Thursday, March 4, 2010

The eXile

Vanity Fair profiles Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames and their paper "The eXile."

I've been reading the eXile for a while. I'm not really sure how long. I've always been shocked at what they've been able to get away with, but that's not what's kept me coming back. They're so damned accurate. They'll nail things way before anyone else. Mark Ames has "the best best bullshit detector on Earth," finely honed after many years in Russia.

They pull no punches, Democrat or Republican: 20 Reasons Why We're Ashamed to be an American.

Their most offensive series ever was "Whore-R-Stories" where Mark Ames would purchase a prostitute and write up the entire night's event.

They got all this published in Putin's Russia. Eventually they got shut down and The Wall Street Journal (who they constantly lampooned) wrote their obituary.

Go read the Vanity Fair article! Cajun Boy agrees: "Matt Taibbi is a thrower of Coffee and Horse Semen Pies to the Face"

UPDATE- While browsing, I found some Russian footage about the infamous Hungry Duck bar in Moscow:


You can also read the rump of what's left of the eXile at Exiled Online.

3 comments:

jeffrey said...

As you know already, I'm a Taibbi fan. Thanks for posting that "20 reasons" article. I think this is my favorite:

Ellen! Look, ladies! It’s wacky, upbeat, afternoon Ellen, the human Wellbutrin XL. There she is on the counter-mounted kitchen tv, dressed in Florida hospice colors, pushing her audience to applaud for musicians—not because of their music, but because they have cancer! And there she is making Barack Obama dance to James Brown on national tv—twice! And Ellen’s dancing too! She’s so wacky and happy! And cancer-free! Unlike her guests, speaking of whom, give them another round! … Ellen Degeneres sucked as a second-rate comedian doing routines about “What If God Was a Woman?” Now she’s reinvented herself as a third-rate Oprah, a human plague on the body televique, with no cure in sight.

Clay said...

One cool thing is I ran into someone on the streetcar reading the printed out VF article. I always thought of the eXile as sort of hidden away and it was good to see someone else that's discovered it.

What really makes them good is not the horse semen pie-antics, but the incredibly deep reporting. They've got a great bullshit detector.

Clay said...

The Ellen thing is a bit too mean.

Do you ever read anyone else, like Mark Ames or Yasha Levin or Gary Brecher?