Thursday, February 20, 2014

What's A Liger?


It's pretty much my favorite animal. It's like a lion and a tiger mixed...bred for its skills in magic.

Pierre "Pete" Omidyar makes a solid new hire.

 From the NYT:
Mr. Taibbi will start his own publication focusing on financial and political corruption, he said in an interview on Wednesday. First Look is financed by the eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who is worth $8.5 billion, according to Forbes. Mr. Omidyar has pledged $250 million to the project. “It’s obvious that we’re entering a new phase in the history of journalism,” Mr. Taibbi said. “This is clearly the future, and this was an opportunity for me to be part of helping to found something and create something that might carry us into the next generation.”
I wish Matt great good fortune in his new digs. He'd have been a fool not to take it.
May he be paid what he is worth plus at least 10% and may he be free to write what he pleases.

10 comments:

Horace Boothroyd III said...

Given the notorious cynicism of the hysterical ninnies at dailykos.com one would expect this news to be greated with screeching cries of TAIBBI SELLS OUT!!!!!1!!!!2@!

In fact, of course, they expect to be spoon fed the pablum that they like to read so the knee jerk reaction has been TEH AWSUM!!!!2323232!!!

The Reality Based Community is withholding judgement until we have some evidence as to how young Matt is handling his new found corporate overlord.

And we share your hope that he earn a reasonable salary under decent working conditions.


Anonymous said...

"May he be paid what he is worth plus at least 10% and may he be free to write what he pleases. "

I don't see the first part being a problem..but paraphrasing Matt:
"Imagine if the top people in drug enforcement could be paid $2 million a year to leave their jobs and work for the drug dealers...."

It is a sad day.

Strider said...

Let's hope we don't have to watch Matt undergo the slow metamorphosis we're witnessing in Bill Maher; into whatever it is he's becoming.

Doowad said...

It's like I tell my daughter about music, at what point does a band lose its indie cred? When they record for a major label? When they enter a studio at all? When they play a big club? When they play a small club? When they leave the garage?

In any case, I am not sure what Strider means about Bill Maher, he is just a rich fuck, as he might say himself, but at least he leans the proper way. I haven't noticed him be much more than the liberaltarian he always has been, I don't think he was ever an anarcho-syndicalist or whatever you perhaps imagined him to be.

I always thought of him as not a mod or a rocker, but a mocker, to borrow Ringo's phrasing.

CM said...

**It's like I tell my daughter about music, at what point does a band lose its indie cred? When they record for a major label? When they enter a studio at all? When they play a big club? When they play a small club? When they leave the garage? **

Good point. Anyway it was not like Matt Taibbi was working as an independent journalist. His previous employer was Rollingstone and not Democracy Now.

Anonymous said...

It's not really a question of "selling out" in the current cultural usage of the term.
When the top economic / Wall Street busting journalist of the day (self taught, non-academic and beholden to no one) goes to work for one of the worlds richest plutocrats, we have a problem.
When you add in that this "organization" is being run by the king of the libertarian dude bro faction....it is nothing but ugly.

Unknown said...

Scahill, Taibbi, Greewald, Poitras... Yeah. Dude bros to a man.
:-DDDDD

Anonymous said...

Poitras is a dude bro? She's a man?

Anonymous said...

....and who is this "Greewald"?
A forgotten Tolkien character?
The Hobbit:"The Constipation of Greewald"

Anonymous said...

You should send Omidyar your resume, drifty.