What an idiot. I could easily rummage around medical statistics to come up with hundreds of relatively little known diseases that have death tolls of 12,000+ over the last decade in a nation of 285 million, and yet I'm quite certain that Alterman has never spoken of these diseases. Therefore it's quite safe to assume that since Alterman has neither spoken nor written of them he secretly believes those people deserved to die, probably because they were conservative (by Alterman's lights, 90% of the nation is conservative). Seems reasonable, right? Right?
For a guy with a PhD he seems terminally addicted to logical fallacies.
Alterman thinks AIDS is the only disease on the planet because, well, it's associated with homosexuality and therefore deserves a special place in the constellation of ailments. Therefore Reagan should have been discussing it at least twice daily during the 1980s. To Alterman the mere fact that he didn't give a specially recognized position in the firmanent means he was a bigot. Right? Right?
Alterman is a weenie cum laude. He has absolutely no idea that his politics are vintage 1980s and early 1990s. Yawn.
I find Eric Alterman's editorial silence during the murder of 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler to be very, very troubling.
Silence can sometimes speak more loudly than words.