Vanity Fair Reporter Discovers that Matt Taibbi Might be a Dick

Matt Taibbi on Fox Business

Vanity Fair’s James Verini wrote a story about The Exile. The Exile was an angry Russian newspaper Matt Taibbi worked on during the 1990s that was shutdown by the Russian government.

Verini attempted to interview Taibbi, who now writes for Rolling Stone, but it didn’t work out because Taibbi freaked out.

When I first contacted Taibbi for this story, he replied unenthusiastically. “Ugh. No way I can talk you out of this, huh?” he e-mailed. “In the end nobody really wants to read about a couple of overgrown suburban teenagers writing about anal sex and the clap and then calling themselves revolutionaries when some third-world dictator gets bored of letting them stay published.”

He then fell out of touch, re-emerged a month later, and agreed to meet me for lunch at a Manhattan restaurant. I arrived late, and he was visibly annoyed. There was no boyish smile. “I just don’t see why you’re doing this story,” he said. When I told him that Ames was now living in New York he grew more agitated. I mentioned some of the Exile pieces of his I planned to write about, and he said, “That was covered in the book.” I told him yes, that was true, but the book had been published in 2000, and, frankly, I didn’t think it was very good.

“The book wasn’t good?” he said.

“No, I didn’t think so,” I said.

“My book?” he said.

“Yes, the Exile book. I thought it was redundant and discursive and you guys left out a lot of the good stuff you did,” I said.

At this, Taibbi’s mouth turned down and his eyes narrowed.

“Fuck you,” he snarled, and then picked up his mug from the table, threw his coffee at me, and stormed out.

The restaurant was packed with customers, and they all turned to watch as I sat there, stunned, coffee dripping from my face. The waiter arrived with the milkshake Taibbi had ordered. After wiping myself off a bit, I went outside, where Taibbi was putting on his coat, and asked him to calm down and come back into the restaurant. He walked up to me, glaring, beside himself with rage.

“Fuck you!” he yelled. “Did you bring me here to insult me? Who are you? What have you ever written? Fuck you!”

I tried to talk to him, but gave up when he walked away. I went back inside, paid the bill, left, and began walking up Sixth Avenue. Halfway up the block, I turned around, and Taibbi was behind me.

“Are you following me?,” I asked. He walked toward me, raising his arms as though preparing to throttle me or take a swing.

“I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do with you!” he said.

“Are you kidding?,” I asked.

And at that moment I thought he might be kidding. There was part of me that thought it must have been a prank. I half expected some old Exile accomplice, maybe even Ames, to jump out from behind a tree with a camera. Maybe they’d been setting me up all along. Maybe there was horse sperm in the coffee. But the anger in Taibbi’s eyes was genuine, and, after some more glaring, he fumed off. That was the last I saw of him.

Read Verini’s Vanity Fair story.