Altercation

Slacker Friday

By Eric Alterman

CHARLES PIERCE

NEWTON, MA.

Hey Doc:

"Turkey in the straw/Turkey in the straw/Roll 'em up and twist 'em up/A high tuck a-haw."

Short Takes:

Part The First: Because it's the week that it is, and because she simply will not go away and leave me and English syntax alone, I thought, well, hell, why not bring back the greatest live shot in the history of American POLITICS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJd_vm9VhpU). And, the best scene in the history of your buddy Sorkin's PROGRAM.

Part The Second: THE saddest story of the week. If you don't know why, you weren't at Marquette University in the 1970's. My god, we had fun. Be well, Dream.

Part The Third: Here's a Fun Holiday Game. Please count up the number of far-too-obvious straight lines contained in this single blog POST. Sometimes, the fish are too big and the barrel is too small.

Part The Fourth: The Youthful Quota Hire goes unicorn HUNTING. Sorry, lad.

You have attached yourself to the Party Of Stupid, and it is the Party Of Stupid because you and it have been produced by the Movement Of Stupid. (There's this BOOK that explains how this happened. Ask Santa for it.) Also, PAUL RYAN, has been known to play to The Stupid. People laugh at him, too. You really gotta get out more.

Part The Penultimate: Apropos of last week's visit to Doc's JOINT, I present the Gobsmack Of The WEEK. Nice hire, fellas. Really.

Part The Ultimate: It is early days, surely, but, at the moment, there is absolutely no way on god's earth that I would vote to re-elect Barack Obama as President of the United States. I always had my DOUBTS. But I was willing to ride the train in order to keep the government out of the hands of a bunch of undereducated paranoid lunatics, which I didn't see as very high a bar, truth be told. I do not underestimate the size of the problems he was handed last January with two badly run wars and one badly run economy. But, all Lilly Ledbetters aside, it is becoming increasingly plain that the man is not up to the most important job he was elected to do--which is to wring the accumulated viciousness, ignorance, and hackery of the past eight years out of the various parts of the United States government--and to do it brutally, if necessary, which it is. One of our two major political parties has completely lost its mind. This should be a political issue. It is incumbent upon the other party to eliminate that party's influence until it purges itself and comes to its senses again. It also scarcely needs to be said that the sane party has to watch its own ranks for people who seem to be enabling and abetting the goals of the crazy party. Otherwise, as Ezra Klein memorably put it this week, every attempt at bipartisanship winds up as "a hostage negotiation." President Obama--and does anyone but me notice that he gets the honorific conspicuously less often on TV than the last guy did?-- ot only seems unequal to this task, he doesn't even seem to recognize the task at all. He wasn't elected to change the tone, dammit. He was elected to change everything because everything needed to be changed. So it's a hard goddamn job. So what? He didn't know this coming in? Now we're going to feed 34,000 more American kids into the meat grinder in Afghanistan because we're America and we can do anything we set our minds to? Hell, we can't even keep our own citizens alive by breaking the power of the health-insurance industry. We can't right our economy because it's still in the hands of Wall Street grifters, and the government has fallen into the thrall of a bunch of banker-morons I wouldn't trust with a potato gun. Some people needed to be crushed politically. Some people needed to go to jail. Some people needed to be exiled forever from the serious business of self-government. It's Black Friday, and I'm shopping for another candidate. I'm beating the rush.

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November 27, 2009

Slacker Friday

By Eric Alterman

My new Think Again column, called "History Isn't a Dirty Word," about the incredible amnesia shown by the MSM regarding the Bush presidency is here.

My new Nation column, on Marty Peretz's New Republic being "Bad for the Jews" is here.

This week on Moyers:

This week in 1) craziness and 2) corruption:

1) SC offering shoppers tax-free weekend on guns

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November 20, 2009

Bad for the Jews

By Eric Alterman

My new Think Again column is called : "History" Isn't a Dirty Word about the incredible amnesia shown by the MSM regarding the Bush presidency is here .

My new Nation column, on Marty Peretz's New Republic as being "Bad for the Jews" is here (I took a relatively high road here, and did not get personal about Peretz but whenever I write about "aging ideologue" I like to point out the following. The man's entire life is filled with nothing but negative accomplishments. He has never published a book; never published a memorable piece of scholarship. He has written no journalism of note, save in a negative fashion. He does not actually edit the magazine upon which his name appears. All he has really done since becoming an adult is to spend down the inherited fortune of his ex-wife, lose TNR readership, destroy its reputation, end its tenure as both a liberal and a weekly magazine, and spew insults to people who, almost without exception have accomplished more in life than he has. Were it not for his former wife's inherited fortune, we would take his racist rants no more seriously than we would any other bitter, crazy old man screaming at Arabs and Latins on the streets of Cambridge.)

That's all this week

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November 19, 2009

Slacker Saturday

By Eric Alterman

I've got a new Think Again column, which involved quite a bit more work than usual, by the way, called "The Continuing Scandal of Howard Kurtz and The Washington Post," here. And my Moment column, "Why Jews Vote Like Puerto Ricans (and not Episcopalians)" is here.

CHARLES PIERCE

NEWTON, MA

Hey Doc:

"Looked like there was 10,000 people standin' round the buryin' ground/I didn't know I loved her 'til they laid her down."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Crescent City Calypso" (Dr. Michael White)--I am weighing several plans for a new offensive in my campaign to tell the country how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: A tip of the Tam to the redoubtable Digby who found THIS first. In the immortal words of Alvy SINGER, what I wouldn't give for a large sock full of horse manure.

Part The Second: A media project started by Tucker (Fail) CARLSON!

And now, a word from our SPONSOR: "If this guy owned a funeral parlor, nobody would die."

Part The Third: I like this REVIEW for the clarity of its arguments, but I love it for the fact that the New Yorker finally breaks The Horseshit Barrier--see the last graf--and tiny mummies weep in the Beyond. But baseball MANAGERS across America cheer!

Good on you, Elizabeth.

Part The Fourth: Of course, there are CHEAPER, TAWDRIER GOODS out there selling themselves on the radio.

Part The Fifth: Being The Continuing Adventures Of Waldo, The Drunk Security Guard. Amazed at his continued employment at the home offices of Salon, Waldo celebrates by chasing 15 shots of Virginia Gentleman with a six-pack of Piels Real Draft. He sings two choruses of "Twist And Shout" and, while impersonating Ferris Bueller atop a desk, he falls, knocking himself unconscious. While he is out cold, a squirrel hops in through a window, downs the rest of the liquor, and starts tap-dancing on a KEYBOARD. "When as a Yale graduate student I ransacked that great temple, Sterling Library, in search of paradigms for reintegrating literary criticism with history, I found literally nothing in Levi-Strauss that I felt had scholarly solidity." And then I failed to find my ass with both hands and made a career out of it.

Part The Sixth: A week or so back, I chided the NYT's rightist quota HIRE for arguing that religious conflict is sanctioned by the Gospels, but that acts of charity lack a sound basis in Scripture. I'd like to know what he thinks of today's READING, apparently from the Letter Of Paul To The Gambinos. Bastards.

Part The Penultimate: Further proof that, at Arianna's joint, where resides The Future Of Journalism, all you need to get a gig is a seat in one Green Room or ANOTHER. (And, as Interim Altercation Sports Editor, it behooves me to point out Exhibit B for the prosecution.). Mika's dough-brained patter is unworthy of a weekly shopper in central Missouri. I mean, really, "Being a mommy"? And, worse, in a country with 10 percent unemployment and rising, "You can always change a job"? Nice, Mika. Change yours. Today.

(Episode Two: Revenge Of The TWIT)

Part The Ultimate: I'm sorry but while both Ezra KLEIN and Jon COHN have done great work on this issue, they are talking here about a country and a political system that no longer exist. And their responses to Marcia Angell's CRI DE COEUR are largely political, and not really to the point of her piece, which is that no substantive reform of the system is possible until the control that the insurance industry exercises over the practice of medicine is broken forever. The now-familiar argument is that the House bill--even if it had a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the Senate intact, which it doesn't--represents a good first step. When exactly was the last time our political system--to say nothing of the Congress--did anything in "steps"? We don't progress. We move a step ahead, and then there's an election, and then we move another step in the opposite direction. The idea that the current debate will produce a system that will somehow be immune to our febrile and idiotic politics is naive to the point of translucence. For this to have worked at all, it had to be so huge and transformative as to immunize itself thoroughly in the event that Congress or the White House--or both--change hands. It had to be so immense as to be unmovable so that it would be permanent enough for enough people out in the country to become invested in it that the political danger would be to monkey with it at all. (Which is pretty much the way things are in Canada now. Their system, for all its flaws, is politically sacrosanct.) It also had to be a big enough change to overcome the fact that one of our two parties will be completely off its head for the foreseeable future. Whatever comes out of this process is going to be far too fragile to survive the kind of boneheaded thinking that produced this NONSENSE this week. And Social Security has a more solid constituency than whatever the new healthcare plan will have.

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November 14, 2009

The All-Time King of Conflicts of Interest, continued

By Eric Alterman

I've got a new Think Again column, which involved quite a bit more work than usual, by the way, called "The Continuing Scandal of Howard Kurtz and The Washington Post," here. And my Moment column, "Why Jews Vote Like Puerto Ricans (and not Episcopalians)" is here.

and Hurray for Tom Tomorrow: for giving Mr. Bearded Librul his goatee back!

(Let's not keep fighting about this, Dan. He's much handsomer this way...)

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November 12, 2009

Slacker Thursday

By Eric Alterman

I've got a new "Think Again" column called "This Fish Rots from the Head Down" and it's about what a crappy, dishonest columnist George Will is, and it's here.

(Funnily, I am staying at the Doubletree in Ontario, CA, wehre I am debating young Ross Douthat at Pomona College tonight, and its computers will not allow me to access that piece or any piece on the CAP website. The warning reads: "The access to the address above is restricted. Accordingly to our harmful content database SiteCoach does not allow you to visit this page!" Sheesh.

My Nation column this week is an examination of the issues raised by a young right-wing journalist's awful book about the elite media's alleged persecution of Sarah Palin and it's called "Sarah, Smile!" (I know, I know, keep my day job...)

While Pedro was letting all the honest, hardworking people of the world down last night, I was typing away at this meshugena hotel computer so that the world might enjoy my election wrap-up from the Daily Beast, and that's here.

Did I mention that my ThinkPad died in between Dallas and Ontario? It's the fourth time that thing has had to be repaired, and of course I am stuck out here with a long flight home no laptop. It's enough to make one consider switching to a Mac, finally. Anway, fortunately Pierce is early, so we have an excuse to post this. Oh, ok, one more thing. Did you happen to notice how Bruce ended his night of the RRHOF (at 1:30am) with an amazing "Higher and Higher" featuring everybody who wanted to perform: Sam More, John Fogerty, Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Tom Morello, etc, while Bono/U2 felt a need to kick everybody off the stage (Mick, Bruce, Patti, etc) so they could close the show alone? Just saying... See you this weekend. Wild and Innocent, Saturday. The River, Sundy. First time ever for both. Here's Pierce.  

CHARLES PIERCE

NEWTON, MA.

Hey Doc --

"Well, I hitched a ride from the borderland/when the home guard went insane/No use trying to work with people/who can't tell fire from rain."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Nevada" (Gil Evans) -- It's never too close to call how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: Parson Meacham, that pious fraud, can continue to BITE ME. And, of course, in conjunction with Sister Sally Punchboard, he also presented a reading from the Book Of THUGS.

Part The Second: The redoubtable Howler remains invaluable. THIS is why. How you settle on a know-nothing pink balloon like Marsha Blackburn as a credible spokesperson for "the other side" on this issue--other that the very real possibility that she might've been the only one the reporter could get on the phone-- is too deep for my small mind to ponder.

Part The Third: Very weird COLUMN. Note to Jon--the reason that ETL New Republic hasn't won a National Magazine Award recently is assuredly not because it once won one for Betsy McCaughey's bullshit. The reason Marisa Tomei has not won an Oscar recently is not  because she won one once for My Cousin Vinny. (And Betsy's was the worst  article in the history of a magazine that once employed Stephen Glass, and that continues to publish the fudge-brained ramblings of The Singer MIDGET?  Look a bit deeper, my lad. And the NMA's aren't until next spring, for pity's sake. Someone needs a hug.

Part The Fourth: I care less about David Brooks's dating advice than I do about a goat's taste in opera.

Part The Fifth: My favorite POST yet from my favorite new honky-tonk here along the docks of Blogistan.

Part The Penultimate: Thanks to Marcy for blogging up this TRANSCRIPT. I was particularly struck by this analysis from Rep. Lamar Smith, one of the true brainiacs in the Texas delegation: "All Al Qaeda needs to do now is open a bookstore." I guess they're right. We are going to have to tighten up our Borders. Hey-yo! No, thank you. Really. I'll be here all week.

Part The Ultimate: Of all the shoddy reactions to last Tuesday's orgy of marginal significance, this may be the most IMPORTANT. If you're keeping score at home, the national Republican party just sent a message to the nutters that, any time they can muster up a candidate from the Island Of Misfit TOYS, the party will take a pass on the race. Now, if you think Cornyn's a little smarter than I think he is --and I think he's pretty much a blockhead--you could argue that he's giving The Base just enough rope to hang itself.  (The establishment candidates who get crisped as collateral damage--Hi there, Charlie Crist!--are just SOL, I guess.) However, if you are burdened with common sense, it's plain that the national GOP is scared right down to the tassels on its loafers by what's going on in the hinterlands, its trembling exacerbated this week when Congresswoman Batshit J. Crazee called for direct ACTION. They may learn to channel all this by 2012; the redoubtable Digby OPINES that the whole business is just the same old plutocratic weasels sub-contracting the job of rebuilding their movement. That may be, but, for now, and for whatever reason, one of the country's two major political parties has surrendered itself utterly to the monkeyhouse. While undoubtedly entertaining, this is in no way a good thing.

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November 5, 2009

Slacker Friday

By Eric Alterman

I've got a new Think Again column called "Obama's Commie Past Exposed Yet Again," and it's here.

Here's what I did last night. How were things in your city?

Oh, Brother...

By Eric Alterman

I've got a new Think Again column called "Obama's Commie Past Exposed Yet Again," and it's here.

I took a seminar at Yale in 1985 when I was getting my master's with Edward Said on the role of the intellectual. Everyone in the class wore black and quoted Derrida (with whom I also took a seminar, in French, of which I understood very little). Anyway, there was a rather imposing African-American fellow at the seminar table on the first day with a vest and tie, etc., and a big afro. He said nothing for the two-hour class and then at the end, was called and ripped into Said with every three-dollar word I had ever heard and many more I had not. It was like a fantasy come true--going back to school to show off how smart you were now; perhaps the coolest moment I've ever seen in a classroom. Then Said said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Dr. Cornel West," who apparently was an assistant professor in the Divinity School, letting the rest of us in on the joke. The amazingest thing about Cornel is what an original he is; there's never been anything like him: "Gramsci and Sly Stone both understood..."

Anyway, I mention all of this because of the publication of Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, an as-told to memoir written with David Ritz, who has apparently cornered the market on cool as-told-tos, having done Paul Schaffer's surprisingly excellent one, and also Lieber and Stoler's not-as-great one. I's published by something called Smiley Books and it's fun.

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October 29, 2009

Slacker Friday

By Eric Alterman

We've got a new "Think Again" column called "It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News," and it's here.

My Nation column, about Obama and Fox News and the rest of the media, is called "Just Don't Call It Journalism," and that's here.

I did another piece on J Street for the IHT. It's called "Voices From the Wilderness" and that's here and then Le Monde Diplomatique asked me to do a podcast and that's here: Living on J Street.

Philly gets everything!

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October 23, 2009

Precious

By Eric Alterman

We've got a new "Think Again" column called "It's a Bird. It's a Plane. It's...Cable News," and it's here

My Nation column, about Obama and Fox News and the rest of the media is called "Just Don't Call It Journalism," and that's here.

I did another piece on J Street for the IHT. It's called "Voices in the Wilderness" and that's here and then Le Monde Diplomatique asked me to do a podcast and that's here: Living on J Street.

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October 22, 2009