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September 07, 2005

Longstanding Taibbi Mystery Solved

Fancy Robot and David Weigel are both wondering—is that Matt Taibbi behind Sean Penn?

Sources close to Taibbi confirm that the answer is: yes. Apparently something happened in New Orleans recently and he went down there to write about it for Rolling Stone.

Speaking of which, in all the idiotic stories making fun of Sean Penn, I've never seen any that mention an obviously pertinent fact: Penn is in a new film version of All the King's Men coming out later this year, and it was partially filmed in New Orleans. So it's not surprising he'd feel obligated to help.

Man, I hope they don't massacre the book, which is certainly one of the greatest novels I've ever read.

We clocked off five miles more, and I said, "But suppose there isn't anything to find?"

And the Boss said, "There is always something."

And I said, "Maybe not on the Judge."

And he said, "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something."

Posted at September 7, 2005 08:42 AM | TrackBack
Comments

yeah that book was stunningly good. Vivid, deep, sophisticated, sweeping and gritty. As good as any fiction I've ever read.

I see on imdb.com that moocher from breaking away is playing sugarboy, kate winslet is playing anne stanton and jude law is playing jack burden.

It should be good, hopefully. But I'm just happy their doing it. Just like the book Dune, even though they fucked it up a bit and moved the story way too fast past stuff only understood by reading the book, I was just happy to see it on the screen.

So penn goes to help, gets a boat and rescues some people and O'reilly says only that penn went down there and his boat "sunk". His guest corrected him and said penn was simply bailing water out of his boat with a cup. what an ass o'reilly is.
he said theres nothing wrong with going down there but celebrities should keep their mouth shut, as if he doesnt make a living by flappin his gums.

Posted by: thicketed at September 7, 2005 01:02 PM

Hey, thanks for answering the question (and the link). I assumed Taibbi would be in New Orleans in his new role as RS's roving national correspondent. It just seemed so weird/cool that, of all the places he could be covering the story, he was right behind Sean Penn.

Posted by: Dave Weigel at September 7, 2005 01:20 PM

yeah a couple of celebrities that should have kept their mouth shut: Raygun, Gropinator, and maybe Sonny too. Jesus, are not politicians now days just celebrity wanna be's? O'Falafal is lucky his listeners are incapable of making any logical connections

Posted by: slothrop at September 7, 2005 02:28 PM

Whoa. He IS secretly Jesus!

Posted by: Aaron at September 7, 2005 07:47 PM

Just for the record. All the King's Men won the Oscar for best picture in 1949. It starred Broderick Crawford, John Ireland and Mercedes MacCambridge. It's a good pic.

I don't have high hopes for a remake.

Posted by: alexis S at September 8, 2005 08:55 AM

I am living and working right now in Italy, and while I am happy to see Matt and Sean in New Orleans, this morning I woke to the following announcement on CNN International: "John Travolta flew one of his private jets down to New Orleans himself, delivering, among other things, peanut butter to those in need." This struck me as deeply, deeply asymetrical and disturbing. Anyway, if any tinyrevolution readers get fed up and fuck off to Europe, drop a line. And yes, I see the irony in my last line.

Posted by: Elayne at September 9, 2005 02:39 AM

thicketed,

Because of this I had to go reread All the King's Men to see if it was still as good as I remembered. OH GOD ALMIGHTY YES.

I can't help but have high hopes for the movie, because I think Penn might be the best actor possible for Willie Stark. The others are also impressive. But of course our hearts have been broken in these situations before.

Dave,

Yes. Like you, I look forward to reading Taibbi's article.

slothrop,

"O'Falafal"

Thank you.

Aaron,

You see? And people think this site doesn't provide any useful information.

alexis,

You're probably wise not to have high hopes. But I prefer ruined expectations and suffering to wisdom.

Elayne,

Hey, when did this happen? Are you coming back to us?

Posted by: Jonathan Schwarz at September 9, 2005 10:03 AM

and Robert Penn Warren had never even heard of the Bush family-- all he had was the Longs.

Posted by: Jonathan versen at September 10, 2005 02:17 AM

Matt Taibbi is God.

He's also damned sexy.

Posted by: sevenless at September 14, 2005 08:26 AM