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Matt Taibbi's Not-So-Secret Russian Past | HuffPost

Matt Taibbi's Not-So-Secret Russian Past | HuffPost: Though Levitt’s Chicago Reader�article contained nothing I didn’t know, I will be forever grateful to her for introducing the word “asshole” into the Taibbi conversation, so that I don’t have to be the first.

“Asshole” is not just a slur; in the hands of philosopher Aaron James, author of Assholes: A Theory (2012) and its timely follow-up Assholes: A Theory of Donald Trump (2016), it is a term of art.

According to James, an asshole:

�(1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically; (2) does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement; and (3) is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.
James probably never read the eXile, but he nonetheless describes the persona cultivated by both Ames and Taibbi during their eXile�days. �Like the clueless expats they loathed, the editors treated Moscow and its residents as their playground.

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