Tag: Eric Alterman

Eric Alterman’s Rationalization of Anti-Semitism

Eric Atlerman is taking some heat over comments he made regarding
attacks against Jews in France. Alterman complains,

I got a ton of mail yesterday, some of it abusive,
complaining about my comments on attacks against French Jews.
Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the victims”
because I stated that the attacks, undertaken virtually exclusively
by young immigrant Arabs, were inspired by the Israeli occupation of
Palestine and could be ameliorated by ending that occupation. Well,
I didn’t “blame” anyone. I merely explained what I understand to be
the sources of Arab anger.

Give me a break. Of course Alterman was blaming the victim. Can you
imagine him seriously writing something like,

Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the
victims” because I stated that the attacks against abortion
providers, undertaken virtually exclusively by pro-lifers, were
inspired by the large numbers of abortions and could be ameliorated
by overturning Roe v. Wade. Well, I didn’t “blame” anyone. I merely
explained what I understand to be the sources of Eric Rudolph’s
anger.

or maybe,

Roughly half of the e-mails accused me of “blaming the
victims” because I stated that the attacks against African
Americans, undertaken virtually exclusively by young white males,
were inspired by affirmative action and could be ameliorated by
overturning affirmative action policies. Well, I didn’t “blame”
anyone. I merely explained what I understand to be the sources of
racist skinhead anger.

Okay, maybe Alterman would be willing to rationalize that these are
anything other than blaming the victim, but would anyone take him
seriously? No, of course not.

The Importance of Blogs

Alex Beam of the Boston Globe doesn’t think weblogs are very important. Just a bunch of losers talking amongst themselves.

I happen to think weblogs are very important and have a nice example of their importance in holding the mainstream media’s feet to the fire about accuracy, or lack thereof.

A few days ago, The Nation‘s idiot-in-chief, Eric Alterman, wrote an article for MSNBC, which is essentially a long list of people he thinks are too pro-Israeli. I skimmed the article but didn’t think much of it.

Then, Glenn Reynolds posted a link to another weblog pointing out that my friend Cathy Young was listed as being one of the reflexively pro-Israeli columnists.

So, I fired off an e-mail to Young asking her if she knew that Alterman had her on his little blacklist. She hadn’t heard of the article, but was none too pleased given that she has never written a single column about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She sent an e-mail asking for a retraction, though as of this morning the article still lists her as reflexively pro-Israeli.

That’s almost instant fact-checking. Without the weblog community, Alterman’s error would have taken a lot long to make the rounds.

The bottom line — as long as mainstream media are going to rely on people as sloppy as Alterman, there will be a need for webloggers to call them on their errors.