Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire | Matt Taibbi

Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire | Matt Taibbi | Do not let this one get by you. BUY IT!

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Smells Like Dead E...

	Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire Matt Taibbi Grove Press, Black Cat, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Smells Like Dead Elephants is a brilliant collection from Matt Taibbi, ?a political reporter with the gonzo spirit that made Hunter S. Thompson and P. J. O?Rourke so much fun? (The Washington Post). Bringing together Taibbi?s most incisive and hilarious work from his ?Road Work? column in Rolling Stone, Smells Like Dead Elephants shines an unflinching spotlight on the corruption, dishonesty, and sheer laziness of our leaders. Taibbi has plenty to say about George W. Bush, Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, and all the rest, but he doesn?t just hit inside the Beltway. He gets involved in the action, infiltrating Senator Conrad Burns?s birthday party under disguise as a lobbyist for a fictional oil firm that wants to drill in the Grand Canyon. He floats into apocalyptic post-Katrina New Orleans in a dinghy with Sean Penn. He goes to Iraq as an embedded reporter, where he witnesses the mind-boggling dysfunction of our occupation and spends three nights in Abu Ghraib prison. And he reports from two of the most bizarre and telling trials in recent memory: California v. Michael Jackson and the evolution-vs.-intelligent-design trial in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Equally funny and shocking, this is excellent work from one of our most entertaining writers.

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The doctor is in.

As a longtime fan of Hunter S. Thompson's political reporting and social commentary I was first exposed to Matt Taibbi when i learned that he had inherited the very same job that the good Dr. HST held at the Foriegn Affairs Desk at Rolling Stone magazine. Pretty bold move to take that one on because nobody (I thought) could inherit that mantle from HST and do it justice. Well, I was wrong. Matt did it and did it well.

This book is a collection or articles (I assume from various sources - I don't recall seeing all of these in Rolling Stone). He takes us to see places and meet people we already think we know from the news stories of the day (or yesterday) and manages to make the stories (some now old and lame) fresh and new in the process.

My only complaint is the same one I had upon reading HST - severe depression at the state of our government and our fellow humans. Damn but the truth is painful and this book is full of truth.

You will love it. If you don't, there is probably something wrong with you.

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Do not let this one get by you. BUY IT!

This book is a masterful creation of reality, snark, wit and intellect. Matt shines the light of truth on just how far gone our government is. You can find him on the show Real Time With Bill Maher often. That is how I found out about him and his book. It's so refreshing and disheartening to read this book. You never get the real story from TV news on just how incredibly broken every part of Washington DC is. This is probably one of the best books I have read in a while.

i love this gonzo-style political humor

allright, i read this whole thing in 2 days. mainly, i couldnt put it down because i didnt want to wait for his next hilarious observation. the new orleans story made me feel like i was there. not a lot of humor there, but probably the best story. it took balls for a hotshot from RS and a millionare actor to drive a boat around the most neglected areas of flooded NO. i hope he got an award for that piece. anyway, here are some things i remember. he travels to the sheehan protest/counter-protest in tx and describes the scene as a "Crossfire" themed amusement park where both sides seem to pathologically "miss the point". his analysis of the lyndie england trial had me on the floor. he described the judge(army colonel) as a blockhead who seemed like the kind of guy who takes his wife on a date to the "elks club" and "yells at his kids at barbeques". the prototype liberal sociologist verbal exchange with this judge was insanely hilarious(when explained by taibbi). the real kicker came when england had her baby(fathered by fellow sadist, graner) and wrapped it up in a flag for a picture. Then, her lawyer presented it to the court as evidence of her patriotism. if i hadnt just served in the army for 5 years, i would have thought he was making this up. the tom delay analysis was alarming, painful(to remember) and funny. thanks matt, for making sense of all this s*** for me. the foreword was dead-on, it said it all. his goal(identical to mine) is trying to understand this facist little AMCON(american conservatism), fox news, W, "famed neocon" movement. like him, i thought there had to be more to it than what i see on television. but no, these folks really believe in bombing the hell out of a place and then rolling in with some tanks and machine guns looking for the victory parade. they really are that dumb. but does anyone say this? no! they are portrayed to us by the news channels as "intellectuals". on top of it all, what these guys all have in common(besides an utter lack of principals) is the inability to admit when they are wrong. you will see this time and time again throughout the book. everything we have heard for almost 8 years now has been wrong and stupid, but no one seems to calling anybody on any of it. WTF!!!!???? thanks again, matt. i wish i could get this guys email address so that i could write him a thank you letter myself.

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Beyond Words!

Taibbi's "Smells Like Dead Elephants" is mostly too funny to describe - especially describing Michael Jackson's trial, Bernie Sanders' efforts to pass legislation and amendments, and attending (no-longer) Senator Burns' birthday party pretending to be a lobbyist for drilling in the Grand Canyon. Then the more serious moments of Lnnydie England and her trial for Abu Gharaib abuses, and later having the guts to stay there for three days.

Definitely a "Must Read."

Almost ready for prime time

I give Matt maybe another few years to become crotchety and bitter before he inherits the mantle of a Hunter S. Thompson, but this is an OK book with some decent play by play of how pathetic our Congress is, some good snark about the Enron scumbuckets, and a very good piece from Iraq that is probably the best of the bunch. Otherwise, occasionally uneven-poor choice opening up with a weak piece about Michael Jackson that gives the reader the impression that skipping around is something they'll want to do, but "Dead Elephants" is still better than anything Laura Ingraham is going to write, ever.

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