{"id":1090,"date":"2004-06-28T02:46:00","date_gmt":"2004-06-28T02:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=1090"},"modified":"2018-08-13T14:24:56","modified_gmt":"2018-08-13T19:24:56","slug":"1090","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/06\/28\/1090\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: <i>What Liberal Media<\/i> by Eric Alterman (2003):  <font color=\"red\">Day One<\/font><\/b>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Well, my friends, this book review represents a departure from those which have come before it.  I ordered a copy of Eric Alterman&#8217;s <i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0465001777\/ref=as_li_ss_tl?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;linkCode=ll1&#038;tag=stlbrianj-20&#038;linkId=2e1c42de497e18f573408c9d90587a9d\" target=\"_new\">What Liberal Media?  The Truth about <\/i>Bias<i> and the News<\/a><\/i> in paperback and have decided to test the new paint job in our bedroom by reading a flingable book in it.  This book fits that bill already.  So, in lieu of sticking a number of Post-It Notes &#8482; in it and then writing a couple of paragraphs when the heat of the reading is cool, I thought I might let you in on my thought processes as I read the book.<\/p>\n<p>So, <font color=\"red\">day one<\/font>:<\/p>\n<p>Objections:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Page <i>xi<\/i><\/b>, in the Preface and Acknowledgements, for crying out loud.  Alterman acknowledges missing the works of Robert Caro as he (Alterman) pursues an advanced degree in history&#8211;so he (Alterman) <i>listens to the complete works of Caro on tape<\/i>.  Cheez, Louise, Alterman, that&#8217;s not scholarship, that&#8217;s killing time.  When you listen to books on tape, they flow past you in a stream of someone else&#8217;s conscious narration, and once the words are past, they&#8217;re gone; you&#8217;re at the whim of the break in the tracks if you want to listen to a section over again, which is why I rarely do.\n<p>Mostly I listen to books on tape to kill time on long drives to Milwaukee and back, or I used to do them when I had an hour long commute from work (or an hour and a half commute from work to <a href=\"http:\/\/angelweave.mu.nu\" target=\"_new\">my sweetie&#8217;s home<\/a>, a quarter of the way across the state.  If you&#8217;re listening to books for twenty minutes at a crack, you&#8217;re not paying them much attention.  Cripes, I would not dare try to impress upon my mind the serious works of Tacitus or Gibbons through books on tape; I&#8217;d require the opportunity to re-read <i>sentences<\/i> until I grasped their very meaning.  Alterman admits he&#8211;in pursuit of a college degree, for crying out loud (or swearing out loud in my case)&#8211;did less.  It&#8217;s less respect to Caro on Alterman&#8217;s part than I am paying to Alterman, but it&#8217;s too late for me to borrow the abridged audio version of Alterman&#8217;s work, so I am stuck with my dollar&#8217;s worth (plus Quality Paperback Club&#8217;s Postage and Handling) of print.  Heaven help me, and you, gentle reader.<\/p>\n<p>Fortunately for the both of us, I skimmed the rest of the acknowledgements.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li><b>pp1-2<\/b> in the Introduction, a lot of name dropping, but I disagree.  Whereas Bernard Goldberg and Ann Coulter quote people to indicate bias and slander, Alterman quotes people who indicate there is not bias nor slander.  Goldberg and Coulter&#8217;s quotes represent primary sources, that is, indications that illustrate their points; when Alterman quotes sources who say there is no bias, it&#8217;s the equivalent of hearsay, since he&#8217;s not actually illustrating non-bias, but rather people saying there is not bias.\n<li><b>p2<\/b> in the Introduction, Alterman quotes Pat Buchanan, for crying out loud, as though he (Buchanan) were a member of mainstream-right thought.  Who are you kidding?\n<li><b>p3<\/b> in the Introduction, Alterman refers to Ann Coulter as a blonde bombshell pundette.  Ad homenim as Alterman points out that Coulter is an attractive (hem) woman, and hence should be judged lesser than, say, a homely man such as Alterman.\n<li><b>p3 in the Introduction <font color=\"red\">FIRST TOSSING POINT<\/font><\/b> this comes a couple lines later:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>In recent times, the right has ginned up its &#8220;liberal media&#8221; propoganda machine.  Books by both Ann Coulter, a blond bombshell pundette, and Bernard Goldberg, former CBS News producer, have topped the best-seller lists, stringing together such a series of charges that, well, it&#8217;s amazing neither one <b>sought to accuse &#8220;liberals&#8221; of using the blood of conservative children for extra flavor in their soy-milk decaf lattes.<\/b> [Emphasis mine.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Got that?  Alterman is saying that Coulter and Goldberg might as well have committed &#8220;blood libel.&#8221;  The tradition to which &#8220;Mister&#8221; Alterman alludes says Jews use the blood of Gentile\/Palestinian children in Zionist rituals of some sort or another.  It&#8217;s often repeated these days in the Arab media to support the tradition of strapping explosives to Believers, women, and children to blow up Israeli civilians whose crime is stopping at a market or drinking coffee in a particular cafe.  <b>Damn you, Eric Alterman.<\/b>  I curse you only to the fate you deserve, whatever form it might take.<\/p>\n<p>I would like to take a moment to apologize to Ajax and Tristan, the felines scared when I flung this book from my hands (towards the door, not the labouriously-painted walls) and to my beautiful wife, whom I upset with my foaming-mouth invective for Eric Alterman.  You all deserve a better refuge when trying to sleep.  I shall try to read this book alone, with a schnucking hammer with which to beat it, in the future for your peace of mind.<\/ul>\n<p><font color =\"red\">Day:<\/font> 1<br \/>\n<font color =\"red\">Pages read:<\/font> 6.5<br \/>\n<font color =\"red\">Chapters:<\/font> Prefaces and Acknowledgements, Introduction (part of)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well, my friends, this book review represents a departure from those which have come before it. I ordered a copy of Eric Alterman&#8217;s What Liberal Media? The Truth about Bias and the News in paperback and have decided to test the new paint job in our bedroom by reading a flingable book in it. This [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1090"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23148,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1090\/revisions\/23148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}