Matt Taibbi, Marriage Therapist?

Today's interview with Matt Taibbi began with talk of Imus's cancer, and ended with much of the same. In the interim, Taibbi killed President Obama's economic policies and advisors, which he does at length in his latest Rolling Stone article, Obama's Big Sellout.

Taibbi brought cancer talk upon himself, asking how Imus's holistic treatment was going. Charles began babbling to himself at the very mention of the c-word, and so Taibbi switched gears to the "boring political stuff."

Obama, he said, ran a very progressive campaign, promising he would do things like renegotiate NAFTA, and telling laid-off workers in rust belt states that he would look closely at free trade agreements because he was concerned about jobs shipping overseas.

"He gets elected, immediately gets rid of his economic advisors, and brings in a whole bunch of people close to Bob Rubin, Clinton's former Treasury Secretary, and these people are all ardent free traders," said Taibbi. "One of the first announcements they made after Obama got elected was, 'We're not going to do anything to change NAFTA."

Taibbi cited that as "just one" example of Obama saying one thing on the campaign trail, and doing another as President. He blamed this more on Obama's political pragmatism than on outright hypocrisy.

"Obama has this really unique chameleonic quality that everybody who watches him thinks that he secretly believes what they believe," said Taibbi. "That's the quality that every gifted politician has."

Obama choosing Rubin as one of his chief economic advisors was exceptionally insane, Taibbi said, given the dual role Rubin played in last year's economic meltdown.

"He's responsible for creating both the bad laws that led to a lot of the mess...and he helped destroy one of the largest companies in the world, Citigroup, as a top-ranked executive," Taibbi explained. "Nobody else had that kind of unique public and private contribution to the mess."

And yet, he added, Rubin was Obama's choice to lead us out of the wilderness. Well, him and his disciples Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and a host of other people who at one point worked for Rubin or for Goldman Sachs (you know, the giant vampire squid).

Taibbi is getting married next June, but today he was more fascinated with the dynamic between Charles and the I-Man, which he called "rapidly dissembling." Imus insisted their bickering was no act, and that the two never socialize even though they talk daily on the phone. And what do they talk about?

"Cancer," said Charles. "Cancer and the treadmill. The treadmill and cancer."

Taibbi thus concluded that Imus had made his cancer so funny in Charles's eyes that "he might actually laugh if you end up dying of this thing."

Which made Imus laugh.

-Julie Kanfer