Eric Alterman gets email from one of my heroes, Reba Shimansky:
Name: Reba Shimansky
Hometown: Brooklyn, NY
I do not understand why liberals waste their time attacking Anne Coulter. It is obvious that she is a psychotic right-wing nut who is not terribly bright nor well informed. She is preaching to the converted and does not have the skills to influence the thinking of anyone except a rightwing zealot like herself. The main reason she gets so much air time is because dirty old men like to look at her blonde hair which dominates her appearance on her and her skinny body which she highlights by always wearing miniskirts. I was profiled in The New Yorker because I am liberal partisan but the media is not interested in a fat middle-aged woman on their programs.
Eric adds: For those of you unfamiliar with the source of Ms. Shamansky’s celebrity, I happened to have saved the following paragraph from The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town, March 25, 2002:
Issue of 2002-03-25
Posted 2002-03-18
It was question-and-answer time at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway at Eighty-second Street on a recent Friday night. Frank Bruni, a reporter for the Times, had just finished reading from “Ambling Into History,” his account of George W. Bush’s Presidential campaign and first year in the White House. A pale woman in the third row spoke up: “Many media outlets, including the Village Voice, Salon, and The New Republic, have accused you, for lack of a better word, of being a major suckup,” shesaid, her voice reflecting a half century’s tenure in Brooklyn. As the woman spoke, Bruni’s eyes widened behind his green-rimmed glasses. “Are you Reba Shimansky?” he asked, cutting her off. ”
