Eric Alterman Reads to Liberals @ Town Hall Tonight

Eric Alterman is the sort of liberal we like to refer to as a "Democrat," as in, capitol "D" Democratic Party stalwart. As such, this Nation columnist and Media Matters blogger was an arch-partisan prototype for those crazy kids at DailyKos, back in the days when armchair politicos were relegated to penning rants to the editor of their local newspaper.

In advance of his appearance tonight at Town Hall to promote his new book, Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, we spoke to Mr. Alterman on the phone.

"These people are given a seat at the table," Alterman told us from New York, "they're treated like they're respectable journalists." We were discussing the sense in responding to the likes of Sean Hannity, who features prominently as one of the bogeymen in Alterman's book. In our brief but wide-ranging talk, Alterman traipsed through the territory he's so familiar with--the American media. Lamenting the death of print journalism, Alterman said something we've (as members of blogosphere) often thought: "I don't know what we're going to do without the reporting," he told us. "So much of what I do relies on reporters' work, I don't know where we're going to get that."

While Alterman offered us his opinion of the Democratic presidential primary ("Obama has already won this"), we're sure his talk tonight will turn to the increasingly nasty slugfest between Obama and Hillary (or maybe their supporters is a better way to put it).

Back on March 17, we went so far as to ask why he'd bother to write a book that seeks to make liberals feel okay about being liberal when it was the Democrats who had all the momentum and McCain's only concrete policy position was unquestioning support for Bush's policy in Iraq. What a difference a couple weeks makes! As Hillary seems ready to bring down the party with her flailing campaign and a Republican victory seems increasingly less an impossibility, Alterman's brand of "Screw progressive, I'm a liberal damn it!" rhetoric seems all the more necessary.

7:30pm // Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave // $5 at the door

Photo by Deborah Copaken Kogan.