A Spanking Shame

By Matt Taibbi, AlterNet. Posted April 15, 2005.

Editor's Note: AlterNet took the unusual step of asking the author to review his own book. What we expected: a funny, acerbic, self-deprecating rant. We were not disappointed.

I had two surprises last week. The first came via an email from my publisher, Colin Robinson at the New Press in New York. Quietly, as though it was no big deal, Colin informed me that he had spotted my new book, "Spanking the Donkey," on the bookshelves at a Barnes & Noble in downtown Manhattan.

I called him up. "What the fuck?" I said. "I thought it was coming out in May!"

Colin is a classically hyper-polite Brit, of the sort who is liable to speak of an utter disaster as if it were nothing at all, a smudge on one's ascot. I expected him to respond in the hushed, only mildly embarrassed voice of an MP who has just been caught screwing a chicken in a public restroom by a Daily Mail photographer. You know -- yes, heh heh, what a shame, quite a thing, that...

"Well, yes," he said. "The release day is in May. But you see, we shipped it already, and they just put it out on the shelves willy-nilly. These things happen. Incidentally, if it doesn't sell, they're pulling it from the New Releases table in a week..."

"But there's no publicity!" I screeched. "We're fucked!"

"Well, some publicity would help, yes," he agreed. "Do you know anyone?"

That same afternoon, I received an email from Lakshmi Chaudhry, the editor at Alternet.org. In it, Lakshmi kindly informed me that Alternet was planning to feature an excerpt from my new book. The catch was, she wanted me to write the accompanying review myself. I immediately thought of the scene in Casino where the blackjack cheat is caught by Joe Pesci and offered a choice -- he gets to keep his ill-gotten winnings and get his hand smashed by a hammer, or he gets to walk with empty pockets and both hands intact. It was that kind of choice.

The downside to not accepting this offer was pretty clear. Most of "Spanking the Donkey" is a collection of vicious tirades directed at various politicians and journalists during the last campaign season. It would therefore be the most egregious cop-out if I were to spare myself that same treatment.

So here it is -- my review of "Spanking the Donkey", list price a ridiculous $24.95, publisher the aforementioned New Press. Release date: May, 2005.

Let's talk for a moment about what this book was supposed to be, and then let's talk about what it is. This is probably the best way to get at the failure of "Spanking the Donkey."

As someone who has followed Matt Taibbi's work for a number of years, there are a few things I can say about this writer. The first, and perhaps most important, is that he is not a deep thinker. He knows almost nothing about politics or anything else, and this is borne out in his reading habits; he consumes about five hours of sportswriting a day, stopping only when he is forced to go to work.

He remains employed as a journalist only due to a genetic accident. Some writers bring a variety of skills to the table when they work: a broad knowledge base, a burning inner idealism, a joyous gift for language, a keen sense of audience. Taibbi, on the other hand, possesses exactly one trick, which he uses over and over again to collect paychecks in between Patriots games. Thrust into any situation, he describes in morbid detail the most negative aspects of every thing, act and person he encounters.

Occasionally, this is amusing. This also occasionally makes his work read like principled iconoclasm, although the true motivation is probably closer to simple laziness and a kind of cowardly, masturbatory psychosis. Because he does not like to work very hard, Taibbi just blasts everything he sees as quickly as he can, and then retreats back immediately into the empty hole of his barren personal life. But this is irrelevant; the point is that the marriage of this particular writer to the subject of the American presidential election should have made for very interesting reading.

Matt Taibbi lives in New York. He covers politics for Rolling Stone and the New York Press.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »