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Published on 5/7/08
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With his acidly funny narratives about national affairs, Matt Taibbi has made a name for himself as a modern-day Hunter S. Thompson, and his latest book of unhinged reporting only strengthens his gonzo status. Vividly interpreting contemporary American politics as a “grotesque black comedy,” The Great Derangement shows how corrupt lawmakers, aided by the establishment media, thwart any legislation their fat-cat corporate backers don’t want to pass. Meanwhile, the people these pols purport to represent, sick and tired of being lied to, have wandered off the reservation, and Taibbi uses their disaffection to build his thesis: Compared with partisan Beltway politicians, evangelical end-timers, the 9/11 Truth Movement and other bizarro groups seem downright sane. To prove his point, Taibbi captures the extremes of the current political climate—the war-mongering leaders, conspiracy theorists and God-fearing secessionists, to name a few.
Taibbi relishes his role as a reporter. He poses as a born-again member of John Hagee’s Texas megachurch, where he’s expected to speak in tongues; he tangles with a spitting psycho blogger who believes that the government deliberately brought down the Twin Towers via controlled demolitions; he visits Iraq. Frequently, Taibbi does what other reporters would never dream of—he takes his subjects seriously, and in the process captures deeply disturbing milieus that most coastal elites have never confronted.
With its grab-bag structure, The Great Derangement is occasionally uneven. But for readers who have themselves grown desperate, forcing down totally uninspired, conventional-wisdom-spewing, boneheaded political journalism, Taibbi’s renegade book is a bracing kind of salvation—the kind that will amuse and enrage at the same time.
Taibbi reads May 7, 2008.
