Eric Alterman’s boring arrest
We here at The Last Chance Democracy Café are big Eric Alterman fans. Myself, I’ve always thought that compared to some of his contemporaries at The Nation — Alexander Cockburn comes to mind — Alterman provides a good example of how it’s possible to be a literary liberal without necessarily having to come across as someone whose mind is floating somewhere near the orbit of the recently demoted ex-planet Pluto.
It’s an old obsession of mine: Contrary to conventional wisdom, I firmly believe that liberals have much more common sense than conservatives. And I see this quality on display in Alterman’s writings (most of the time), including his blog, which, by the way, I once made fun of.
So you can imagine my distress upon discovering that Eric has been arrested. But what distresses me even more is what a boring arrest it was. I mean, really, Eric, if you were going to go and get yourself arrested couldn’t you at least have done something interesting — or at the very least something illegal? You know, streak naked across the stage of one of the Republican presidential debates, throw a pie in Bill O’Reilly’s face or etch “Bush Sucks” into a table during a White House tour.
Instead, what do we get? An innocent misunderstanding? Yawn.
June 5th, 2007 at 1:08 am
boring? Wow - have you ever read a Kafka story? Actually, i immediately thought of The Trial…