Now Prole's trollin on the facebooks cause I talked (limited) smack about Taibbi.
The problem is that he's become an avatar for fed up liberalism, and any criticism of him gets perceived as an attack on the expression of honest anger or use of cuss words when discussing politics. So no matter what you say, it immediately turns into installment 512,207 of The Role of Tone In Political Discussion, an ongoing series.
Of course, they're absolutely right on the larger issue of tone. If something is genuinely outrageous (and many things often are in US politics) then people should be allowed to express genuine outrage and anger without being dismissed. Enforcing rules about politeness and decorum creates a huge bias in favor of the status quo by limiting participation to those who are comfortable with it. Anyone who feels genuinely aggrieved is on the outside.
The problem is honesty. You read Taibbi's stuff enough and you'll catch him misinforming or misleading the reader in ways that have to be deliberate. I'm not talking about hyperbole for comic or emphatic effect, either. I'm talking about times when he quotes statistics or describes versions of events in ways that are flat out disingenuous.
He doesn't do it all the time, and he probably doesn't even do it most of the time. But he does it enough that I've learned not to simply take his word for things. Nobody yet has given me a good explanation of why I should gloss over these things.
