Author:
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Matt Taibbi |
Source:
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Rolling Stone
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Date:
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1/24/2008
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Format:
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Long feature
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“Merchants of Trivia” may not trace a conventional narrative arc, using plot, dramatic conflict, or character transformation to build to a satisfying resolution. Instead, its organizing principle is a thesis — an accusation that the candidates and the media itself have let a once-exciting 2008 presidential race sag with the equivalent of “stage-managed glory” and schoolyard taunts. The story’s tone, though, suggests none of the high-minded seriousness that the word “thesis” implies, making the piece feel more like a wild romp than an academic argument.
Throughout the article, Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi resists the narratives the candidates serve up. He indicts hope as Barack Obama's “own personal spoonful of oatmeal” and puzzles over comments from Clinton, asking “What the hell is the difference between ‘working for change’ and ‘demanding change’?” The candid descriptions combine insult with insight, as with Iowa's “hilariously satisfying behind-the-woodshed third-place ass-whipping for status quo gorgon Hillary Clinton,” or Mike Huckabee sounding “like a late-stage Lenny Bruce ranting about cops and Francis Cardinal Spellman.”
The storyline sometimes gets lost in the ping-pong between rallies and diatribes. But “Merchants of Trivia” gives a noogie to the phony aspects of the presidential primary process and damns reporters for subjecting the public to a “a sort of political version of Fear Factor in which candidates must eat bowl after bowl of metaphoric worms.” A perennial complaint, perhaps, but firmly rooted in the current campaign. And Taibbi’s outraged and outrageous language makes a familiar rant fresh.
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© 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College