Eric Alterman | The Nation

Just to recap: My new Think Again column is Tax Cuts: The Faith and the Facts.

My Nation column is Rupert Murdoch and the 'Jewish Owned Press.'

Gift-Giving, Part III

My Think Again column is called “Why Were Pundits All In on ‘All In’?” and it’s here. My Nation column is called “Don’t Stop Believin’. It’s about the MSM coverage of the election and it’s here.

Alter-reviews: The Altercation Gift-giving guide, part I.

There’s a lot of great stuff this season, so I’m getting started early. City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, 3-volumes I’m surprised not to have read more of this ambitious three-volume history of New York Jews. Its editorial pedigree is appropriate—not many would argue with the choice of Deborah Dash More as the series editor--and the historians recruited for each volumes strike one as appropriate to each topic. I attended a session of the American Jewish Historical Society conference last Spring in which each explained their ambitions and methods and have been looking forward to sitting down and spending some time with it ever since. (And I will, I swear, but not until it’s too late to recommend it in time for the holidays.) I even tried to design one of my courses around it—but that idea got the kibosh above my paygrade.

Greetings Altercators, Reed here. Eric’s off this week, but here’s his latest Nation column: “The Cuban Missile Crisis: Thirteen Days…and Fifty Years,” which revisits some of the common myths of the incident that readers of his book “When Presidents Lie” will no doubt recognize.

As for me, the past few days in New Jersey weren’t without some drama as well, but I was definitely one of the lucky ones. Many more of us in the Garden State, where following the devastation from Sandy we might temporarily rename ourselves the Generator, Sump Pump and Chainsaw State, didn’t fare so well. Fortunately, we now have a president that actually gives a damn about things like disaster recovery and a governor whose facility for wielding pomposity and self-righteousness like a cudgel might finally have found a worthwhile cause to fight for. And not for nothing, but if the latter’s effusive praise of the former effectively acts as a political shiv to Mitt Romney’s plans after next Tuesday, well then I guess the old saying about every cloud having a silver lining really is true. To be sure, other less-than-pure theories abound about the reasons behind Christie’s very sudden appreciation for Obama’s competence. But in terms of ridiculously wild speculation, I submit that none will surpass The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, who believes that, this being Jersey, maybe subconsciously, this all comes back to Bruce.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Election

My new Think Again column is called “Considering CNN’s Choice to Hire Piers Morgan.”

My new Nation column is “All the (Political) World's a Stage.”

I was not in Ohio this week, but I do live in the greatest city in the world where we don’t even worry about people voting for Mitt Romney—thank you very much—and in my city, you can leave a class on the theology and philosophy of Abraham Joshua Heschel, taught by my friend Rabbi Shai Held, a founder of Mechon Hadar, watch some debating in a bar, then drop by the Hammerstein Ballroom, where, in celebration of the musical career of Steve Van Zandt receiving the "Big Man of the Year" Award from littlekidsrock.org, you can see Darlene Love, singing "Among the Believers,” Tom Morello, doing an incredible “Sun City,” Elvis Costello's singing "This Time Baby's Gone For Good," Gary U.S. Bonds, “Standing in the Line of Fire,” Southside Johnny singing “She's Got Me Where She Wants Me,” Dion and Ruben Blades doing “Bitter Fruit,” and, oh yeah, Bruce and Steve doing “Until the Good is Gone,” Bruce, Steve and Southside doing an incredibly moving (if you’re me, anyway,) “It's Been a Long Time” and everybody together doing “I Don’t Want to Go Home.” Can you even imagine?