Why does Alternet always do this?

They post a video or a link to a video that purports to have a progressive smacking down a prominent conservative, and instead it shows the charicature of a smug liberal intellectual being embarassed by a more competent TV personality.

Debating a conservative TV personality is like wrestling a pig. You'll both end up covered in shit, and the pig doesn't mind.

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Perlstein needs to learn to sit up straight and stop bashing the people whose lives were put up for grabs in a climate where we didn't know who would come after us, who would arrest us, who might be killed. His smug dismissal of the left from the 60s unmasks his own pseudo-intellectual narcissism. That he despises the people who opposed the war, marched for civil rights and so on goes to show just how out of touch as an historian he truly is. Historians do not pass judgement, they tell the truth about things as they see them and show why they interpret things the way they do.

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an American Jew of any respect and standing come out and confront the remarkable arrogance and manipulating deceit that is Israel.

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looking in a proctologist's harbage can.

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An utterly fascinating thing has happened in politics (and elsewhere in debate) during my lifetime. It is the way an individual or group figuratively beaten half to death and humiliated in an argument or political campaign will declare victory on the grounds that he survived. It's like the way one who has survived capture and imprisonment becomes a hero.

I saw this debate, and to claim that Perlstein gave anyone a history lesson is comical. While Barnacle and Buchanan argued major causes and effects, Perlstein - with that simultaneously self-conscious and petty intellectual smirk - argued trivia like "the Canuck letter." Utter nonsense; but liberal? - oh, yes, very liberal.

It is an historical fact that Richard Nixon was a schmuck, but to likewise argue that he did nothing that will be seen by history as positive is absurd.

It's a good thing that political extremists and their colossal biases always come out looking stupid - they ARE!

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...any more than he himself is getting schooled. I doubt that Pat will remember this history lesson any more than I'll remember this interview. I think the centre/left can field stronger and more articulate players than this against Buchanan.

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Yes, who?

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What a total waste of time this interview was. Perlstein spent his time giving racist pig Buchanen a thorough hand job. The old guy came up looking none the worst for wear while the young ass kisser looks like a complete fool.

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I suffered through several minutes of the video and the author was far from giving any history lessons.He back pedaled on almost every issue and winds up praising Nixon's courage and belittling the hippie and anti war movements.This is an example of the kind of muddled thinking you get from someone who learned everything he knows from books and has no feel at all for the era.Nixon was a despicable and criminal minded bureaucrat that destroyed his party and the country for years.He started the war on drugs against the best advice of his advisers and implemented policy based on personal prejudice.He was a foul mouthed,miserable and contemptuous individual who died alone and unhappy.

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More like Perlstein gets his smirking, light-weight ass handed to him! He should have been able to gut Buchanan like a salmon.

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