Get Lit
After America This Week ended in February, due to some sort of undisclosed falling out between Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, Racket News launched a new show with Matt Taibbi and Michael Tracey that pretty much ended in a disaster after five episodes. In a follow up move, Matt has dispensed with both Tracey and the news angle of the show and is instead concentrating on the literary classics portion that made his show with Walter such a success. On the new show, Get Lit with Matt and Brad, Brad Pearce is the second co-host to try and replace the pretty much irreplacable Walter Kirn.
The first episode is out, discussing Aristophanes’ 391 BC play Assemblywomen. It was decent entertainment and I learned some things, though I must say, like most who enjoyed ATW, I miss Walter. This seems to be the main theme in the comments to the video, at YouTube and Racket News at least. I am not sure that the concept alone will keep the show afloat. This is certainly better than the Michael Tracey disaster, but what made the literary discussions on ATW work was specifically the interplay between Matt and Walter and the audience seems to be well aware of this. Needless to say, Walter Kirn isn’t a fan of the new arrangements.
Man, I would love to know what happened between the two of them. It must have been brewing for a while, they both don’t seem like people who fly into drama mode at the drop of a hat. I bet there was some stuff going on behind the scenes for a while before something made the pot boil over. And the fact that they both maintain pretty much silence about the causes is either very professional or points at something more sinister.