I consulted two esteemed, professional, grammarians to put the lid on this:

“Hi, Sera,

The correct form is “Help Walter Kirn and me,” since the verb “help” here has a compound object. The object pronoun is “me.” Again, you can always get it right by eliminating the other half of the compound: “help me,” “help us,” “help him/her.”

We hope this helps. Best,

Pat O’Conner & Stewart Kellerman”

Now, I want to say for the record that I consider Matt Taibbi the most important journalist in America today. I revere his contributions to public discourse, his humor, his untiring devotion to justice and freedom of speech. I consider his skill and imagination as a writer second to no one. We all know that one of the trade-offs of the Substack model is less rigorous editing. To jump on a great writer for a minor error which in no way distorted the meaning would be like criticizing a singer who forgot a word in a song.

I would never have mentioned this at all except that I wanted to shoehorn in my little joke about “whom cares” which was a reference to Taibbi’s own catch of another error earlier in the week.

Th-th-th-th-that’s all folks!