Taibbi and Murray defeat Gladwell in right versus left debate

My son Mike Had me watch me watch this debate: Matt Taibi & Douglas Murray v. Malcolm Gladwell & Michelle Somebody from the NY Times. Topic is “Can the Mainstream media be trusted?”

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In 2020, I came out with a book titled How to Spot Dishonest Arguments and keep your own thinking straight. Debates like this are a great place to see stuff that I talked about in that book.

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In this particular debate, you do not see much variety of dishonest tactics. Malcolm Gladwell uses the straw-man tactic incessantly. He also uses a tactic that I did not even put in the book because its too first-grade: deliberately mispronouncing the names of the opponents. He calls Matt Taibbi, Matt Tiabbi (sic). And he calls Douglas Murray, “Doug.” Murray goes by Douglas.

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The implication is that Gladwell is in a higher caste, like an early 20th century white Alabamian cracker calling a black man “boy.” He is such a big shot—several best selling books—that he cannot be bothered to learn how to pronounce the names of two writers he is debating because they are so far beneath him in status.

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When he persisted with the “Doug” routine, Murray theatrically addressed him as “Malc,” then paused to wait for the laughter to die down.

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In fact, Gladwell DOES know how to pronounce the correct names. He is falsely pretending not to—in a debate about whether you can trust the mainstream media. He is lying in front of a Canadian like audience, while representing the New Yorker magazine for whom he writes, about his claim that the mainstream media does not lie.

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His other dishonest debate tactic is almost in my book but not quite, again because I was not writing for a low elementary school individual like Gladwell. He “pulls rank” on Taibbi and Murray by repeatedly dismissing them as mere Twitter posters. Taibbi was 15 years a Rolling Stone reporter, has a podcast and has written several books. Elon Musk chose Taibbi as the reporter to see all the internal Twitter messages that revealed its censorship. Murray is an editor and writer at the British Spectator. and has written for the Wall Street Journal as well as writing several books.

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Both Taibbi and Murray have extensive reporting experience including in foreign countries. Gladwell is a British-born Canadian with I think an Afro (not my area of expertise—he is a descendant of a mulatto Jamaican slave owner and a Nigerian in part and apparently identifies, of course, as black) has written seven books five of which were best sellers. His Wikipedia makes no mention of a marriage or spouse but says he father his first child last year. He is 59.

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I reviewed a number of his books. I like some interesting stories in the early chapters, but in each, the title seems to promise he is going to teach you the better ways to do something. That is what I do: how-to books full of best practices. Like me, he criticizes those doing things the wrong way. But unlike me, he never gives you the best practices to avoid the mistake he identified.

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Very simply, he loses interest in the title topic after about five or six chapters then meanders off into unrelated topics that he finds mildly interesting. Much like a podcaster who had some good material for his Monday and Tuesday podcasts but had to rely on his miscellaneous pile for the rest of the week.

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You can read my reviews or mentions of some of his books by typing his name in a search box then +johntreed.

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Before this You Tube debate, they polled the audience on the topic question. It was about 50-50. Then they polled the audience again at the end. 2 to 1 said Taibbi/Murray persuaded them that the mainstream media cannot be trusted.