Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi is very good at some things, like ending interviews with flair and explaining credit default swaps to dudes who live in their mom’s basements. But what he is perhaps best known for is his willingness to say Bad Things about Important People in a Colorful Way. This talent is on copious display in his new book, Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America, which is ostensibly about how America is becoming “a vast ghetto in which all of us … are being bled dry by a relatively tiny oligarchy of extremely clever financial criminals and their castrato henchmen in government” but mostly serves as a 252-page delivery mechanism for ad hominem insults. Below, we’ve put together a quiz using some of his most vivid descriptions of public figures. See how many you can figure out!
