Medical examiner Roy Allen (center) looks for signs of sexual assault on the body of 11-year-old Irene Fiederowicz, who was strangled, Hartford, Connecticut. 1953.
I had never been over to Matt Taibbi’s blog before but John Amato had a link to one of his posts, so I strolled over for a look.
On the subject of teabaggers and Michele Malkin, it was far from the best I have read. Hit Instaputz, if you want high quality pwnage, or just pick someone randomly out of my blogroll.
But what’s got me writing about Matt Taibbi is what he has written in his”About Me” paragraph located on the lower right side of his front page.
I’m a political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine, a sports columnist for Men’s Journal, and I also write books for a Random House imprint called Spiegel and Grau. My main ambition in life is to someday strangle that chick in the Progressive Insurance commercials who is always waving her hands back and forth and screaming, “Discount!!!” Anyone who has suggestions for how to dump her body without being caught is welcome to write to me. I already have plenty of plastic and a staple-gun.
I don’t know about you, but I find jokes about killing people more than a little off-putting. As a result, I sent the following email to general inquiries at TrueSlant which hosts his blog for them to forward to him:
tonight was the first time i had ever visited mr. taibbi’s blog although i have seen him on rachel maddow’s show and maybe countdown, so i am reasonably familiar with who he is.
that being so i was very surprised and very disappointed to see this in his “about me”:
[I included here just the strangling/body dumping fantasy from the quote above but delete it here to avoid repetition]
i am not someone who offends easily. you can say “fuck” or “shit” and i probably would not even notice. but the expression of a desire to murder a woman and secretively dispose of her body doesn’t strike me as even beginning to be acceptable. and it’s not just because [
he] his fantasy involves murdering a female — it doesn’t matter. he could be soliciting a hitman on lassie and it would still be offensive.killing people is not funny.
any respect i might have had for mr. taibbi has completely evaporated. i hope you forward this email to him and that he considers, at the least, removing the offensive “joke” and, if he is able, to apologize to his readers.
thanks.
karen marie
The more I think about it, the more pissed off I get that it should be acceptable for someone who goes on TV “representing,” as the kids say, to have something that offensive on his front page.
I wonder if Men’s Journal and Rolling Stone magazine think this is funny.
I’ll update if I get a response, but I am not holding my breath.
