As a roving current-events correspondent for Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi spent much of 2005 filing hilarious and caustic dispatches from all sorts of troubled datelines—from the Lyndie Englund court-martial to earthquake-devastated Pakistan. (For more of his work, check out his book on the 2004 campaign, Spanking the Donkey.)
In a year that took you to the Michael Jackson trial, Burning Man, the Cindy Sheehan vigil, the bowels of Congress and New Orleans with Sean Penn, what sticks out the most?
Actually the theme of this gig so far, for me personally anyway, has been sleeping outdoors. It's almost like the magazine's editors get together and figure out which story will expose me to overflying pigeons. In the Cindy Sheehan story, at Burning Man, in Pakistan and in New Orleans, I slept outside for most of my stay. At Camp Casey, with Cindy Sheehan, I fell asleep in one of those canvas camping chairs with a full bottle of strawberry Yoo-Hoo in one hand; I woke up with this huge pink stain on my khaki shorts and had to work with that the whole next day, including a trip to cover a George Bush appearance at a Little League game in Waco.
On a serious note, I guess the theme that sticks out for me so far is how depressing this year has been. This seems like a really down period in American history. At least when Bush was up in the polls, somebody was happy. Now Bush is spiralling out of control and even the right wing is miserable. Covering politics was probably more fun when Bush was getting away with everything.
With all the travel, is it hard to find time and energy to write?
You'd be surprised how much time and sanity you lose just by travelling this much. I'd say I lost about 10 days last year to pure rage due to things like lost luggage, being pulled in for random TSA inspections, flights canceled after sitting on the runway for five hours, etc. On one flight on the way to Waco for the Camp Casey thing, an air marshal had to come to my row just before takeoff to physically place a hand over the mouth of a little girl who was sitting right next to me, screaming at the top of her lungs, "I DON'T WANT TO DIE, DADDY! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" Another time, I spent 15 hours sitting in a chair on an Amtrak train stuck on the rails between Trenton and Philadelphia. The woman in the next seat was a women's studies professor who was lecturing me about some lesbian-themed Luce Iriguay book for most of the night. I almost pulled the armrest out of my chair. Stuff like that ruins your whole day—and I had a lot of those days last year.
Do you plan to turn all this into a book, or are you sort of winging it for now and sorting it out later?
There's a plan in place to publish this with Rolling Stone's publishing company, Wenner Books, when this is all over, but we're far away from that.