The Nation's Eric Alterman arrested at debate spin room

[zulchzulu]

His explanation (from the CNN blog):

“Top of the World, Ma”

Ok, here’s what happened.

I came to New Hampshire with the Creative Coalition for a panel tomorrow morning and was supposed to be in the auditorium for the debate but because I am a journalist, they were told I would have to wait in the spin room. When I got to the spin room, which was an empty gymnasium, I noticed that there were chairs located on a balcony above us. So I went up there–no one asked me for my ID or anything–and went over to the bar and asked if it was a cash bar, because I had no idea what kind of event it was. I was told it was an open bar so I asked for a glass of wine and a glass of water and went to sit down and wait for the event to begin.

A guy came over and asked me who I was and I told him I was a colmunist for The Nation and he told me I had to leave. I thought he was kind of rude, so I asked him his name, thinking it might go into Altercation the next day. He refused to answer me I asked again. He refused again. But I was following him out when he went to get a cop. The cop told me to leave the room and I did. We left the room, past where the people were handing out badges to go into the reception and I figured the entire drama was over. But the cop kept yelling at me to leave. I didn’t understand. I thought I had left. I asked him to stop yelling, I had left. He kept telling me to leave. In retrospect, I guess he was kicking me out of the building and I didn’t understand, but it was really mystifying and annoying and I told him I wanted to speak to his commanding officer.

We went over to the commanding officer and I, calmly and politely, sought to explain that I didn’t know why this cop was continuing to hassle me. The first cop kept interrupting me as I tried to explain myself and finally I turned around and said, “Can I please finish a sentence here?” That’s when the first cop decided to arrest me. He handcuffed me behind my back and took me outside.

(A funny aside, Congressman Ed Markey happen to walk by then and came over to say hello to me and stuck out his hand for a shake. I had to say, “Sorry, Ed, I’m being handcuffed.” He laughed, and told the officers that he would vouch for my character and walked away.)

Anyway, I never refused to leave and the only time I raised my voice was when the first cop would not let me explain what I had thought was a massive misunderstanding to his commanding officer. Once I was arrested and brought to the Goffstown station, I actually had a pretty nice time with the cops there, who were very friendly and understanding of my situation. When they learned I was a writer and planned to write about this incident, they wanted to make sure that I knew that the cop who had arrested me was not one of theirs, but was from another town and had been working on an “reciprocity” arrangement.

I paid a $30 to be released and the whole thing took about 45 minutes. I filed a written report with the police explaining that I thought the arresting officer had treated me unfairly, and I do think this was the case, but I now think it was based on a misunderstanding on just where he wanted me to stay and where he wanted me to leave.

In any case, I spoke to CNN and I believe they will correct some of the misimpressions created by their first story. Just to be clear, I did not refuse to leave seven times and I did not, as far as I know, raise my voice, except for that last time.

For the record, I also don’t remember anyone reading me my Miranda rights, though I don’t know if that is ultimately going to matter. I have a court date in July but I am hoping to be able to clear it up before I leave tomorrow because it strikes me as mosty, a misunderstanding.

Posted By Eric Alterman : June 3, 2007 10:25 pm

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2007/06/03/columnistauthor-arrested-in-spin-room/

You should read the knuckle-dragging Repigs in their comments about the "event":

Liberals don’t like following the rules, so what is the big deal here?
Posted By Kelly, Piedmont, SD : June 3, 2007 9:32 pm

Here’s to the cop doing the arresting. I’ll open a beer in your honor.
(an asshole)

This guy’s a crackpot!
Posted By Wm Holland St. Paul, MN : June 3, 2007 10:07 pm

Lock him up and throw away the key!
Posted By Joe, Phoenix, AZ : June 3, 2007 10:22 pm

A bullet in his brain would have cured his left wing liberal mind–the only cure for liberals.
Posted By Howard Lee : June 3, 2007 10:29 pm
(Note: IP address please...)

They can’t lead or protect America, all they can do is gripe and complain.
Demoquits!
Posted By Mike, Denver, Colorado : June 3, 2007 10:44 pm


Eric's bio:
http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/eric_alterman

[Catherine Vincent]

1. I think he's so cool.

I love it when he's on cspan. The wingnuts hate him.

[Dinger]

2. The Text Of CNN's Article (In Case They Try To Change It):

Columnist/Author released after being arrested in Spin Room
MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN ) – Columnist and author Eric Alterman has been released after being arrested Sunday night inside the debate spin room. He was charged with criminal trespass after police say he refused repeated orders to leave.

Goffstown, N.H. police said Alterman was in the spin room as a guest of the Creative Coalition and went to an area reserved for a private reception for WMUR-TV. Police said he was asked by an executive at the party if he was invited to the private area and was asked to leave. A police officer was called after a verbal altercation ensued. According to police, Alterman was asked seven times to leave and became increasingly loud as he refused. After ignoring a final request, police said he was handcuffed and taken from the building.

Alterman spoke with CNN after being released. He called the arrest a “misunderstanding” and claimed he did not refuse orders to leave.

He told CNN he was waiting in the spin room for the debate to end but there was no place to sit. He claimed he saw an area upstairs and was not stopped when he walked up there. He said he saw a bar area and asked if it was an open bar. Told that it was, he ordered a wine and a water. He then said he was approached by a man and asked if he was invited to the party. Alterman said he asked for the man’s name because he had been treated “brusquely”. He said the man declined to give his name and called for an officer.

Alterman said he “never raised his voice once” and identified himself as a journalist. When he asked for the police officer’s name, the office threatened to arrest him. Alterman said he asked for a supervising officer to come over and tried to explain the situation. He claims he was cut off and acknowledged he may have been argumentative when he said, “could I please finish a sentence here?”

He was booked and released after paying $30. Alterman said he will fight to get the charges dropped.

Alterman writes a column for “The Nation” and writes the “Altercation” blog for Media Matters. He also has authored several books, including “Why Presidents Lie.”

– CNN Political Desk Managing Editor Steve Brusk

[madfloridian]

3. Arrested? Sounds like he was invited. Unbelievable.

:shrug:

[Fredda Weinberg]

11. Actually, not

He was supposed to be somewhere else in the building.

[madfloridian]

13. Oh, well then, they surely should have arrested him.

If he was in the wrong part of the building. That's gotta be a crime.

At least in the America we live in today.

:sarcasm:

[AndreaCG]

4. He should go on with the complaint against the cop anyway

This could be a pattern on his part.

[jefferson_dem]

5. Show your support for Eric...

Grab a book ---

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/105-0721117-9539668?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Eric%20Alterman

[zulchzulu]

7. What Liberal Media?: The Truth About Bias and the News by Eric Alterman

A must-read and great gift to fellow Repugs...

:thumbsup:

[KoKo]

6. Eric just wrote this for the Nation....It might have something to do with his arrest.

It might...or it might not. But what happened to him is very strange and that it comes after this article about the Power Brokers that we don't always hear about...makes me suspicious.

I feel sad that Congressman Markey didn't do more to help him out, too.

Here's link to what Eric wrote:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x285653

[mrdmk]

8. Don't read the comments. It is like the right-wing hip squad is out in numbers tonight

:patriot:

Not to mention CNN puts out a hit piece. Incredible!!!

I mean is not strange that a congressman vouches for the guy and they still take to jail.:wtf:

[madfloridian]

9. Why did Markey walk on by?

Why didn't he stop?

[KoKo]

10. That's what I wondered....did you check out what Eric just wrote for Nation

linked up above in my post?

Here's the post from a couple of days ago...over in DU "Editorials."

-------------------------------
Potemkin Paper?
Eric Alterman..The Nation


The conservative New York Sun announces on its front page each morning that it reaches "150,000 of New York City's Most Influential Readers Every Day." I read in Scott Sherman's sympathetic April 30 profile in this magazine that the Sun says it is selling 13,211 hard copies a day and giving away more than 85,000.

-Snip-

Given such contortions, it should surprise no one that so much of the Sun appears to exist only in its owners' and editors' neoconservative imaginations. Indeed, its investors--together with Lipsky, a refugee from Bob Bartley's Wall Street Journal editorial page, and the founder of the English-language version of the Jewish Forward--appear to have little interest in publishing a newspaper in the traditional sense. Back in 2002, Daily News editor in chief Ed Kosner called the Sun "an intellectual vanity publication" with "a very small niche, the niche of weekly and monthly journals." But Dissent could run for a hundred years on what these machers are paying for the Sun. Why go to the enormous trouble and expense of publishing a multimillion-dollar daily newspaper that (apparently) reaches next to no one, at a moment when investors are eagerly shedding their newspaper holdings and privately owned papers are just as eagerly shedding staffers? The answer, obviously, has nothing to do with profits or even readers; advertisers are not stupid enough to put their faith (and money) into imaginary circulation figures. But journalists are. And there's the rub.

Lipsky quotes his mentor Bartley that it requires "seventy-five editorials to get a law passed." It's not clear whether those editorials require actual readers who care what they say. In the case of the Sun, which mimics Murdoch's technique of blending editorials and news coverage in the same story, the intent is less to pass legislation than create tsuris for people and places of which it disapproves. Sherman aptly described the paper's primary function as that of "a journalistic SWAT team against individuals and institutions seen as hostile to Israel." During its first five years, these have included the Ford Foundation, which it accused of aiding Palestinian terrorism; Columbia University, accused of creating an atmosphere unfriendly to Jews; Kofi Annan's office at the UN, accused of rampant corruption; and Harvard University's Kennedy School, publisher of the famous Walt-Mearsheimer paper, likened to a David Duke neo-Nazi screed. It matters little that few sensible people would concur with the Sun's wild charges. (This is, after all, a paper whose editorial board thinks Dick Cheney should run for President in 2008.) What matters is the political value to the neoconservative agenda of creating the appearance of smoke, regardless of whether it's connected to fire.

But I don't want to harp on the Jewish-media-moguls-supporting-Israel angle, which hews a little too close to traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes for my taste. While it may explain the Sun's rise, it obscures the more salient fact that countless conservative propaganda factories are supported in America by literally billions in ideological investment. Their success in swaying gullible reporters in the MSM and elsewhere accounts, in significant measure, for the widespread misperception that the public has moved rightward in recent decades. (The past four decades of public opinion polling show exactly the opposite: The public has moved leftward as the political system has moved rightward.) The beauty of this operation is that all this can be accomplished--as the Sun demonstrates--without the participation of any actual readers.

more about why this is important at........

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/alterman

[minkyboodle]

12. Sully couldn't resist a posting

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/alterman_arrest.html

I guess when you've been consistently dominated over the course of 10 years by
someone as Sully as has been by Eric you gotta take what you can get... typical

[cui bono]

14. Wow. And to think I just saw Eric speak on the state of democracy

in the US a couple months ago.

[zulchzulu]

15. I wonder if there's any video floating around

It was the spin room with lots of cameras...you'd think...

[madfloridian]

16. Just did a search on Markey's name, to see if he was mentioned.

He is apparently not speaking up at all, and he was only mentioned in Alterman's column.

A journalist is arrested. Where are the Democrats defending him? I don't see anyone.

Are they aware? Why did Markey laugh and walk on by?

Why did this happen at a Democratic forum?

[cui bono]

17. Well if their ads are true and you can't be seen with The Nation in your hand

you most certainly can't be seen with a handcuffed Nation reporter!