Matt Taibbi is a polemic, no doubt about it. But he’s a viciously funny polemic, so I typically enjoy reading him. His most recent piece is about the investment banking company Goldman Sachs. It’s basically a slam piece in which he blames GS both for causing bubbles (like the one over housing) and also for massively profiting from those bubbles. I will leave aside the merits of the piece for now (and I can’t link to it, either, since it’s not yet available online).
But if you aren’t familiar with Taibbi, you should check out the best thing he has ever done, which is this piece about NYT columnist Thomas Friedman. I’ve never liked Friedman, so perhaps I am biased, but in addition to being funny, the piece also shows how Friedman is both a bad writer and an unimpressive thinker. Given that Friedman is nearly universally acknowledged as a “Serious” thinker and a generally important person who wins Pulitzer Prizes and writes bestselling books, I consider this piece a public service. It’s also the source of the above graph.
