Matt Taibbi

Matt Taibbi is an American journalist. He writes a column on politics and current affairs for the New York Press, an alternative weekly in New York City. Taibbi is known for his extravagant writing style and critical edge.

Taibbi grew up in the suburbs of Boston, Massachusetts. His father is Mike Taibbi, an NBC television reporter. After graduating from Bard College, he lived for many years in Moscow, where he cofounded an English-language alternative weekly, The eXile, in 1997.

In March 2005, Taibbi wrote a column for the Press, "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope", which was vilified across the country. The column was denounced by Senator Hillary Clinton, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and others, including Matt Drudge on the Internet.

In a subsequent column entitled "Keep Pope Alive", Taibbi defended the controversial piece as "an off-the-cuff burlesque of Truly Tasteless Jokes", which he said was designed to give readers a break from a long run of "fulminating political essays" in his column space. Taibbi claimed his parody was a protest against "the agonizing marathon of mechanized media grief and adulation we so inevitably go through after the passing of each and every hallowed leader or celebrity"

In 2005, Taibbi published a book, Spanking the Donkey: On the Campaign Trail with the Democrats, a campaign diary from the 2004 US presidential election. His writing has also appeared in The Nation.

External links

• "The 52 Funniest Things About the Upcoming Death of the Pope" (NY Press)
• "Keep Pope Alive" (NY Press)
• Lloyd Grove column (New York Daily News)
• Mother Jones interview
• Thomas Friedman Book Review