Don't APF hate. Perpetuate!? Matt Taibbi on the vicious circle of hate in punditry

I've actually mentioned this Matt Taibbi's essay on Punditry and Hate before. But it was in audio form. I only read the 2006 piece today and he makes some good points about the culture that is 'American Pundit Fighting'.

Matt highlights the circle of hate that is available for us to consume. A sushi train he calls 'Blame, Hate, Coalesce':

THE LOW POST: Keep on Hatin' by Matt Taibbi
That's what's happening now. When I go to a bookstore now, I don't see any relief from the same basic Blame, Hate, Coalesce strategy Murdoch started rolling half a generation ago. I just see it working in reverse. We had Bernie Goldberg's "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" and now we have Keith Olbermann's "The Worst Person in the World: And 202 Strong Contenders." We had Bill O'Reilly's "Culture Warrior" and we now have "Sweet Jesus I Hate Bill O'Reilly." We had Ann Coulter's "Godless," which in turn spawned "Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter" and "Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate" and even the inspired "I Hate Ann Coulter!" by Anonymous. You had Rush's "The Way Things Ought to Be" and the way things are according to Al Franken, which is that Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot. For those who don't want to buy all the new liberal books, you can get it all in one volume in "The I Hate Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity. . . Reader: The Hideous Truth About America's Ugliest Conservatives," edited by Clint Willis.

You'll be happy to know that I've hyperlinked all the titles, for those who intend to perpetuate the hate.

But for the rest of you, consider the implications of a culture and media landscape built on division.

Keep on Hatin' (pg 2)
It is amazing to me that people can walk into a bookstore, see a pair of books whose titles begin with "I Hate...," and still believe that the two books are different, simply because the politics of one are conservative and the politics of the other are liberal. Even though it is astoundingly obvious, I'm beginning to think that the vast majority of Americans will not realize until it is too late that this is the same shit. Hating the other guy, it's the new racism. It's imposed from above, like racism, and it serves the same purpose. It keeps the population mesmerized by irrelevant passions and distracted from their natural business of tending to their own real political problems.

Listen and download a Matt Taibbi interview on this topic