Eric Alterman

'I Can't Keep My Mind on the Show'

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on February 21, 2013 - 3:28 PM ET

My Think Again column is called "The Mainstream Media Is Missing the Point." It attempts to contrast the obsession with Tiger and Barack's golf game, with say, the lack of attention shown to the conservative billionaire/corporate purchase of the think tank world to spout the nonsense that keeps them rolling in dough. It's here.

And it's taken me thirty-seven years to build a column around my favorite Bruce song, but here we finally go. It's called "They've Got the Fever..." and it's here. (It's a long story, but I do feel responsible for getting Bruce to include it on "18 Tracks," ["The Promise," too, as it happens] though the version on my funeral playlist is the one from Winterland in 1978.)

Now here's Reed:

Hamas? What Hamas?

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on February 14, 2013 - 6:11 PM ET

My new “Think Again” column is called “The Mainstream Media Is Gobbling Up Conservative Crazies” and it’s here.

And I did a short piece for Columbia Journalism Review on Arthur Krock and Joe Kennedy. It’s called “The journalist and the politician.”

Among the deeply annoying things the story about that insanely large cash prize won by Leon Wieseltier is that I was asked to audition for the same Sopranos role. Neither of us got it—they used one of their own writers—but Leon got that great cameo, instead (at which, by the way, he sucked, sorry to say. Two lines and they were weak as hell). I’m pro-Leon, however, as a writer, which is unusual among people I know who don’t also write for him (or sign their names to his prose). (Oh and, stay classy, Marty.)

Altercation Extra: This is Forbes Journalism? My Complete E-mail Correspondence with Mr. Richard Behar of Forbes Magazine

Eric Alterman on February 8, 2013 - 2:19 PM ET

This morning I received an e-mail from a Mr. Richard Behar, who says he is a contributing editor to Forbes and who, like apparently hundreds of people (most of whom were anti-Zionist but be that as it may), objected to something he read in the piece published on the Open Zion website yesterday, "Brooklyn College And The BDS Debate."

As you can see from the below, I tried to answer his question politely and get rid of him, repeatedly, until he informed me (after publishing my e-mails without even asking permission) that he planned to write a column about them. Since I have nothing to hide in this respect, but do not believe that Richard can be trusted to treat the exchange fairly and honestly—and moreover, he has already demonstrated that he does not believe in the privacy e-mail communication—I thought I'd put up the entire exchange here, so that (in the unlikely event that) he really does waste even more time writing about me, interested parties—again, I imagine that the existence of such a person might be a stretch—can judge for him or herself. Eric Alterman.

Dear Eric,

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What Fox News Lost in the 2012 Election

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on February 7, 2013 - 3:16 PM ET

My Think Again column: “Pity the Poor Folks at Fox News.” It’s here.

My Nation column: “The Missing Link in Obama's Liberalism.” It’s here.

And a special extra: “Brooklyn College and The BDS Debate” done for OpenZion.com and that’s here.

A Lonely Spot in a Lonely War

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on January 31, 2013 - 5:38 PM ET

My new Think Again column is called “It’s Not Really ‘Krugman vs. the World’” and it’s rather critical of Joe Scarborough and his fellow Villagers, here.

I also thought I’d recommend Thomas Mallon on Richard Nixon in The New Yorker.

And in the “Well Said” department, there this:

Guns vs. Butter

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on January 24, 2013 - 4:10 PM ET

My new Think Again column is a sad lament for lack Republican voice in the media and a tribute to Joel Kotkin’s brilliant analysis of that terrible problem. It’s called “The ‘Virtually Voiceless’” and it’s here.

In my Nation column, I offer my dissent in the MSM celebration of Andrew Sullivan. That’s here.

Alter-reviews: Jazz at Lincoln Center “Birth of the Cool” celebration, Miles Davis Bootleg release, Volume II, Nixon in China….

Inside the Grand Bargain Basement

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on January 17, 2013 - 5:49 PM ET

My new “Think Again” column is called “Is Contemporary Conservatism Just ‘Payola’?” and it’s here. (Hint: it’s yes….)

A blast from the past: Journalists traveling on National Review cruises and writing articles about the funny people they encounter there have appeared in the past month in New York magazine and a couple of years ago in The New Republic. I did one in 1997, and since David Foster Wallace's famous cruise piece turned out to be largely fictional (according to Jonathan Franzen) I nominate it as the funniest (true) cruise piece, (though others may differ, as they so often do...). It’s called “Heart of Whiteness”—as we went to Alaska—and you can read it here.

Alter-reviews

Putting Our Money Where Our Muzzles Are

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on January 10, 2013 - 7:24 PM ET

My new Think Again column is called "More Tea Party Fiction," and it relates to the inability of those people, now down to just 8 percent of the country, to think straight about anything, except how to screw up Congress. Anyway it's here.

The Nation column, "Hooray for Hagel" is here and perhaps some find it ironic (to put it kindly) that Phyllis Benniss accused me of flacking for AIPAC in last week's magazine. Perhaps one day the magazine will carry reports on Israel/Palestine that are appropriately critical of both sides, instead of blaming Israel for absolutely everything and refusing to acknowledge, much less address, Hamas's horrible human rights record.

Alter-reviews

Comforting the Comfortable, Afflicting the Afflicted

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on January 4, 2013 - 11:56 AM ET

My Think Again column is about Politico’s choice of the top ten media stories of 2012. I find Politico to be quite silly for any number of reasons, but here is just one of them.

My Nation column is called “Putting Stories Into the World.” It’s about about Nathan Englander, Nora Ephron, and the Night of the Murdered Jewish Poets, under Stalin, in 1952 and it’s here.

I also wrote a letter to the editor of The Nation, as I sometimes feel compelled to do, even though it is a blockhead move. It’s behind a paywall and so you can’t read Phyllis Bennis’s reply, but I did, and it’s my considered opinion that you’d be doing both Phyllis and yourselves a mitzvah by skipping it. Anyway, here’s my letter:

Guns and Roses

Eric Alterman and Reed Richardson on December 21, 2012 - 1:56 PM ET

My Think Again column is called “The Power of Unreality.” It was inspired by the NRA’s successful attempt to rewrite the Second Amendment and it’s here.

In memory of Robert Bork, from Why We're Liberals (2008):

1) Nowhere was the rejection of the liberal elite clearer than in the right’s reaction to the joint presidency of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Right wing Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork compared the decade of their rule to a “mini-French Revolution.”