Anyone remember the old Stray Cats video for "Rock This Town"? Where they had Brian Setzer threatening a real smug, nebbishy looking guy seated in the club that the band was performing at? The lyric was something like "A real square cat from 1974"?

That pretty much sums up Eric Alterman. If only Brian Setzer would shame him in a video, too.

Ana and Eric playing xylophone in a boneyard.

Maybe this is a good time for someone to dig out that letter that Larry David's wife sent to The Atlantic describing Alterman's not-particularly-charming moral superiority? "My children go to public school!" was the highlight, as I recall.

I tend to side with Alterman in terms of the substance of this debate--Time really has blown it by giving a forum to either wingnuts or reflexive lib-bashers like Joe Klein. Alterman is a smart guy. That said, he is also insufferably arrogant, narcissistically thin-skinned, and a tiresome name-dropper. (My friend Larry David, my friend Roseanne Cash, blah blah blah blah...) On the other had, Ana Marie Cox, in addition to having a showstopping rack, is capable of surprising us. No contest.

You lost me at "Julia Allison having sex with Henry Kissinger [urp]," but basically putting Eric Alterman in his place is always a good idea, no matter how public, so kudos. Yes Eric, if only everyone would just listen to you. Next time: more punching.

She's so boring

you know how sometimes you just kinda hate someone, and you can't explain it rationally, but just, like, their very being is enough to just make you resentful of the general unpopularity of abortions, and you hear from friends of the party in question that s/he is actually "really cool, no, seriously" or s/he shares your preference in dog breeds, so they can't be all bad, but still still still you can't keep the bile from rising upon mention of this person's name? So even though you've never met and are never likely to do so, the bits and bites of the individual's essential character are so off-putting that you dismiss their worthiness as a human entirely?
Ana Marie Cox is one such person for me. God knows I can't explain or defend it, but I just need to punch her in the neck.

Ah, the old, "tell me what my job is," outside parry. A valid riposte might have included references to prostitution and the like, but this being the White House Correspondents dinner...

Yeah, Democrats lost all those elections because of Eric Alterman and his bretheren. Time magazine had nothing to do with it.

Sounds like AMC should have brought a thicker skin to work.

@smartyr: It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools.

@PikachuMcHeidegger

No, my point is that Time magazine has been supporting Bush and the Republicans all along.

(Compare the Time cover when the Republicans took control of Congress: painting of stampeding elephants with "Here comes the GOP" headline; Gingrich made Man of the Year; then look at their cover this year when exactly the same thing happened the other direction: Time's cover headline about the Democratic takeover was "The Triumph of Centrism" accompanied by a a cute yin/yang illustration and a story that held up McCain as an example of the "centrism" they were talking about.)

Time is no friend of the Democrats. And they are far more influential than Eric Alterman. Ana Marie Cox's gossipy, knowledge-free commentary doesn't help.

Not to get all boringly sincere.

Eric, if you're going to use a sock puppet, please don't use such a gaspingly self-congratulatory pseudonym as "smartyr."

Without commenting on the validity of their side in this particular argument -- a gossip website coming to the defense of Ana Marie Cox is like a conservative media personality coming to the defense of Rush Limbaugh. You're not exactly an objective voice, and that you'd pretend to be one doesn't exactly help Cox in this case.

I'm not Eric Alterman! I have my own delusions of grandeur, thank you very much.

I don't even like Alterman. But the "whiny liberals are the reason Democrats lose elections" line (even as a joke) is so stupid and wrong that I wanted to argue the other direction (especially since a featherbrain like Cox is the counter-example).

AMC is a POS.

Time props up Joe Kline as a "liberal" - need I say more?

C'mon here people... AMC was fun at Wonkette where she could highling ass-fucking and liquor but she's over her friggin' head masquerading as a journalist.

Go back to gossip and snark AMC and shut the fuck up.

Then they sneaked off to Cox's liar for a drunken angry bang...

@24-7: i'd hit it.

@smartyr: "Also, what game were the refs watching?"

Losers always whine about the officiating.

@PikachuMcHeidegger:

Okay, you win. We're all whiny losers. Me, Alterman, Harry Reid, etc. etc. Brilliantly argued! I especially like the way you used my own words against me.

(Great commenter-name, by the way.)

Hey AMC,

You showed us the power of snark to expose idiocy, vanity and dishonesty (as well as provide excuses to discuss the merits of politicians' body parts).

Can you forgive us if the whole Time thing pretty much feels like a sellout at this point?

We hoped your irreverence and ability to expose meaningless posturing would help the world focus on more important things than the secret spiritual lives of stem cells. Instead, you now add minimal value to a magazine that shamelessly panders to the Red States in pursuit of government handouts to AOLTW (in 2006, five covers on religious themes, one on stem cells, four fashion covers, and one (1!!!) on political corruption).

Seems to me that you're actually proving Alterman's thesis - that the process of "being accepted" as one of the "Beltway 500" is a process that takes the teeth (and passion for the truth) out of any journalist/commentator, and that once in, the members of the 500 will then do anything to avoid being cast out for not playing along.

Well, Ana, we haven't heard squat since you gave up your equity for a steady paycheck. Have you stopped noticing all the liars, hypocrites and cheats out there?

And Gawker, snarking about Altermans' geekishness only proves his point. Would you really rather be cool than on the right side of the argument? Probably so.....'nuff said.

Whatever. Saw her in person once. Hot.

Talk about an Altercation! Zing!

@smartyr: Thank you.

As for Alterman et al., the media are the tools of the modern politician. Hence my earlier comment.

Team AMC!

I met Eric Alterman once at some crappy publishing function. "If you lost fifteen pounds you might be hot," he said by way of introduction.

I was smitten.

I really wish you people would stop using her initials, it makes it sound like Alterman is having a spat with a basic-cable channel.

What is it with Time Magazine pundits and me at parties? It's getting so I can't go out at all anymore. Believe me I don't look for trouble--at least in person. I skipped not only the White House Correspondents' dinner but also the Vanity Fair party at Hitchens' and the Bloomberg party.

Time and The Nation both suck. Time is a magazine for stupid assholes, and The Nation is just fucking boring.

While Anna Marie Cox has significantly more to do at TIME than Katie Couric does at CBSNews, they were both hired for essentially the same reason.

Just read Alterman's side of the story at the Huffington Post. As with his blow-by-blow on his Joe Klein encounter, I'm not sure why he makes a point of mentioning his strenuous efforts to avoid the people he writes about -- "I had a wonderful time purposely avoiding (Chris) Matthews, Howie Kurtz, Tim Russert and anyone else whose work I could remember criticizing in the past." Yes, well. God forbid you ever... you know... *talk* to the people whose work you critique for a living. Might actually result in a dialogue or something.

I was getting ready to jump in on this thread, but I'm going to need a ruling or some clarification on AMC's rack before I form an opinion. I'll go with the consensus that Alterman's a tool, but I don't want to support AMC unless she's C cup or better. It's possible that both are losers with nothing interesting to say.

@Fishman: Nice rack -- emminently fuckable...

Still a dipshit though...

These two ego-puppies deserve each other.

@gacracker: Nice work cracker, providing valuable information like that is a public service.

Could you please give the Democratic Party its due credit? Two of the last seven elections. Do you really dismiss the 2000 election manipulations involving Florida and the Supreme Court? And can I remind you that two people are jailed in Ohio for election tampering in 2004? Do you recall how important Ohio was in the last race? Yes, those Republicans are so popular with the people! and honest too.

So it turns The Observer actually recorded this conversation:

http://themediamob.observer.com/2007/anatomy-washington-ca...

Now we can compare the Alterman "quote" in the post above to the actual quote as transcribed for real.

Gawker version: "As my good friend [John] Huey said to me at Jim [Kelly]'s party for Walter [Isaacson]...."

Actual quote: "The point I made to John Huey... at Jim's party for Walter..."

It's interesting to note how the "good friend" piece is so central to the posts indictment of Alterman for name dropping.

Change or exaggerate language a bit and you can redefine the whole context of someones words. Ahhh, second hand bashing.

I dunno. I just read the Observer's transcript, and Gawker seems to have captured the conversation pretty well. Yeah, the quotes are a little off, but the "spiral of name-dropping" characterization's spot-on -- especially given that, while Alterman doesn't do the "friend" thing in that particular sentence, he does so throughout the conversation -- "I am very critical of my friend Rick Stengel. And as I was of my friend Jim Kelly... I'm friendly with Rick... I want to stay friends with Rick." That's a lot of "my friend"-ifying.

@smartyr: Well, it's not like Time could have written anything about, um, Abu Ghraib or the Plame scandal. That would have required asking uncomfortable questions of people they really, really like.

Yesterday, Gawker reported on what it called a “catfight” between Nation columnist Eric Alterman and Time.com’s Washington editor, Ana Marie Cox, setting the scene at television host John McLaughlin’s brunch the day after the White House Correspondents’ dinner.