> Vincent offers this as good writing:
>
> *That’s what made the whole period-costume fetish party so surreal: the
> sight of all these people re-enacting the Founding Fathers revolutionary
> fight for democracy, while at the same time cheering on a plan that
> overthrows American democracy and restricts power to a vanguard elite —
> which presumably includes the kinds of draft-dodging rednecks and bipolar
> government-parasites like Tancredo.*
>
> But what I see is a meandering run-on sentence. I mean, it's not awful,
> but....
> And the whole edifice is built on the assertion that the founding fathers
> were involved in a "revolutionary fight for democracy"....so, wobbly, very
> wobbly.
>
> I agree about Taibbi's jockitis; still, he's awfully fun to read. And
> sharp. Very sharp.
>
> Joanna
Actually the whole edifice is built on - that is: structured around - a "surreal period-costume party" - the point about the founding fathers is one pastel among many which he uses to paint this picture (its also one that should probably taken with a grain of salt as to its facticity - but in his defence I think he's implying that the tea-baggers see the founding fathers as democratic revolutionaries).
As for the wandering, meandering sentences it reminds me of Proust's writing style - one which has been called "dialectical" by many authors which also calls up Marx's writing style (of which similar criticisms are often raised). Actually, Ames' style often exhibits this dialectical character - the above passage, whether using stereotypes or not (again, grain of salt), uses juxtaposition to highlight the surreality of the situation.
Taibbi's just a positivist - which his why his writing succeeds in the mainstream ;)