Now I understand Doug's, "Everyone should have a nuke, "pov. See below. http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2002/000104.html Alterman apparently pissed off Cockburn at a panel about nuclear proliferation chaired by Alterman at a recent cruise sponsored by The Nation (don't you just love the image of Leftists debating the niceties of oppression on board a cruise ship?) According to Cockburn's account,
Trying to juice up the panel a bit, I remarked that there was one bit of proliferation that seemed to me indisputably okay, which was when the Soviet Union acquired the know-how to make A and H bombs, thus ending the US monopoly on Armageddon, and in my view making the world a safer place. (My position, very shocking to Jonathan Schell, is that every country should have at least one thermonuclear device, if necessary donated by the World Bank along with the "national" flag.
Cockburn apparently can't wait to see what the generals who run Myanmar might do with nuclear weapons.
Alterman's sin was to challenge this nutty view. Alterman had the temerity to suggest that the transfer of atomic technology to the Soviets was not a good thing. Cockburn allows that this,
. . . shows just how dumb Alterman is, since at least 2/3rds of the audience of Nation seniors, the only subscribers who an afford to pony up for these cruises, were either in the Communist Party or in close sympathy with it. A chill silence greeted Alterman's ill-mannered interruption and then one old boy piped up angrily and said that it was the Red Army which saved the day for the Allies at Stalingrad.
Cockburn sure wouldn't want to disappoint the Commie senior citizens, now would he? Cockburn goes on to report that he was told third hand that Alterman was calling him an anti-Semite and serves notice that he may sue Alterman and/or MSNBC if this claim is repeated.
Alterman responded in his MSNBC weblog, leading off with the smarmy observation that he has been attacked "on Alexander Cockburn's CounterPunch, a site which I refuse to link." Gee, Eric, why not through in a couple "nya-nya's" while you're at it? Alterman writes,
But what really bothers him [Cockburn] is the fact that not only did I say something nasty about Joseph Stalin on a Nation cruise when Cockburn said how happy he was that the man responsible for the mass murder of 40 million people was able to acquire a nuclear weapon in part owing to the work of spies like Julius Rosenberg -- but I also called him an anti-Semite. He says this means -- are you ready -- that I cheapen the Holocaust. (You'll have to find the link to Cockburn's article yourself, as I cannot bring myself to link to someone who equates criticism with his positions toward Jews to cheapening the Holocaust, but I assure you the title of the piece is "Eric Alterman Cheapens Holocaust.") [Translation: I write for MSNBC and you don't, so f--- off Cockburn].
. . .
The notion of Cockburn threatening MSNBC's and The Nation's lawyers over my employment of the term [anti-Semite] in this piece is literally laughable. This is the same Alex Cockburn who once accused the Village Voice of "blatant pandering" to Jews by running Paul Bermna's essay on Holocaust denial on its cover.
Cockburn has been called an anti-Semite with some regularity since the days he was cheerleading for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (As he put it then, "If ever a country deserved rape it's Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too.") He gets called one almost as often as he is called a "Stalinist," which seems to me about right.
Stalin murdered 40 million people? Holy cow -- and here I thought it was The Nation's view that all Stalin did was give a few well-deserved cross looks to kulaks and class enemies. Hopefully none of those Commie seniors Cockburn mentions read Alterman's weblog or he'll have some 'splainin to do for his failure to properly contextualize Stalin's crimes (so what if Stalin killed 40 million people, the Red Army stopped the Nazis at Stalingrad! A few tens of millions of state-sponsored murders is to be expected.)
The main difference between Cockburn and Alterman is that Cockburn believes in all sorts of nutty things while Alterman doesn't really seem to believe in much of anything with his positions that shift with the winds as constantly as those of the Left wing Democrats he worships (the only thing Alterman really seems to believe in his stupid 14-year-old-like Bruce Springsteen hero worship). Two people, in other words, who clearly deserve each other.
Sources:
Eric Alterman Cheapens the Holocaust. Alexander Cockburn, CounterPunch, August 23, 2002.
One Cockamamie Commie. Eric Alterman, MSNBC.Com, August 26, 2002.