In Saturday’s Rolling Stone, political writer Mike Taibbi sailed the Barack Obama/Rev. Jeremiah Wright controversy into new waters: down, way down, deeper fathoms down, if you can believe it, than it’s already been.

The controversy itself played a surprisingly minor role in the piece. It was turned into just a convenient craft for a claim usually booked in steerage about political bottom-fishing: the fundamental problem of American politics, Taibbi says, is that we have an electorate made up of just so many “squeebs.”

A squeeb is a gargoyle of Taibbi’s own phantasmagoria. It is “a crude mix of squid and dweeb, and by inventing it,” he says, “I mean no disrespect to the squid, which in most respects is an excellent and admirable animal. In the ocean there's almost nothing you'd rather be than a squid….

“But on land, a squid is about as useless as it gets. It's a spineless, squishy little hunk of seafood that wouldn't stand a chance in a cage match with a baby squirrel. It has no heart, and its first instinct when trouble comes is to hide in a cloud of its own excretions. This is why a squiddy word like squeeb seems to me to be a good way to describe the American voter during a presidential election season.”

Now, Taibbi’s coverage of 2004 Presidential election campaigns was first-rate: sniffing around everything, doubting, suspicious, unrelenting; thankfully out of the ordinary, “off-beat” if you really must, but if you really must you would also have to say, again and again, “he nailed it.” He saw what candidates’ keepers didn’t want anyone to notice, made connections they’d have preferred neither a journalist nor a voter make.

But of late Taibbi has been turning his eye far less on the powerful, more on the public. And flatly ranting, in wrath and rage, about the behavior of its constituent members. It’s a common enough rant, though in Taibbi’s uncommon style.

If the squid definition didn’t give you a big enough taste of his argument, here’s the bottom line to Saturday’s 2500 word version (you can read the whole piece at
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/19729398/generation_squeeb):

“We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense – while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we... shit, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.”

Before you agree too quickly that Taibbi’s lost it, gone overboard, please note this: from the start his “squid” was locked together with “dweeb” to make that opening gargoyle gambit “squeeb.” He defines “squid,” but never does “dweeb.”

So, if American voters and Noah Webster are half “inept or foolish, [but] often on account of being overly studious,” Taibbi may be entirely in control of his argument; may be inviting us to dweebishly fish around – "wonder about" – military contracts, war strategy, and campaign financing; and may really, deep fathoms down, have at least half a hope for us yet.

Posted by
G.E. “Skip” Lawrence