Quote:
Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I scanned his canon at The Atlantic. It's roughly 80% focused on race and social justice matters. I understand that's his brand, so I don't hold it against him. Everybody's got to pay the mortgage.
But if Tabbi can pull off writing about so many disparate subjects (police brutality [I Can't Breathe], banking crisis [Griftopia], civil justice system unfairness [The Divide], numerous political campaigns [Insane Clown President, Smells Like Dead Elephants, Spanking the Donkey], media bias [Hate, Inc.], general societal delusions [The Great Derangement]), and Coates is ostensibly just as gifted a writer, why is Coates self-limiting?
And more importantly, why is Coates adored here, while Taibbi is scorned? I'd say West puts his finger on it - Coates offers banal but intellectual-sounding analysis that upper middle class people find palatable. He's a significantly gelded form of radical chic. One can deal with him, where someone like West, who understands the issues in greater detail, is uncompromising.
I'd love the meet Colonel West (I have friend who did and said the experience was highly enlightening and entertaining). I've heard West and Taibbi go back and forth in several interviews and podcasts and even when I don't agree, I'm challenged and I have my mind changed. West has his shit down, and the two of them are formidable as all fuck when they agree. I could be wrong, but Coates strikes me as someone who'd be a supreme bore, unable to crack comedic, most interested in appearing erudite rather than actually saying anything truly revelatory.
|
I've met Cornell West many times, beginning with back when we were both in DSA in the late 70s and early 80s. Once he was both interesting and inspiring, I'd even say brilliant, and really struggled with things like facts and history, but the last time I met him, probably ten years ago, before my cancer, he was a shell of his former self. It's like all the detailed history and political analysis he had stuffed in his head in the 80s and 90s just evaporated, leaving him with nothing but memories of rants gone by. You raise something like Black September or his discussions with Michael Harrington back when DSA was a fledgling, and it was like he just couldn't place them and he just sailed off on tangents. I've only seen a few people who have lost it as thoroughly as him. Very very sad. Still entertaining, but untethered, and he used to be.
I have a similar history with Bernie, knew him back when he was elected mayor (have I told you I was there the night he was elected?). But with him it was just raging narcissism that took over, it's not any loss of mental focus.
As to Taibbi, it's because he's just an asshole. You can only take an asshole for so long.
