Eric Alterman
Eric Alterman
Eric Altermanis an American historian, journalist, author, media critic, blogger, and educator. He is currently CUNY Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College, the media columnist for The Nation and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, as well as the author of ten books. His weblog named Altercation was originally hosted by MSNBC.com from 2002 until 2006, moved to Media Matters for America until December 2008, and is now hosted by The Nation. He writes...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBlogger
Date of Birth14 January 1960
CountryUnited States of America
President Obama has lowered taxes more than he has raised them, and they are today lower than they were in President Reagan's time. But you don't hear conservatives crowing about that.
The myth of the liberal media empowers conservatives to control debate in the United States to the point where liberals cannot even hope for a fair shake anymore.
To own the dominant, or only, newspaper in a mid-sized American city was, for many decades, a kind of license to print money. In the Internet age, however, no one has figured out how to rescue the newspaper in the United States or abroad.
Apple is a wonderful company for its customers and investors. So, too, Pixar. (NeXT, not so much...) But Apple is also an engine of misery for its subcontracted Chinese workers.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the tactics of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it's easy to understand the inspiration for its anger as well as its impatience.
Americans get mad as hell with reasonable frequency but quickly return to their families and sitcoms.
Few progressives would take issue with the argument that, significant accomplishments notwithstanding, the Obama presidency has been a big disappointment.
So was it a political mistake for Obama to put so many eggs in the health-care-reform basket? Well, a negative decision from the Supreme Court will certainly make it appear so.
There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.
Half the U.S. population owns barely 2 percent of its wealth, putting the United States near Rwanda and Uganda and below such nations as pre-Arab Spring Tunisia and Egypt when measured by degrees of income inequality.
The White House and the media need one another in order to be successful in their jobs. The White House depends on the media to make its case to the public; the media need the White House to fill their airtime and news columns.
By the accusation of liberal bias ... the institutions that conservatives revere - the military, corporate America, organized religion, and the powerful conservative groups themselves - will be able to escape scrutiny and increase their influence.
The consequences of President Johnsons campaign of deliberate deception regarding Vietnam could hardly have been more catastrophic for the nation, the military, the president, his party, and the presidency itself.
If bloggers are to improve our public discourse - helping busy and usually uninformed people make sense of the world - it is necessary to use some sort of standard with which to judge their reliability. Perhaps the answer (strictly advisory) is a body of their peers. Perhaps not.