you're in, spend a few years writing wonky editorials gently chiding Jane Fonda liberals for failing to grasp the obvious wisdom of the WTC or whatever Bob Rubin/Pete Peterson Foundation deficit-reduction horseshit the Democratic Party chiefs happen to be pimping at the time. Once you've got that down, you just sit tight and wait for the New York Times or the Washington Post to call. It won't be long.
Yeah, in Taibbi's world, the best way to get your hand on some of that Bob Rubin $$$ is to get a job at a magazine founded by someone who has basically declared himself to be a mortal enemy of Bob Rubin. So what, we made it in there because Tim Fernholz once wrote a blog post that hurt Taibbi's fee-fees so bad he couldn't even mention his name? TAP was going after Bob Rubin before Taibbi was was placing his rather strategically cropped head shots next to rants cursing Rubin's name.
Of course, while Bai hasn't worked for the Prospect, he actually did have a short gig at Rolling Stone on his journey along the "Great Silk Road of pseudo-left punditry." But I guess I understand why Taibbi didn't want to go there.
