ERIC ALTERMAN — becoming a warblogger? Read this:

I am pleased to be able to fob the job of addressing the current US version of the problem on my friend Todd Gitlin, whose smart piece on anti-Semitism is in Mother Jones online. [NOTE: Gitlin opens with SFSU — GR]

Todd writes, “Wicked anti-Semitism is back. The worst crackpot notions that circulate through the violent Middle East are also roaming around America, and if that wasn’t bad enough, students are spreading the gibberish. Students! As if the bloc to which we have long looked for intelligent dissent has decided to junk any pretense of standards.” He has a great deal more faith in students than I do, however. . . .

Also, a brief digression to France: Why do so few people wish to notice that all this anti-Semitic violence in France is being carried out by Arabs? Doesn’t that make a difference? The French are no more or less anti-Semitic than they have always been. French anti-Semitism is not exactly news. Hello: Ever see “The Sorrow and the Pity?”

Eric, you are being assimilated into the blogosphere. Resistance is futile.

(The Gitlin piece, by the way, is excellent.)