Regular readers probably believe that I'm not a huge fan of Henry Hanks' work. Some might think that this is due to the fact that he never posts on the comments section of this site* without including some sort of an attack on my arguments or my credibility, and therefore it's a "he criticizes me, I criticize him" kind of situation. One problem with that: I rarely if ever read his blog, and therefore can't really claim much of an opinion one way or the other. Having noticed the disparity of him reading my site and my not reading his, I decided to head over.

Unfortunately, this is what I found:

Alterman's labeling of National Review as "far right" and Newsweek and Time as "the center" is telling. However, if there's a "far right," there must be a "far left." So what would that be? I can only see one probable answer here and that's extremist leftist groups such as anarchists and eco-terrorists. So they are now comparable to a magazine? Just as the WSJ editorial board was compared to the most extremist right-wingers earlier?

Well, it's only telling in that Newsweek and Time are definitely centrist, and any attempt to label them as "leftist" only shows how Henry is trying to redefine the center. (He isn't the only one.)

What I'm absolutely baffled by, though, is this assertion that there are no magazines on the far left. Um, Henry? Have you read Alterman's blog to any extent? Have you ever read anything else he's ever written? I ask that because he links to Tapped, which is a part of The American Prospect, a left-wing magazine- and he's written quite a few articles for The Nation, another left wing magazine. Heck, they aren't even that leftist- if you're looking for hard leftism there's everything from the "The New Internationalist" to "The Socialist Review" to several scholarly journals to... well, there's lots of them, even if they don't usually enjoy the supporting largesse, attack dog politics and loose grip on the truth that the Weekly Standard is notorious for. Why this glaring error, which throws the entire point of his post into doubt?

Sadly, not much else I read really varies much from this sort of recycled talking point. Despite Henry's continual visits to this site, I'm unlikely to return to Crooow blog anytime soon.

*Yes, the comments will return. Frankly, it's very strange to see the page without them.