Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Eric Alterman

American Author, Media Critic, Educator, Blogger, Historian and Journalist

"The punditocracy is a tiny group of highly visible political pontificators who make their living offering “inside political opinions and forecasts” in the elite national media. And it is their debate, rather than any semblance of a democratic one, that determines the parameters of political discourse in the nation today."

"Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda."

"Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria."