Matt Taibbi has every right and reason to come back at me for the piece I wrote about him last week. It wasn’t a nice piece, and it wasn’t meant to be. I questioned his integrity, because I think his integrity is questionable. I took a swipe at him, and in return, he called me “scum” and a “cunt.” Seems a little disproportionate to me, but whatever, I guess that’s his “gonzo” style.

There are obviously more important things happening in the world than a squabble between Matt and me, and I don’t want this to descend into kayfabe. But in the absence of any more important insights to share about the world this week, I’ll say a few brief words in response.

Matt accuses me of calling him a “money-grubbing coward.” I never used that phrase, but as long as he’s imputing it to me, I won’t refute it. Matt has made many millions off of his writing and reporting. Good for him: he worked for it, he’s talented at what he does, and nobody handed his readership to him. But to pretend that professional success in journalism does not beget self-censorship would be a very un-Taibbi like thing to do. Matt includes as an appendix to Hate, Inc. an interview he did with Noam Chomsky about Manufacturing Consent, a book whose entire premise is that journalists censor themselves to advance their careers. He devotes a whole chapter to the “assholes” John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, who he accuses of “making assloads of money being wrong about presidential politics” and whose expressed opinions about Trump, he suggests, are shaped by whether or not they have a book deal in play.

He’s probably right about all of those things. But when a very mild version of the same doubt is cast on him, it can only be the work of a conniving cunt.

Matt then lumps me in with his critic Eoin Higgins, who wrote a book about how Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald “sold out to conservative media,” and uses that feint as an opportunity to defend Glenn and himself against those slanderous charges. That’s quite a strawman to pivot to, since I never said a word of criticism about Glenn and in fact would hold him up as my moral counterexample to Matt. Glenn, like Matt, has made a heap of money off of his commentary and reporting. But that has never for a split second stopped him from criticizing Trump on free speech or Israel on its genocide, despite losing viewers and subscribers by the boatload for it.

I’m hardly the only one to notice Matt’s reluctance to take risks such as the ones Glenn takes on a daily basis. In fact, according to Matt, I’m “roughly the 6,000th” person to register the same complaints about him. If that’s true, then there’s a point where, if I were Matt, I might start wondering whether my thousands of critics might have a point.

Matt described me in his “ode” as “sort of a friend.” He used those words in the context of suggesting that I could have just picked up the phone and expressed my gripes with him directly. I don’t know that I would have described us as “friends,” even “sort of” — I’d say we were “friendly,” maybe “collegial.” But ok, yes, I do have his phone number and could have just called him instead of writing a public post about his hypocrisy.

But I find this criticism a little awkward coming from someone who has written entire books on the incestuous culture of professional journalism and how it corrupts their coverage. If I had written about Matt dissing me at a dinner party, then yes, my grievance could have been better handled by a private conversation. But that’s not my issue with him. My issue is his hypocritical silence around Trump’s threats to free speech. That’s an issue of public concern and one, I would argue, that absolutely should not be resolved quietly in a personal call between colleagues. We’re journalists. We should have these conversations in public. Just because we’re both labeled “heterodox” or “post-left” or whatever doesn’t mean that we should act like another of the professional media cliques Matt has made a career out of despising.

“Money-grubbing coward” seems pretty harsh, and again, those aren’t the words I would choose. And if I’m being honest, I don’t think they describe Matt at all. They’re too vulgar and overt. What Matt is caught up in is far subtler. But if we’re trading words like “cunt” around then I guess we’re way past subtlety and I’d note that the words Matt put in my mouth are no harsher than the ones he chose for Heilemann and Halperin when they were doing the same thing he is. Matt just doesn’t believe that the standards he sets for beltway reporters apply to him.

I don’t plan to write anything more on this subject. I doubt Matt will, either. I said my piece and he’s said his. We’ve probably torched whatever collegiality we once had and I honestly think that’s too bad. But it’s about the least important factor in this whole dust-up. Matt has a huge platform and a lot of influence over the public discourse. In a recent tirade against Ezra Klein and Ben Smith, he noted that they were probably “nice enough guys, but what the fuck?” I feel roughly that way about Matt.