PEEVED TV PUNDIT FIRES BACK
FRESH from a bizarre on-air showdown with CNBC talk-show host Dennis Miller, left-wing MSNBC pundit Eric Alterman has accused The New York Observer of doing a second "hatchet job" on him.
The lathered-up lefty is apoplectic over a piece in the latest Observer that details how Miller humiliated Alterman when he went on Miller's show to critique the war in Iraq. Miller repeatedly mocked Alterman, pretended to fall asleep out of boredom, and snapped, "Oh, just finish the [bleeping] segment." Miller later called Alterman to apologize for being "rude."
But Alterman blew a gasket after Observer TV writer Joe Hagan noted, "Mr. Alterman can be as smug and arrogant as Mr. Miller," and that Alterman "ruthlessly flogged the segment on his blog."
The thin-skinned scribe, who claims that Observer writer George Gurley skewered him in a "bitchy hatchet job" last year, responded by charging that the snarky salmon-colored weekly has it out for him.
"OK, I'm an idiot. For the second time in a year, I've made the mistake of talking to a New York Observer 'reporter,' " Alterman seethed in a letter to the Observer posted on his MSNBC Web log, in which he called Gurley "Ann Coulter's handmaiden."
"Now someone named Joe Hagen [sic] tells the story of my appearance on Dennis Miller show hardly less smarmily and dishonestly. If the few paragraphs I wrote about the Miller episode [on the Web log] . . . can fairly be considered 'ruthlessly flogging' it, then Joe Hagen is A.J. Liebling, and the New York Observer is Harold Ross's New Yorker.
"As Mr. Hagen - whom I have never met - cannot help but note, Miller invited me on the show, ambushed me, and I responded with restraint . . . Hagen called me and I politely responded to his questions. And the result is this pathetic Page-Sixish crap."
When we tried to contact Alterman for comment, he e-mailed us back: "I don't have a lot to say. I enjoy PAGE SIX but I don't admire it. I imagine most people feel that way." Mee-ouch!
Observer Editor in Chief Peter Kaplan said he will publish Alterman's letter in next week's edition. "Our stories were accurate and, needless to say, I stand by them. Eric Alterman is a force to be reckoned with, and we're going to run his letter. We respect him a lot. We'll report on him as the important left-wing force that he is."