BLATHER REVIEW

Jonathan Alter sucks at his job

I just want to say right off: Jonathan Alter is not only a partisan, he's an ignoramus. Every time I've seen him on a cable news show, or heard him on Imus, he's never failed to make some bone-headed comments that show how little he cares for keeping up on the news/topics he shows up to yammer about.

For instance; I listen to Rush Limbaugh during my lunch hours, and often hear Rush criticizing President Bush about this and that (usually his bloated budgets and his State Dept.). But does Jonathan Alter hear that?
Here's the text (from memory) of an appearance on Imus last week (talking about conservatives in talk radio) :

Alter: "I mean, Rush Limbaugh is right-wing. Do you think you will ever hear him criticize the president or any Republican? (chuckling) It's just not going to happen."

Or this from about a year and a half ago (I like this so much because Imus seems to realize how pathetic a commentator Alter is, and shows it in his voice):

Imus: "So, what do you think is going to happen to John Walker Lindh?"
Alter: "Well, he's going to have to go through one of these military tribunals..."
Imus: "Well, Lindh is an American, Jonathan."
Alter: "...and..."
Imus: "And the policy doesn't apply to US citizens."
Alter: "..uh..."

And this is from Britt Hume's show on FoxNews:

Alter: "...and now we've learned that some of the hijackers didn't even know that they were going to die in a suicide mission when the planes hit..."
(Fred Barnes and others jumped in, but Britt took it from there:)
Hume: "No, no. It was that they didn't know precisely WHEN their missions would take place, but they knew they going on a suicide mission at some point."
Alter: "Well...whatever."

But the biggest proof that Jonathan Alter doesn't pay attention to the news -- that he allegedly expounds on -- was when Bush picked Dick Cheney as his Veep.
For days and days all we heard was the word "gravitas." Everywhere. All day and night it was "gravitas gravitas gravitas."

After three or four days of this, Jonathan Alter was on TV (I think it was on John Gibson's old MSNBC show), and, when asked what Cheney brought to the ticket, Alter actually said (in his most smugly arrogant elitist let-me-teach-you-something tone):

Alter: "Well, John, there's something that someone of Cheney's expertise brings to the Bush ticket, and there's a word for it. And that word is 'gra-vi-tas'."

I nearly through my cat at the TV.

I had a point to make other than bashing Jonathan Alter as the useless pundit that he is. What was it? Oh yeah! I read this. It's his latest column (though a couple o'weeks old, and it's co-written with Karen Breslau. At the very bottom it says "With Jennifer Ordonez in Los Angeles."
I mean, the guy needs two co-authors, probably to keep an eye on him to make sure he doesn't embarrass NBC with his random idiocies.

I was going to fisk the whole thing but I realize that my blood pressure would rise and I just had a bowl of Ramen's Sodium Bisque.

UPDATE: Just out of curiosity I did a google search on "Jonathan Alter sucks". Wow! I'm not the only one who's noticed! Pretty please, read this!

Posted by Tuning Spork at September 3, 2003 08:17 PM