>After rereading all these posts my response is still the same as Max's:
>Huh?
>
>It may start out with just some bad writing by Alterman, which like an
>inkblot spreads through the whole. But I hardly understand the reference
>of a single pronoun in these posts. And one really can't give an e-mail
>post or a letter to WSJ or Nation the same energy one would give to
>Canto 37. "His argument" = "My argument"? Huh?
1. Alterman writes a column arguing that Sinclair's refusal to run the Nightline listing the names of the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq as evidence of the evils of media concentration.
2. I write a letter to The Nation pointing out that Sinclair is small and ABC/Disney very large, so in this case the small guy was doing the wrong thing and the big guy more or less the right thing.
3. Alterman doesn't respond, either to the letter or to the column.
4. Alterman later writes a letter to the WSJ claiming that the big guy, ABC/Disney, did the right thing, and the little guy, Sinclair, did the wrong thing - as if this was his own idea.
You write something that changes someone's mind and you hope for some credit. Perhaps that's egotistical or vain. But I still find it very fucking annoying, esp when it comes from an asshole like Alterman.
Doug