Preview

The news from the White House, Mar-a-Lago, Georgia voting booths, Jerusalem backroom negotiations, and wherever the heck Elon Musk lives has been rather overwhelming of late. But I think the punditocracy, both social and professional, have it covered to the point where I can attend to one of the primary goals of this column, which is to bring significant scholarship about important political issues to bear on the arguments about them. So here are a few for today, and I expect to continue this through the end of the year (along with more music and only a little book promotion). Warning: You may need an institutional affiliation or to go through a library in order to access some of the links below.

• “It’s About Hate: Approval of Donald Trump, Racism, Xenophobia and Support for Political Violence.” Trump supporters in the study disproportionately exhibit racist and xenophobic/anti-foreigner attitudes, and these attitudes are associated with a positive endorsement of both January 6th and the use of political violence.

• There is no such thing as “antifa.” (I’ll bet you suspected that.)

• Relatedly, violent extremism in America is a far-right phenomenon, period. (All bothsidesing of this danger is therefore total bullshit.)

• Also relatedly, even for “strong, partisan” conservatives, consistent exposure to the lies on Fox News leads viewers to an even more “biased set of facts” as well as “concealed negative information about President Trump.” Not only does it “present its side an electoral advantage—it may present a challenge for democratic accountability.”

• Further relatedly, “more ideologically extreme users are exposed to more misinformation—but, interestingly, this association is stronger among users estimated to be conservative compared to users estimated to be liberal.”

• (Ultimately) conservatives win in U.S. politics despite the unpopularity of their policies because:

(a) the Republican Party has rejected democratic political norms and has moved further right, promoted stronger identity formation, and allied with less conflictual policy demanders than Democrats.

(b) U.S. electoral institutions allow Republicans to rule without winning majorities of voters.

(c) Long-standing institutional political features hinder the passage of national legislation, which progressive movements require, while granting Republican officials control over legislative processes even when they are out of power.

(d) Conservative movements and Republicans also benefit enormously from a partisan media machine, with nothing equivalent for progressive movements and Democrats.

The above are all related to a similar theme. I hope to have more in the next few weeks, but that will be more of a hodgepodge of things I’ve been saving during the past year.

In the meantime, yes, my book We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel was published last week (after only 40 years in the making). Peter Beinart called it a “a terrific intellectual and political history” in his weekly newsletter. Here is an excerpt from Lit Hub about the impact on American Jews of the 1967 War. Oh, and I love this opening line in this review published by the Jewish Book Council: “Eric Alterman, long-time media critic for The Nation magazine, has written a history of America’s relationship to Zionism and the State of Israel that is likely to anger a significant segment of readers—for different reasons.” (I’m Eric Alterman and I endorse that message.)

Here are some taped interviews/discussions dealing with the book’s content:

With Americans for Peace Now
With Haaretz
With Yonit Levy and Jonathan Freedland of Unholy
With Robert Wright of Bloggingheads.TV

I will be discussing the book with UCLA’s Dov Waxman on December 8 at 1:00 Eastern time and you can sign up here to join in real time. I’ll also be speaking at the J Street conference in Washington this weekend, if you are there and want to say hello. Oh, and I will be on MSNBC with Mehdi Hasan this Sunday evening sometime between 8:00 and 9:00.

Regarding recent developments in Israel unrelated to my magnum opus, I’d recommend this piece by Joshua Leifer in The New York Review of Books, and this piece by Alon Pinkas in Haaretz.

The overwhelmingness of politics has kept me from doing justice to the music I care about, as well, so first things first. Bruce Springsteen has a new album out called Only the Strong Survive and it’s made up of old soul songs. It’s a rather conservative album with regard to the fact that the arrangements pretty much mimic the originals. It’s also really fun. Bruce’s voice (at 73) has never sounded better, and the song selection is both familiar and surprising. A few of the numbers are strangely moving. His version of the Commodores’ “Night Shift” legit makes me tear up every time. All of the above are the reasons I found this article in The Atlantic so silly. When David Hajdu writes, “It’s just pointless, because it adds nothing to our understanding or appreciation of the music—or of its singer,” he is writing as a holier-than-thou rock critic rather than someone who actually likes to listen to music. I mean, even if it does add “nothing to our understanding,” so what? It was fun for Bruce and it’s fun for the listener (as well the viewer of these wonderful videos).

Why, exactly, is that a bad thing? Is the world such a wonderful place it can’t stand a little more fun? But far worse than the above, is Hajdu’s performative woke-ism in this putative-high-falutin’-but-actually-crazy judgment: “[T]here remains something off-putting and simply off in this high-profile presentation of a successful white man singing Black music, even in ardent homage.” Really? Has Mr. Hajdu ever heard of Elvis Presley? Mick Jagger? John Lennon? Gregg Allman? Peter Wolf? This is to say nothing of the educative value of the album, which comes with information about the songwriters of each of the songs, and undoubtedly will send some fans back to the originals, just as six decades ago, Stones and Beatles fans discovered Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Arthur Alexander, and Willie Dixon, among many others. (It will also serve the estates of the songwriters.) I mean Rully, this professor needs to go back to rock ’n’ roll high school.

(Here, here, and here are the above-mentioned Springsteen videos.)

I saw three live performances recently that I can’t fully do justice to in the space I allot for these things, but I can try. The first is someone you’ve almost certainly never heard of. His name is Richard Shelton, but if you go see him, as I did at the Green Room inside Yotel, you’ll feel like you’re in the room with a sour-talking but wonderful-sounding Frank Sinatra. His show, “Sinatra: RAW” takes place (allegedly) in 1971 at The Purple Room in Palm Springs as Sinatra is facing one of his many faux retirements. (The man had pretend-quit the business more times than The Who.) More than mere mimicry, it’s a genuinely moving and, musically speaking, deeply satisfying experience.

I actually saw Sinatra quite late in his career at the Kennedy Center. I bought a ticket for $15 from one of the Flying Karamazov Brothers right before he had to go on stage for the opening act. (Boy, was he pissed at how cheaply he had to sell it to me.) Anyway, Frank was 67 at the time, and it was long past “quarter to three” for “the voice.” All those cigarettes and booze had turned that marvelous instrument into just a voice, and one that cracked at every remotely high note. When I saw Shelton, he was a better Sinatra than Sinatra had been. (He also took requests: I got “That’s Life,” Frank’s greatest statement about just being Frank, and Shelton killed it.)

When I am feeling extremely fancy, or even better, when someone else is paying, I check into who is playing at the Café Carlyle. If it turns out to be John Pizzarelli and his better half (at least), Jessica Molaskey, I know I am in for an evening of not only fun, but also education (which for me, at least, makes everything more fun). The couple does regular residencies in that beautiful room (where a steak and fries will set you back $60 before tax and tip), and their most recent gig there was among my favorites of the half dozen or so times I’ve seen them (which I’ve also done in cheaper places). It was called “East Side After Dark.” It was a tribute to late mid-century New York café culture of the kind I yearned to enter in my teens and twenties—maybe even thirties—but could never dream of affording. John and Jessica mix their own history along with some corny jokes with actual historical context for every song they play and sing, while the band, led by John, hits a sweet spot in jazz that is melodic yet also inventive and fresh. Both are reasons why the room was packed despite the exorbitant cover price, etc., and one could tell from their warm welcome, many in the crowd were repeaters, not just hotel-guest oligarchs (like the folks sitting next to my partner and myself, but at least they were well behaved). Tune in to their wonderful weekly internet radio show here.

If you were to ask me, “Eric, who is the person whose level of fame is most inconsistent with their talent and originality?” I would have an easy answer: Tammy Faye Starlite. I wrote about her last show here, where she created a character she called “Tamar,” a nutty Israeli legend in her own mind, who sang what Tammy called “Ashkenazi-textured Europop.” This time, also at fun and funky (and decidedly affordable) Pangea in the East Village, I was expecting her Mick Jagger guise, à la her legendary “Mike Hunt Band,” and we got some of that, but it was more lovingly “Mock Jagger”—get it? I made that up—along with some Bowie and a healthy dose of her long-running, so-intense-it’s-almost-scary Marianne Faithfull tribute. The proof is here and here with Tammy as Marianne and here as Nico circa the Velvet Underground days and here in the Mike Hunt Band. Catch her if you can.