[On July 19th, Eoin Higgins contacted one of us, C.I., via e-mail. He sent five e-mails over three days. He received a dictated reply or a summary via Martha to each of his e-mails. That's the only contact we've had with Eoin.]
OWNED: HOW TECH BILLIONAIRES ON THE RIGHT BOUGHT THE LOUDEST VOICES O THE LEFT is Eoin Higgins new book. The digital version that we read runs 250 pages. That's not counting footnotes that are really just works cited -- there are no true foot notes or end notes.
The author's stated intent is to illuminate how columnist Glenn Greenwald and Twitter artiste Matt Taibbi ended up on the right -- wing, that is, right wing.
A better question for a book might be: Why did people ever think either of the legmen were left?
To read this book is to forever be thinking of something better.
And we wanted to like the book. We really did.
But we read it . . . and often wondered if we were reading a first draft?
This is a very poorly written book in so many ways that's it hard to know where to start.
How about the simplistic nature of it all?
Eoin writes as though it's early Friday morning and he's emerging from a go-go club he landed in on a throwback Thursday bellowing, "The best things in life are free! But you can give them to the birds and bees! I want money! That's what I want!"
Was it that simple? An old 45 helped him figure out the whole world and the complex landscape of humanity?
Because money, we are told time and time again, is what motivated Greenwald. And Taibbi. And Elon Musk. And Peter Thiel.
Even the pop music landscape of the 60s allowed for more concerns than just money -- love, good times, loneliness, R-E-S-P-E-C-T., why even -- true for the kids and even that Pasadena granny -- cars.
But for Eoin, it's just money.
Maybe we're mistaken about his source. Maybe it wasn't a trip to a go-go? Maybe he found his inspiration in some fire-and-brimstone-sermon about money being the root of all evil?
Maslow might have come up with five needs but Eoin only discovered one.
And that's so sad because it really does the book in.
Call us Freudian, but we'd say that sex was a huge motivator for the boys as well -- none of whom are attractive today or was attractive in school.
Sex is probably a very big motivator. We laughed, for example, when he quoted Elon Musk telling his first wife -- while dancing -- that he's the alpha in the relationship. We laughed because of all those rumors about Elon and S&M and how he likes to be beaten. Now granted, we only heard first hand from one woman who had a relationship with him -- no, not a mother of his child, think, true readers, and you'll know who we're talking about and why we're not naming her because we are thrilled with her journey into obscurity. But those rumors have always been out there -- even before Elon thought he was hopping in the sack with the next Blake Lively (he wasn't, he had hopped into the sack with this century's Lani O'Grady). And the one time, at a party, when we were introduced to him -- and quickly walked away -- we noted the signs of a weak little subbie in dire need of a woman who could wield a harsh riding crop.
Elsewhere, Eoin writes about how Elon Musk wants the money for the "control and power." Is he writing in code? You know, like in the fifties when you couldn't say lesbian in print so you'd instead type, "Judy Holliday is Katharine Hepburn's new gal pal." A little clue for those in the know might work in a gossip column but should a supposed serious investigation be coded?
Sadly, the "alpha" line -- like "control and power" -- goes unexplored in this book and even sadder is the story of Little Glenn which unfortunately makes it into the book. Combative. That's what gay Glenn was like in school up through high school. Combative. Combatively gay? It's poor writing in the sense that the badly worded passage really doesn't make it clear. (For the record, Glenn was in the closet until college. And still in there for his early hook ups which were anonymous ones.) But it's also poorly written in the sense that Eion is not talking to any of Glenn's friends or boyfriends. We've spoken to two of Glenn's college hook ups.
"You mean boyfriends?"
We said what we said.
Here's reality for Eoin: Reporting isn't writing down what someone says and proclaiming, "Done!"
No, that's just stenography.
If the premise of your book is how the right wing nouveau riche -- specifically apparent plastic surgery victim Peter Thiel and President of The Hair Club For Men Elon Musk -- bought writers who lie for them, why would you then take a liar like Glenn at his word?
Glenn lies throughout the book and Eion, like the bustiest airhead in the steno pool, just jots it all down and never checks it out.
Let's move away from Glenn's sex life to offer an example where Eion's stenography is probably 100% accurate -- we are sure this is what Glenn told him -- but the facts are 100% wrong.
After he left THE INTERCEPT, Eoin tells you, Glenn ended up on SUBSTACK and then, in 2023, he started his podcast-program SYSTEM UPDATE on RUMBLE. And Eoin doesn't just tell you that in his own writing, he also (repetition?) then quotes Glenn declaring, "Prior to moving to RUMBLE, I didn't have a video program."
Kids, can anyone figure out the problem with that?
It's not true. Not only was Glenn doing video spots for THE INTERCEPT many, many years ago, those video spots morphed into a show he hosted -- and pay attention, Eoin -- called -- you know it's coming, right? -- SYSTEM UPDATE.
He did those on THE INTERCEPT -- SYSTEM UPDATE started not on RUMBLE, but on THE INTERCEPT. You can find them on YOUTUBE to this day.
But maybe skip them because if you really want to laugh -- if you really need a gut busting laugh -- instead stream Jimmy Dore's October 2020 segment on Glenn leaving THE INTERCEPT. There, you'll find Jimmy pointing out how "he started his own podcast on THE INTERCEPT network -- why you'd would do that -- That's also a bad business move. You don't need anybody to help you do a podcast."
"Ava, C.I., that's not funny!"
We didn't say that was. So little that comes out of Jimmy's mouth ever qualifies as funny. No, what we're saying is that even Jimmy Dore knew Glenn was doing SYSTEM UPDATED well before 2023 and, unlike Eion Higgins, Jimmy Dore didn't try to write a book about this topic.
The funny part?
The funny part comes from Jimmy's guest co-host. That would be the desperate Aaron Mate -- who hadn't yet taken over for Taibbi at USEFUL IDIOTS. Howl with laughter as you watch Aaron suck up to Jimmy by sporting the saddest attempts at laughter to Jimmy's every utterance. (Aaron's particularly delighted with the one about the "interwebs" and Joe Biden.) There are times when Aaron laughs so hard and so early that Jimmy doesn't even bother to deliver the punchline. Ed McMahon at his most intoxicated on THE TONIGHT SHOW never embarrassed himself as much Aaron does.
At one point in the book, the author gets to Taylor Lorenz (who's just joined Medhi Hassan's ZETEO, by the way). And the discussion covers how cruel and vicious Glenn was to her.
Catty.
Use your words, Higgins.
Catty and bitchy.
Glenn is catty and btichy and he was that way in school as well which is why Higgins using the term "combative" to describe those early years -- and him just jotting it down and then publishing it -- is so damn funny.
Glenn attacks Taylor. A little later, Eoin will note that AOC is attacked by Glenn.
During her discussion with the author, Taylor's shared -- rightly -- that Glenn's attacks on her were very gendered and very sexist.
But Eoin can't see a pattern?
Glenn hates all women.
He'll get a token hag to be his roll dog for a year or two. And she better hate women to be at his side. That awful FIREDOGPOOPHEAD Jane, for example.
Higgins doesn't mention her. But mentioning her would require telling people why Glenneth was involved in Democratic Party politics oh-so-very-briefly.
Jane and Glenn bonded over their hatred for Hillary Clinton. And in 2008, they roll dogged around like an elderly couple that had stopped having sex while showing up on any program that would have the gruesome two-some and let them trash Hillary.
Hillary was the reason Glenn finally found a Democrat he could vote for -- as he and Jane went around attacking Hillary and building up Barack Obama.
How do you miss that?
So many public details are missed, overlooked and ignored. Again, it reads like a first draft.
He notes Peter Thiel and misses a great deal there as well.
Peter Thiel co-writes a book -- THE DIRVERSITY MYTH which is bad book that tries to be like another really bad book from four years earlier, THE BEAUTY MYTH. Nut job Naomi Wolf is pleased to buddy up to Peter these days. Years ago, she wasn't quite grabbing onto the notion that imitation was the sincerest form of flattery. (Her earlier anger over the copying always made us laugh since Naomi's book ripped off the lectures of Judith N. Shklar -- a point we've made here repeatedly for two decades now.)
We bring that up not to just get another dig in at nut job Naomi, but also to point out that the co-writer is David Sacks.
Eion explains Sacks is "an old Stanford friend" of Peter Theil.
That's one way to describe him.
But the detail that we'd zoom in on and that Eion misses? Sacks is from South Africa. Grew up there. Came to America as an adult. Goodness. The book notes how Thiel spent elementary years in South Africa back when he was a German citizen. And, of course, we know Elon Musk learned to embrace, love and dry hump racism from his South African father.
But Eion makes no connection.
Three of Donald Chump's biggest donors all Whites from South Africa and it's not worth noting? That silence from a few months ago to when the book was published last month has not aged well. Sacks, for example, is more than the single-sentence former friend of Thiel's from Stanford scattered on a few pages. December 5th, Gabrielle Canon (GUARDIAN) reported:
And, of course, last week found Chump announcing -- in the midst of his attacks on immigrants -- that Whites from South Africa are now to become priorities. Camilo Montoya-Galvez (CBS NEWS) explains:
President Trump on Friday directed government officials to prioritize the resettlement of South Africans of European descent through the U.S. refugee program, which he suspended during his first day in office.
In an executive order, Mr. Trump accused the South African government of discriminating against Afrikaners, an ethnic group in South Africa made up of descendants of European colonists, mostly from the Netherlands, who first arrived there in the 1600s.
Until the 1990s, White South Africans of European descent ruled South Africa, enforcing the brutal system of apartheid against the country's Black majority.
This week, President Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump appointee and billionaire businessman Elon Musk all attacked South Africa in a flurry of social media posts.
The South African government, which is made up of a coalition of diverse political parties, responded firmly but diplomatically. President Cyril Ramaphosa said the country would "not be bullied."
By Friday the White House had issued an executive order to cut financial assistance to South Africa, citing disapproval of the country's recent change to land policy and for bringing a genocide case against Israel to the International Court of Justice.
At CNN, Eve Brennan and Alejandra Jaramillo added:
South Africa’s foreign ministry called the order a “great concern” and said it “(lacked) factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid,” adding that the move seemed “to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation.”
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged, while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship,” the foreign ministry added in a statement Saturday.
If anyone feels noting the above three stories on South Africa is 'a little much,' maybe they went to school with Eoin Higgins?
Because the above is not minor. His whole attitude reeks of White privileges. Such as when he's failing to grasp that Thiel's support of Ron Paul was not despite of Paul's well known racism but actually because of the politician's well known racism. Equally true, he never notes the racist connection of rich supporters of Donald Chump to South Africa. Or that, for example, Elon leaves South Africa because apartheid is falling. Instead, he -- and Thiel -- just happen o leave South Africa, the country that has allowed them to benefit their entire life from their White skin while discriminating against Black people. The attacks on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is briefly noted in terms of when Musk took over Twitter and was appalled by the diversity he sees in the company's work force. Higgins treats it as a quirk when, in fact, it's a built-in factory feature of three White men (Musk, Thiel and Sacks) spending their formative years in an apartheid state fed and deepened their bigotry and hate.
Higgins limited vision can't even see that the end of apartheid was relevant in terms of history and activism.
That's obvious when he goes to attack Generation X and says they didn't have to fight with their parent growing up and they didn't have to fight for anything, "Yes, there were movements against US imperialism and support of dictators in Central and South America. The WTO protests in Seattle were huge. However, unlike the boomers or the millennials, Gen X did not experience formative moments like the earthshaking battles of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, the Iraq War, or the Great Recession."
That may be the part of the book where he comes off the most uneducated and unaware. College students across the US were huge leaders and participants in the global anti-apartheid movement. They worked years and years on that. Did no one ever educate him on the shanty towns built up on campuses all around this country?
In addition to the movement to end apartheid, they were the generation coming of age when AIDS showed up. And they were part of the LGBT movement (at that time it was billed as LGBT) because some of them were LGBT and most of them -- including the straight allies -- rebuked homophobia. The AIDS crisis -- and the federal government's refusal to address it in a responsible manner -- made their generation the most aware of sexuality and the need for equality and recognition -- as opposed to the silence that Ronald Reagan greeted it with back when it was initially (and wrongly) noted as "the gay plague." They marched for the environment -- did that not matter? The pollution resulting from EXXON VALDEZ was a major issue for them. Some of them also marched and protested the first Gulf War.
We could go on and on about the issues Gen X stood up for. But let's deal with the other part about them not having the big fights with the parents. You don't have to have read Stephanie J. Coontz's THE WAY WE NEVER WERE: AMERICAN FAMILIES AND THE NOSTALGA TRAP to grasp that Gen X kids had less time with parents. That is, in fact, why they were dubbed The Latchkey Generation.
Again, the book reads like a first draft.
Money, money, money is always the motive in this book.
Glenneth Greenwald, as we call the loser, absolutely bends over backwards to kiss FOX "NEWS," for example, but when he's praising the awful Laura Ingraham in Tweet after Tweet, might it also be due to the fact that the two are friends?
You know, the way Eoin works his friends into the book even when they really don't have anything to offer -- and the closer he is too them, the less he feels to need to explain of them -- for example, there's a professor whose university will escape most American readers.
There are all these characters in the book which is another problem.
You encounter Republicans and Libertarians and MAGA and even the Tea Party.
And then?
And then you have the left. Such as, on page 134, when he writes of being part of "a group of lefty writers." Socialists. That's what he's talking about on that page. He notes a left "environmentalist" in the book -- a Socialist. He writes of the genocide in Gaza insisting that the "left" was all basically on the same side ("The left was more or less opposed to the war, but the conflict quickly exposed a split on the right.")
Is that what he heard in the echo chamber bubble he lives in? For the record, we are opposed to the ongoing genocide and have been throughout. But we're not so stupid that we think that is the uniform opinion on our side. For example, October 30th -- days before the US presidential election -- Linley Sanders (AP) reported on the latest AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll:
But there’s a big partisan split on whether the Israeli government bears “a lot” of responsibility for the war’s escalation. About 6 in 10 Democrats say they do — similar to the share of Democrats who say Hamas bears “a lot” of responsibility — while only about one-quarter of Republicans say the Israeli government bears “a lot” of responsibility.
Six in ten is not 100%, it's barely over half.
But damned if the media ecosystem that Eoin hails from -- FAIR, THE NATION, COMMON DREAMS, etc, etc -- hasn't misled everyone on that reality.
In a really poorly written section about leftists brought on FOX "NEWS" (made even worse by his desperation to name check another friend), he notes that the network brings on two types -- the ineffectual (think Alan Colmes) who is seen as ridiculous and then the Glenn Greenwald types who are there to insult the left.
We wish it would have been better written book but we also wish he had the nerve to go beyond finger pointing at the other side. What he's describing -- the fake assery of FOX "NEWS" when it comes to the left -- is what the media eco-system he hails from does over and over. In fact, that's what DEMOCRACY NOW! did every day from the start of August through October 30th when covering Kamala Harris.
They brought on Socialists to lie and attack. And the biggest lie there was that they were Democrats. Even Democrats don't like Kamala, they insisted with their coverage thereby achieving Amy Goodman's intent to suppress turnout for Kamala.
That lie also helped them attack Kamala constantly regarding Gaza. Again, the lie was -- and continues to be in Higgins' book -- that the left was of one mind on Gaza. But, as polling demonstrated, that was never the case for the Democratic Party's members. Kamala had to navigate a tight rope but that reality was ignored as Amy Goodman repeatedly brought on Uncommitted to tell their lies -- frequently, the biggest one being that they were Democrats. They were, in fact, Socialists (and one Communist). Long before Eoin finished his book, we were pointing out here that DN! was using the FOX "NEWS" model.
It takes a lot of nerve and a lot of hypocrisy to rightly attack Glenn Greenwald for his lies, distortions and FOX-ification while you not only refuse to do the same with your own peers but, in fact, also applaud them in the book -- Naomi Klein (a Socialist whose pro-Kamala message on DN! was hold your nose and vote for her -- again, the messaging from DN! was that even Democrats did not support Kamala), Adam H. Johnson, Branco Marcetic and so many more Socialists.
We don't like Glenn, we have called him out here for years. But when the left does what we call out in Glenn, we call out the left. And when we say that we call out the left, we mean we call out Democrats, we call out Socialists, we call out Communists and we call out Greens.
Not only does Eoin refuse to do that, he can't even type the word "Socialist." Political closets run deep. And political closet cases worked overtime to defeat Kamala so we're in no mood to play and pretend this is some deep and important book.
It's trite and superficial. The scope is beyond the page length. It's 'finding' are generic and self-fulfilling. Doesn't make them necessarily wrong but does reduce this allegedly important book to nothing more than a basic primer good only for someone brand new to the topic.
This could have been an important book, this century's BACKLASH: THE UNDECLARED WAR AGAINST WOMEN, for example, but Eion's research is sloppy and superficial. And whereas Susan Faludi not only mastered the research part of journalism, she also wrote with real flair. There are moments where it's so obvious that Eion Higgines is mentally doing a rim shot thinking he's left the reader laughing (one such example would be when he noted Greenwald doesn't grasp that the US Constitution is not the law of the land for the United Kingdom) but he buries the wit with too many words in the sentence and the words poorly arranged.
Again, the book reads like a first draft. Maybe the problem is the echo chamber bubble he lives in? Too eager to holler that someone's calling out Glenn to actually note how bad a job is being done at calling out Glenn and holding him accountable. In fact, we think we can give him the ultimate insult here -- this book is as superficial as any 'book' Eric Alterman ever produced. That's right, Socialist Higgins has produced a book so bland, boring and bad that it could have been written by centrist Eric Alterman.
In closing, we should note that Higgings might falsely believe he did one end note in the book's footnotes. That would be regarding an entertainment program. If so, he screwed that up as well. Aired? If a program was on CBS ALL ACCESS (now PARAMOUNT+) on October 8, 2017, it did not air that day. CBS ALL ACCESS was an on-demand streaming platform for the program. The note should read something along the lines of "began streaming."
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Some end notes.
There are no numbers above or "*" or "**" for these end notes and that's because the piece is long enough as it is and because "*" and other notes would get in the way of the sentence we were writing and the point we were making. Here are some comments and clarifications that we couldn't fit into the above.
Naomi Wolf's THE BEAUTY MYTH? We say is came out four years prior -- that's because the 1990 book didn't come out in the US until 1991. Don't e-mail to tell us what we already know.
Defining events in Gen X's formative and early adult years go beyond the end or apartheid, the AIDS crisis, the fight for LGBTQ rights and the environment -- those re just the four we are noting. There's the tearing down of the Berlin Wall, there's Tiananmen Square and much more with actions.
"Catty" and "bitchy." Yes, Glenn is those things. If you're new here, you may wonder if we're trying to be homophobic. No, men can be catty and bitchy without having to be gay or bi or straight. "Strident." You'll find, looking at the archives, that we've called a huge number of men "strident" just because the term is so often applied to women and so rarely applied to men -- even though men can be strident.
We're not discussing the section on the January 6th insurrection. We had planned to write about that if Kamala Harris was elected as president. If the Dems take back even one house of Congress -- we're hoping for both houses -- in the 2026 mid-terms, we'll write about it then. Our thoughts have nothing to do with what's in Eoin Higgins' book -- well, we do intepret a Congress member differently that he does in the book. It has to do with impeachment and why we think Congress failed at it.
If you think we're being overly cruel, we could have gone into the typos (page 150 is missing a colon before launching into a very long excerpt, for example). We didn't know, until we read it, that we'd be negative about the book. As it stands now, it's like a review we did of a friend's book -- an actress -- where we panned her book and knew she'd be bothered but even so we laughed writing the review and we're laughing right now thinking again of that book review.
Ty asked us to note "Trapped in an AA meeting with Judy Collins (Ava and C.I.)" because Rhonda wrote last month asking if we'd be covering a book this year as part of the community wide effort to increase book coverage. We didn't cover a book last year. This might be the only one we cover this year. Rhonda says the Judy Collins book review is her "favorite book review of all time ever." You're too kind. It does have a few strong passages though.
Matt Taibbi is not noted to any real degree above. That's because we were asked not to write about him by someone close to him . . . years ago. Until 2020, as a result, his name never appeared with one exception -- when we interviewed the reporter covering the case of Iraq War Criminal Steven D. Green. In that interview published here, the reporter noted his admiration for Taibbi. We have never had admiration for him and never worshiped him. We know his drug problems and his education issues. Eoin Higgins tells a tale of how Taibbi agreed to an interview with a journalist approximately ten years ago and threw a cup of coffee at the reporter and then tried to intimidate him out on the street. That's the reality of Matt Taibbi and it's more common than Higgins apparently knows -- or is willing to tell. It's not sane behavior. It is typical Matt Taibbi behavior.
The damage Amy Goodman and other political cases did to Kamala's campaign is something we addressed in real time and have continued to do. You can refer to the following if you're late to the party:
Media: Accountability -- a term beggar media needs translated
Media: How Amy Goodman harmed immigrants and helped elect Chump
"2024: The Year of Betrayal From Inside The Left."
Media: An idiot says he'll sue over art evaluation, two other idiots defend Trump's nominees
Media: Journalistic Malpractice
Media: You apparently can't teach common sense to journalists (Ava and C.I.)
I-I-I-I-I-I Ain't Gonna Tweet on TWITTER (Ava and C.I.)
Media: White supremacy won the 2024 election (Ava and C.I.)
Don't give a dime to the racist NATION magazine
Media: The election winds down
Media: Are they trying to elect Donald Trump?
Media: Abusers Donald and JD fit the pattern
Media: The damage done by Dave Zirin and The Gaza Freaks
The death of corporate media has been widely misreported
Media: Broadcast TV and Jill Stein -- two things that always fail to deliver
Media: Hard Truths and Soft Media
Media: A great sitcom, a lousy debate
Media: The stupid on the right and the stupid on the left will doom us all
Media: They don't know any better
Media: The embarrassments of the 2024 presidential campaigns
Media: We usually get our twists and turns from TV
