Matthew John "Matt" Labash (born 1970 or 1971)
is an American author and
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
who writes the Slack Tide newsletter. He was a senior writer, and later a national correspondent at ''
The Weekly Standard
''The Weekly Standard'' was an American neoconservative political magazine of news, analysis and commentary, published 48 times per year. Originally edited by founders Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes, the ''Standard'' had been described as a "red ...
'', where his articles frequently appeared. Labash has contributed to ''Esquire'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''The New York Times'', ''Salon'', ''Slate'', ''Washingtonian'', ''The New Republic'', ''The Drake'' (A fly fishing magazine), and ''Nerve Magazine''.
Labash specializes in long-form, humorous reportage. Many of his pieces are profiles, often of crooked and disgraced politicians; others are accounts of offbeat conferences or portraits of cities on the skids, such as
Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
and
. In 2010,
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...
published a collection of his pieces entitled ''Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: and Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys''.
Early life and education
His father was an officer in the
U.S. Air Force
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
, and Labash lived some of his childhood years in Germany.
He has described himself as a "military brat."
He attended Mount Olive Lutheran School in
San Antonio
("Cradle of Freedom")
, image_map =
, mapsize = 220px
, map_caption = Interactive map of San Antonio
, subdivision_type = Country
, subdivision_name = United States
, subdivision_type1= U.S. state, State
, subdivision_name1 = Texas
, s ...
from 1974 to 1979; Hahn Elementary School on Hahn Air Force Base from 1979 to 1980; and Gateway Christian High School in San Antonio from 1982 to 1986. He studied journalism at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, graduating in 1993.
Career
''Slack Tide''
In October, 2021, Labash launched a
Substack
Substack is an American online platform that provides publishing, payment, analytics, and design infrastructure to support subscription newsletters. It allows writers to send digital newsletters directly to subscribers. Founded in 2017, Substack ...
newsletter called
Slack Tide" The newsletter, which comes out once to twice a week, requires a subscription, though some posts are free to the public. Labash describes the newsletter as being "about life and politics and culture and fly fishing and God and whatever else comes, not necessarily in that order."
Early career
He has said that his first job was at "a pool snack bar at the Andrews AFB Officer's Club."
[
Before joining ''The Weekly Standard'' in 1995, Labash worked for the ''Albuquerque Monthly'', '' Washingtonian'' magazine, and '']The American Spectator
''The American Spectator'' is a conservative American magazine covering news and politics, edited by R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. It was founded in 1967 by Tyrrell, who remains its editor- ...
''.
''Weekly Standard''
Labash wrote for the ''Weekly Standard'' since its founding in 1995.[ His first article for the magazine appeared in its issue of September 18, 1995.]
He wrote two general types of pieces for the ''Weekly Standard'' – pieces for the magazine's website that "are a lot riff-ier, and pop-culture-y and you can polish it off in a day or two," and pieces for the print magazine that require him to "go see the world and find an interesting nook and cranny... I like to find little undiscovered pockets or subjects or interesting people and just ride them into the ground. Things I know other people aren't going to get at." He has said that he profiles men "who are not quite in control of their own appetites, who live a little bit larger, so we don't have to."
Labash has profiled scores of people for the ''Standard'', including his friend and colleague Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British-American author and journalist who wrote or edited over 30 books (including five essay collections) on culture, politics, and literature. Born and educated in England, ...
, politician James Traficant
James Anthony Traficant Jr. (May 8, 1941 – September 27, 2014) was an American politician who served as a Democratic, and later independent, member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. He represented the 17th Congressiona ...
(whom he called "the most colorful man who ever inhabited Congress"), ''CNN'' reporter Anderson Cooper
Anderson Hays Cooper (born June 3, 1967) is an American broadcast journalist and political commentator from the Vanderbilt family. He is the primary anchor of the CNN news broadcast show ''Anderson Cooper 360°''. In addition to his duties at C ...
(of whom he has stated "now all journalistic history is divided into two periods: BAC and AAC. Before Anderson Cooper and After"), filmmaker Michael Moore
Michael Francis Moore (born April 23, 1954) is an American filmmaker, author and left-wing activist. His works frequently address the topics of globalization and capitalism.
Moore won the 2002 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for ' ...
("a Ritz-Carlton revolutionary...the entertainment world's Jesse Jackson, a migratory Mau-Mauist showing up at corporations to demand concessions that will ultimately benefit him, leaving companies a choice between throwing him a bone and risking public humiliation"), and celebrity lawyer William Kunstler
William Moses Kunstler (July 7, 1919 – September 4, 1995) was an American lawyer and civil rights activist, known for defending the Chicago Seven. Kunstler was an active member of the National Lawyers Guild, a board member of the American Civil ...
("Defender of Stalinists, all-around press hound, and guest star on TV's Law and Order").
He reported that the 1995 National Conference on Political Assassinations was attended by "fine, friendly folk...from lonely burgs in the Rust and Cheese Belts" who "left behind practices and jobs and bughouses and militia recruiting offices to spend a long weekend in a whirlpool of scholarship, muckraking, and paranoia with the ambience of a 30-year chess club reunion gone deeply, seriously awry." He recounted his "bourbon tour of Kentucky" and reported on the Whiteness Project, "an 'interactive documentary short' brought to us by acclaimed documentary filmmaker Whitney Dow,"
He also reported from Kuwait
Kuwait (; ar, الكويت ', or ), officially the State of Kuwait ( ar, دولة الكويت '), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated in the northern edge of Eastern Arabia at the tip of the Persian Gulf, bordering Iraq to the nort ...
during the Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
. "I was embedded at the resort Hilton in Kuwait," he wrote. "I donned a chemical suit about nine or ten times a day. The alarm kept going off in our hotel. This was back when we thought Saddam had chemical weapons and was willing to use them."[ Also, he wrote about the death of his friend and colleague ]Andrew Breitbart
Andrew James Breitbart (; February 1, 1969 – March 1, 2012) was an American conservative journalist, and political commentator who was the founder of ''Breitbart News'' and a co-founder of ''HuffPost''.
After helping in the early stages of '' ...
, whom he memorialized as "a partisan warrior and a guerrilla theater aficionado – half right wing Yippie, half Andy Kaufman
Andrew Geoffrey Kaufman ( ; January 17, 1949 – May 16, 1984) was an American entertainer and performance artist. While often called a "comedian", Kaufman preferred to describe himself instead as a "song and dance man". He has sometimes b ...
.... Breitbart had the brains, the talent, and the animal charisma to get people to set cars on fire for him, or to run off with him to the desert where he might start his own anti-Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...
doomsday cult. But while he believed in what he espoused, perhaps a little too much, he was also in it for other reasons – for action, and for amusement. He didn't just hit scandal head-on. He enjoyed coming at it slyly. He gloried in the art of presentation."
Labash deliberately does not use Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
or Twitter
Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...
, and has written lengthy essays attacking both of these popular social media sites. In his May 2013 article about Twitter, he stated, "I outright despise the inescapable microblogging service, which nudges its users to leave no thought unexpressed, except for the fully formed ones....I hate the way Twitter transforms the written word into abbreviations and hieroglyphics, the staccato bursts of emptiness that occur when Twidiots who have no business writing for public consumption squeeze themselves into 140-character cement shoes. People used to write more intelligently than they speak. Now, a scary majority tend to speak more intelligently than they tweet.....I hate that formerly respectable adults now think it's okay to go at each other like spray-tanned girls on Jersey Shore, who start windmill-slapping each other after they've each had double-digit cherry vodkas and one calls the other "fat."
Labash has occasionally departed from the ''Weekly Standards perceived political positions. He once stated, "I was sour on the war (in Iraq) when many, many of our neoliberal friends were still something close to cheerleaders....I just never understood what was in it for America to get bogged down there for the better part of a decade. Still don't. I thought it was a bad play." Bush, he said in 2004, "has spent the better part of a year and a half painting smiley faces on Iraq, when it is still a festering sore, to put it charitably."
Labash mocked Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, author, and reality television personality who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 R ...
in a 2010 piece about her reality TV show, noting that despite her assertion that she loves Alaska "like I love my family," except that Palin "didn't give her family up after governing it for two-and-a-half years, so that she could get a Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
contract, and make 100 grand per speech, and write two books in a year, and drag her entire family onto a tacky reality show." He added: "one could see how Karl Rove
Karl Christian Rove (born December 25, 1950) is an American Republican political consultant, policy advisor, and lobbyist. He was Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff during the George W. Bush administration until his resignation on August 3 ...
... has a point when suggesting that the American people might expect 'a certain level of gravitas' in someone who's considering running for president, and that starring in your own reality show might not be the ticket."
By way of explaining the ''Standards tolerance for his ideological deviation, he said in an interview with Esquire: "it's called diversity of opinion. There is such a thing at the same magazine, believe it or not." Apropos of ''Weekly Standard'' editor William Kristol, Labash added: "My opinions often aren't his, and his often aren't mine. That's why my byline runs over my work, and his byline runs over his."[ He expanded on these observations in another interview: "I work in the right-wing world, but we have a good understanding at the magazine that everyone gets to follow their interests and eccentricities. Our editors... give us a lot of writerly freedom. I'm less interested in scoring ideological points than in finding good stories. Good stories shouldn't have to conform to some predetermined formula."][
]
Other journalism
Labash has written for the ''Wall Street Journal'', ''Salon'', and ''Slate''.
He contributed to the 2014 anthology ''The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell'', edited by Jonathan V. Last, which was described by the publisher as "a hilarious, insightful, sanctimony-free remix of William Bennett's ''The Book of Virtues''—without parental controls." Other contributors include Christopher Buckley, Christopher Caldwell, Andrew Ferguson, Rob Long, P. J. O'Rourke, and Joe Queenan.
Labash writes occasionally for Nerve.com and Nerve magazine, which, he said, "prides itself as a literary smut magazine. They're good people. I like them and they like me and we both like sex. I'm sort of the house prude and the pet reactionary. It strikes me when I'm doing it. They actually hire a guy like me to react against sex because it's impossible to shock people with sex these days."[
]
Fly Fishing with Darth Vader
In 2010, a collection of Labash essays from the ''Standard'', ''Fly Fishing with Darth Vader: and Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys'', was published by Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...
. The articles ranged from profiles of politicians, ranging from then- Vice Pres. Richard B. Cheney to former Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
Rep. James Traficant
James Anthony Traficant Jr. (May 8, 1941 – September 27, 2014) was an American politician who served as a Democratic, and later independent, member of the United States House of Representatives from Ohio. He represented the 17th Congressiona ...
, and American cities such as Detroit
Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...
, Michigan
Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...
and , to personal opinion-related pieces on such issues as US-Canada relations
Northern America is the northernmost subregion of North America. The boundaries may be drawn slightly differently. In one definition, it lies directly north of Middle America (including the Caribbean and Central America).Gonzalez, Joseph. 2 ...
, physical education
Physical education, often abbreviated to Phys Ed. or P.E., is a subject taught in schools around the world. It is usually taught during primary and secondary education, and encourages psychomotor learning by using a play and movement explorati ...
, and Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
.
The book received wide acclaim. "Labash takes readers to the fringes in his portraits of people and places outside the mainstream and, very often, beyond our ken," wrote Publishers Weekly. "His subjects are outlandish and unforgettable....His profiles of disgraced former Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry, corrupt former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards, Rev. Al Sharpton, and Vice President Dick Cheney stand out for their affecting portrayals of the humanity behind the larger-than-life personas." The review in Booklist stated: "Whatever their politics, readers will appreciate Labash's energetic style and biting insights."
Describing Labash as "one of the most consistently entertaining magazine writers today," Jeffrey Goldberg of ''The Atlantic'' praised his "innate sympathy for scoundrels," saying that "he brings them to life like no other journalist today." Goldberg called ''Fly Fishing with Darth Vader'' "the funniest book of the year." David Carr of the ''New York Times'' called Labash "the king of hang time, insinuating himself into a subject's world — remember immersion journalism? — and then writing those encounters up in all their rococo glory." Describing Labash as "one of the absolute greatest magazine writers in America" and calling Fly Fishing with Darth Vader "exceptionally good," The reviewer for ''Esquire'' wrote that "Every now and then, a collection of remarkable stories from a magazine writer has the effect of unleashing a significant new voice on an unsuspecting public. Tom Wolfe's ''Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby'' comes to mind. And so it is with Matt Labash's wonderful ''Fly Fishing with Darth Vader''."[
Emily Bazelon of ''Slate'' described the book as "a collection of inflated egos, delicately punctured. You can hear the hiss as the air goes out of ]Dick Cheney
Richard Bruce Cheney ( ; born January 30, 1941) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush. He is currently the oldest living former U ...
, Arnold Schwarzenegger
Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian and American actor, film producer, businessman, retired professional bodybuilder and politician who served as the 38th governor of California between 2003 and 2011. ''Time'' ...
, Al Sharpton
Alfred Charles Sharpton Jr. (born October 3, 1954) is an American civil rights activist, Baptist minister, talk show host and politician. Sharpton is the founder of the National Action Network. In 2004, he was a candidate for the Democrati ...
, Marion Barry
Marion Shepilov Barry (born Marion Barry Jr.; March 6, 1936 – November 23, 2014) was an American politician who served as the second and fourth mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. A Democrat, Barry had served ...
, and Roger Stone
Roger Jason Stone (born Roger Joseph Stone Jr.; August 27, 1952) is an American conservative political consultant and lobbyist.
Since the 1970s, Stone has worked on the campaigns of Republican politicians, including Richard Nixon, Ronald Rea ...
. At the same time, you'll also come away with some sympathy for these men, or at least their foibles."
"In a just world," wrote Mark Lasswell in a review of the book for ''The Wall Street Journal'', "Matt Labash would be celebrated as the heir to Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson and other writers in the 1960s and 1970s who were corralled under the rubric of 'new journalism'.....Like the best of the new-journalism practitioners, Mr. Labash inhabits a story so thoroughly that readers feel as if they're at his side, seeing events with his sharp eye, privy to his wisecracks, savoring moments when he reels in what feels like the truth." Lasswell noted that "Labash specializes in going after catfish of the human variety: the unpopular, the no-hopers, the has-beens and the rogues." While Labash "doesn't pull his punches" in such pieces as his profile of former Washington mayor Marion Barry
Marion Shepilov Barry (born Marion Barry Jr.; March 6, 1936 – November 23, 2014) was an American politician who served as the second and fourth mayor of the District of Columbia from 1979 to 1991 and 1995 to 1999. A Democrat, Barry had served ...
, "he succeeds in producing an affecting portrait of a rapscallion in twilight.... the deep satisfaction of finishing a story and feeling that it couldn't have been told better."
The magazine ''First Things'', in its review of ''Fly Fishing with Darth Vader'', stated that comparisons to Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke don't "do justice to the deeply sympathetic twist" in Labash's voice. "The ''Weekly Standard'' senior writer intercuts biting analysis of America's declining fortunes with juicy, hilarious portraits of its damaged politicians, and somehow manages to humanize even the most inhuman among us....Unlike his first-person-possessed New Journalism forebears, Labash subordinates his own tough-guy persona in favor of the absurdities in his notes. At heart, he's a highly skilled reporter who prefers a powerful quotation to a self-absorbed reference – realizing, correctly, that a writer can convey a point of view without turning the spotlight on the process but, rather, on its rewards. By targeting his sensibilities on the fringe figures of American politics, Labash performs a valuable public service even as he establishes himself as one of the top writers of his generation."
Deepak Chopra lawsuit
Labash was sued by New Age author Deepak Chopra
Deepak Chopra (; ; born October 22, 1946) is an Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate. A prominent figure in the New Age movement, his books and videos have made him one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternati ...
, after Labash wrote an article in the July 1, 1996 issue of the Standard exposing alleged inconsistencies between the healthy, moral lifestyle advocated by Chopra and his real-life conduct. Included in the exposé were accounts from call girls
A call girl or female escort is a sex worker who (unlike a street walker) does not display her profession to the general public, nor does she usually work in an institution like a brothel, although she may be employed by an escort agency. , substantiated by credit card
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...
receipts, purportedly indicating that Chopra had paid for their services. The article also delved into allegations that a Chopra book plagiarized
Plagiarism is the fraudulent representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work.From the 1995 '' Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary'': use or close imitation of the language and thought ...
the writing of others and that Chopra sold mail-order herbal remedies
Herbal medicine (also herbalism) is the study of pharmacognosy and the use of medicinal plants, which are a basis of traditional medicine. With worldwide research into pharmacology, some herbal medicines have been translated into modern remedie ...
containing high amounts of rodent
Rodents (from Latin , 'to gnaw') are mammals of the order Rodentia (), which are characterized by a single pair of continuously growing incisors in each of the upper and lower jaws. About 40% of all mammal species are rodents. They are na ...
hairs. According to an article in '' The Columbia Journalism Review'' (CJR), the ''Standard'' went to "unusual lengths" to document the accusations against Chopra, but it nonetheless eventually settled with Chopra for an undisclosed sum and issued a complete retraction.
Some court records brought out the fact that Labash had tape recorded some interviewees without telling them, sometimes from his home in Maryland, where surreptitious taping is a felony. In a court brief, one of Chopra's lawyers, William Bradford Reynolds, a Reagan administration Justice Department official, described Labash as a "brash young 25-year-old cub reporter." Libel experts said the information revealed in court records indicated that it would be difficult to prove the ''Standard'' had acted with "actual malice" but that juries were unpredictable.[ The ''Standard'' was at the time owned by billionaire ]Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...
through News Corp.
Political views
In late 2007, Labash described his politics and astrology sign: "Politically, I'm not terribly complicated. I regard myself as a fiscal and social conservative with strong libertarian overtones. Turn-ons include low taxes, balanced budgets, and a robust military. Turn-offs include waging unwinnable wars, government intervention, and mean people."
He has stated "At the polls, I vote my conscience—no easy feat, as I haven't had one since around 1997."
Views on journalism
Labash has summed up his philosophy of reporting as follows: "The best details always come when you think you already know everything."[ "I subscribe to Thoreau's philosophy: 'Simplify, simplify.' Or as we true minimalists say: 'Simplify.'"
He has facetiously stated: "I don't talk to Real People often if I can help it, as they tend to confuse the emerging media narrative with their common sense, consistency, and almost touching naïveté."
"Being the prescriptive village pronouncer isn't my bag," he told Esquire. "In fact, I design my entire life so that I don't do that kind of writing. Everybody wants to pronounce, not everybody wants to weave tales, which takes a lot more work, on average. So I'd much prefer to go hang out with Kinky Friedman and write a character study, as my book bears out."][
"Journalism," Labash has said, "is definitely like psychotherapy. When you successfully get into a subject's head, you're their priest, their best friend, their spouse, their bartender, their shrink. They end up telling you, a stranger, things they often don't tell the people they know best. And you know why? Because you asked."]
"I get surprised by something almost every story," he has said. "In fact, I live for those surprises. That's the best part."[
"If I were teaching a journalism class, I'd tell students to be a human being first, and a journalist second," he has said. "Because even if you're a cold bastard, you get better stuff. Respond to people as you would respond to them naturally, not just as a "journalist" would respond. That's important, since most people think journalists are assholes, which is not without some justification. Most subjects though, at least the ones I often write about, tend to be kind of lonely. Even and especially the famous and quasi-famous. So when you become their friend – in the artificial way journalists and subjects become friends – you're halfway there. And sometimes you even stay friends after. Most people just want to be understood. And all people like talking about themselves."][
On ''New York Times'' fabulist Jayson Blair: "It's a pretty ballsy thing to be filing stories from places you've never been. I felt like I was there when Jayson Blair was writing. Unfortunately he wasn't."][
On his writing process: "I don't do drafts. I edit as I go along. So I'm always throwing stuff out. And then when I finish, I read and read and re-read. I do so at the computer about 10 or 15 times, all the way through, hammering things out here and there. Then when I have it pretty close, I print it out, and I read and read and read some more, while I pace. Because walking helps, for some reason. We live in our own heads too much. It's good to make writing as physical as possible. Sometimes I read out loud, not because I need to sound out big thesaurus words, but because it's easier to tell if you're missing a beat or have an extra beat too many. Writing and music – same difference. It's all about rhythm. And I look like an idiot doing this, quite frankly."][
On not being a TV talking head he has said "I have friends who go on TV a lot and say, 'You ought to be on TV.' I don't do it partly because of performance anxiety. I'm pretty sure I'm going to screw it up. Second, it just makes me feel like a fraud. Popping off about issues of the day that I'm considered an expert on simply because I read the paper that morning doesn't feel right to me, which is surprising because I pop off a lot in real life. You take me out to lunch and put a few beers in me and I'll pop off all you want. Going on TV sort of formalizes it. It makes me feel like a dork and that's my rule of thumb public behavior-wise: try not to be a dork."][
]
Honors and awards
"Matt Labash of ''The Weekly Standard'' is consistently one of the best magazine writers in the country," David Brooks, editorial columnist for ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' wrote in his December 25, 2007 column. Brooks named Labash as one of the winners of the "Sidney Awards" — the columnist's annual naming of the articles he considers the best of the year. Brooks gave Labash another "Sidney Award" two years later for his essay on Marion Barry, "A Rake's Progress."
Personal life
Labash is married to Alana Peruzzi Labash. They live in Owings, Maryland, and have two sons, Luke and Dean. Luke is an avid fly fisher. [
His favorite writers include ]Richard Ford
Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel '' The Sportswriter'' and its sequels, '' Independence Day'', ''The Lay of the Land'' and ''Let Me Be Frank With You'', and t ...
, P.G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, ( ; 15 October 188114 February 1975) was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jee ...
, Peter De Vries, Tom Wolfe
Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr. (March 2, 1930 – May 14, 2018)Some sources say 1931; ''The New York Times'' and Reuters both initially reported 1931 in their obituaries before changing to 1930. See and was an American author and journalist widely ...
, Thomas Lynch, and Tom McGuane.[
]
Notes
External links
Matt Labash
at ''The Weekly Standard'' Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Labash, Matt
1970s births
Living people
American male journalists
American libertarians
University of New Mexico alumni
The Weekly Standard people
People from Calvert County, Maryland