Eric Alterman quotes

Fox News is nothing if not impressive. No matter how harsh the criticism it endures, the network somehow always manages to prove itself even worse than we had previously imagined. (Eric Alterman)
As a parent and a citizen, I'll take a Bill Gates (or Warren Buffett) over Steve Jobs every time. If we must have billionaires, better they should ignore Jobs's example and instead embrace the morality and wisdom of the great industrialist-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. View quote
Eric Alterman
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. View quote
Eric Alterman
But particularly when the media profess to strive toward objectivity, gatekeepers play a crucial role in helping people navigate the news to make educated political decisions. View quote
Eric Alterman
Philosophers and theologians have argued for centuries over the morality of targeted assassinations - a technique that the Israelis use with some frequency - without ever reaching anything approaching consensus. View quote
Eric Alterman
The ability of the 1 percent to buy politicians and regulators is nothing new in American politics - just as inequality has been a permanent part of our economic system. This is true of virtually all political and economic systems. View quote
Eric Alterman
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. View quote
Eric Alterman
I am deeply devoted to the 27,000 songs I can take anywhere on my iPod Classic as well as the exquisitely engineered MacBook Air on which I typed this column. View quote
Eric Alterman
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. View quote
Eric Alterman
Over one in five American children is living in poverty, and the number is rising. View quote
Eric Alterman
Trends in circulation and advertising - the rise of the Internet, which has made the daily newspaper look slow and unresponsive; the advent of Craigslist, which is wiping out classified advertising-have created a palpable sense of doom. (Eric Alterman)
Much of what Tea Party candidates claimed about the world and the global economy during the 2010 elections would have earned their adherents a well-deserved F in any freshman economics (or earth science) class. View quote
Eric Alterman
Mistakes, after all, are endemic to foreign and military policy given the unpredictability of events and the difficulty of securing reliable information in a place like Iraq. View quote
Eric Alterman
Warren Buffett pays taxes on a smaller percentage of his billions in income than his cleaning lady. View quote
Eric Alterman
Stylistically speaking, Barack Obama could hardly be further from Jimmy Carter if he really had been born in Kenya. View quote
Eric Alterman
More and more, Democrats are starting to worry they that they have a more um, colorful version of Jimmy Carter on their hands. Obama acts cool as a proverbial cucumber but that awful '70s show seems frightfully close to a rerun. View quote
Eric Alterman
We live in a media world simultaneously obsessed with technology and personality. View quote
Eric Alterman
While history never repeats itself, political patterns do. View quote
Eric Alterman
Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirited Democrats and increasingly radicalized Republicans. View quote
Eric Alterman
The Economist is undoubtedly the smartest weekly newsmagazine in the English language. I always look forward to its quirky year-end double issue. View quote
Eric Alterman
For the past eight years, the right has been better at working the refs. Now the left is learning how to play the game. (Eric Alterman)
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. View quote
Eric Alterman
One of the many, many salutary aspects of Barack Obama's impending presidential nomination is the sea change his victory marks in the battle for the mind-set of the American foreign policy establishment. View quote
Eric Alterman
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. View quote
Eric Alterman
As with almost every significant aspect of the Bush presidency, its handling of 9/11 was a catastrophe from start to finish. View quote
Eric Alterman