Altercation

Altercation

(Subscribe to this RSS feed)Well-chosen words on music, movies and politics, with the occasional special guest.

  • Slacker Friday

    By Eric Alterman

    Wrapup: Our Think Again column is called "Falling for the Far Right's ACORN Agenda" and deals with the manner in which the MSM got rolled by right-wing re-working vis-a-vis ACORN. You can find it here. My Nation column this week is called "The House that Irving Built."

    Alter-review:

    Loudon and Charlie again: I wrote this little squib for TBD on the new (and beautifully packaged) Loudon Wainwright tribute to Charlie Poole, High, Wide and Handsome, which Sal reviewed so favorably here a couple of weeks ago here.

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    September 25, 2009

  • What We Talk About When We Talk About ACORN

    By Eric Alterman

    Wrapup: Our Think Again column is called "Falling for the Far Right's ACORN Agenda" and deals with the manner in which the MSM got rolled by right wing re-working vis-a-vis ACORN. You can find it here. My Nation column this week is called "The House that Irving Built."

    Alter-reviews: Raymond Carver, Thorton Wilder and Big Star. My friends at the Library of America have finally gotten around to Raymond Carver and collected all his stories in, you guessed it, Collected Stories, edited by William L. Stull and Maureen P. Carroll

    Based on previous collections such as Will You Please Be Quiet, Please?, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Cathedral and Where I'm Calling From, Carver established himself as the short story writer of his moment. That they are all in one place would be reason enough to want this on your shelf--even, if as I do, you have the paperback somewhere. LOA decided to offer up the pre-Gordon Lish version of Beginners, the manuscript of What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and it's revelatory in the extensiveness of the collaboration between writer and editor--one that was a source of both inspiration and anguish to Carver, whom I met once, and struck me as a really decent, albeit sad, man. LOA has also published a bunch of novels and stories by Thornton Wilder: The Cabala * The Bridge of San Luis Rey * The Woman of Andros * Heaven's My Destination * The Ides of March * Stories and Essays, which were edited by J. D. McClatchy. Most of us know Wilder for his plays (which LOA has also published). These are, therefore, a wonderful surprise, and a perfect example of why we need a LOA, lest they be lost to us if publishing depended purely on profit. The volume concludes with a selection of early short stories--among them "Precautions Inutiles," published here for the first time--and a selection of essays that offers Wilder's insights into the works of Stein and Joyce, as well as a lecture on letter writers that bears on both The Bridge of San Luis Rey and The Ides of March.

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    September 24, 2009

  • Slacker Friday

    By Eric Alterman

    I've got a new Think Again called "The Conspiracy Nuts Take Over," which compares media coverage of "truthers" vs. "birthers" and you can find it here.

    Also, my old friend and history professor, Dick Polenberg is continuing to host his web-based Slope Radio program on the blues and folk music. Called "Key to the Highway," it's back at its old time slot: from 7 to 8 pm on Wednesdays. The shows are archived, though, so you can hear them whenever you wish. All of the past programs - more than thirty of them--are also still available and I think they are our kind of thing.

    You can log on at the following site. No username or password is necessary.

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    September 18, 2009

  • You Say You Want a Revolution...

    By Eric Alterman

    I've got a new Think Again called "The Conspiracy Nuts Take Over," which compares media coverage of "truthers" vs. "birthers" and you can find it here. (Mickey is a former student of mine at Brooklyn College).

    That's all I did this week, but do take a look at Victor Navasky's letter (in and about TNR) here together with the two pathetic responses it generated, and muse for a moment, on the relative moral merits of each publication as represented by Mr. Peretz and The Nation's publisher emeritus.

    Now here's a post by Reed Richardson, a former military officer who was once my student at Columbia and my intern at The Nation.

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    September 17, 2009

  • Bad Brown Acid

    By Eric Alterman

    I've got a new "Think Again" column, called "Why Can't the Media Explain Our Woes? (and Why Other Countries Don't have Them...). It's a comparison of healthcare systems in the United States and Europe and a musing on why our media fail to communicate these essential differences. And you can find it here.

    My new Nation column is called "Harvard Heal Thyself (Why Journalism Matters)." It's about the Times excellent reporting of the Harvard Medical School scandal, and it's here.

    On The Daily Beast this week, I did an interview with the great E.L. Doctorow about his new novel, Homer and Langley here and a discussion of the stakes of Obama's speech, here.

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    September 10, 2009

  • Slacker Friday

    By Eric Alterman

    Wrapup: I've got a new Think Again column called "Ted Kennedy, in Substance" which deals with the personalistic, rather than substantive coverage of the senator's life and career, as well as some of those that did. That's here.

    Also, I've got a new Moment column called "Hiding Truths from the Goyim--and Ourselves," here. I see they start sorta similarly...

    Now here's the man:

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    September 4, 2009

Eric Alterman Eric Alterman

Well-chosen words on music, movies and politics, with the occasional special guest.

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Blogs

» Act Now!

Coal Country | "This is a civil war."
Peter Rothberg
40 Comments

» The Notion

A Blow to Privatization in Israel (and Perhaps Beyond) | A potentially historic ruling on prison privatization, in Israel.
Eyal Press
19 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Can China Help on Afghanistan? | Beijing wants a broader role in the Middle East and South Asia. Will Obama bring them in?
Robert Dreyfuss
41 Comments

» Editor's Cut

Around the Nation | The week we went Rouge. Plus, Moyers on Afghanistan.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
83 Comments

» The Beat

Health Care Bill Advances, as Harry Reid Trumps Sarah Palin | The death panelist-in-chief rallied her followers to "KILL THE BILL." But 60 senators decided to follow the real leader.
John Nichols
105 Comments

» Altercation

Slacker Friday | The "Second Amendment" sale; the raving paranoids of the right.
Eric Alterman