Posted by
Matty on Monday, May 19, 2008 2:55:17 PM
There is a very big bully on the net who writes for Media Matters. They call him Eric Alterman. It's time someone took him on.
To start, he is a horrible professor at Brooklyn College. I'm not saying that to be mean; it's the truth. If you swing over
here you will see exactly what I mean. Here's a sample:
"This professor was the worst I have ever encountered in my academic
life. He should move to China, North Korea or Cuba where is [sic] brand of
facist [sic] socialism is thriving. He is not fit to breath [sic] the same air as
free people." (He apparently really is a bad English professor; observe the amount of "sic's" in there!)
"Check out his appearances in the PBS documentary on Nader -- a stunning display of crooked and dishonest piggery."
"The guy is a joke. His arch-liberal tenancies and massive ego are a detriment to the entire school.
Last week he said in class that this country had lost the war in Iraq.
Nice thing to say in front of a class that doesn't know where it stands politically and believe [sic] whatever the professor says.
Why he has a job as an educator is beyond me."
Wow! And those are just from the first page. It's tremendously interesting reading.
But let's delve deeper. The guy's written a few books, and I'm sure they deserve to be evaluated on substance. Let's look at
one.
Huh. Wait a minute. In the About the Book section we learn that "[t]he fact that conservatives howl so much louder
and more effectively than liberals is one significant reason
that big media is always on its guard for 'liberal'
bias but gives conservative bias a free pass." Oh! I think I get it. That's why the critical praise for the book comes from the "big media" newspapers those idiot conservatives "howl" about for their liberal leanings. It's almost like those who are liberal would jump at the chance to fall in line with Alterman's conclusion. No! Say it isn't so! It is:
"'What
Liberal Media' is bold, counterintuitive and cathartic."
--The New York Times Book Review
"A polemic is nothing without passion
, and Alterman's argumentative vigor is engaging [and]... the
meticulous care with which his arguments are sourced and footnoted
is in commendable contrast to the efforts of some of his more
fire-breathing opponents." --The New Yorker
“A well-documented,
even-tempered and witty answer, I might say antidote, to such
toxic recent bestsellers as Bernard Goldberg's 'Bias.'" --The Los Angeles Times
I apologize for the quote-heavy entry, but these are all from the front page of his website. Bernard Goldberg is "toxic," by the way. Damn conservative media.
But there's more. How about this little
gem?
There is a lot to address about this one, including the fact that you should, in fact, judge a book by its cover. This cover is full of drawings of "liberals" that look like they were done by a five year-old.
Liberals do indeed enjoy the revision of history; I suspect that's why so many of them want to teach it. Just because liberals fancy themselves the party of African Americans doesn't mean that Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican President, was a liberal. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s message was anything but Leftist. A colorblind society. When was the last time you heard a Democrat or that conservative media not being obsessed with race? Some of the founders are on the cover, too. The people conservatives idealize most by stringently following their message were apparently liberals. I understand the argument, but again, just because you stray from the mainstream doesn't mean you are a liberal. If the liberals were in control and we conservatives strayed from their message, that doesn't mean we would be the new liberals. It just means we would be smart. Oh, Jesus is tucked away on the side of the cover, too. I just thought you should know.
In the end I can only conclude that these people are bipolar. This is why they could excoriate the Right as racists and point out that the founders had slaves as an ad hominem argument against their conservative message, and then proudly display pictures of them as liberals on the covers of their books. It's why FDR would be the most prominent person on the cover when he ordered the internment of Japanese Americans (just to remind those who are obsessed with race). It's also why they are insane.