Evan Thomas participates in a discussion with US Navy leaders, January 29, 2010

Evan Welling Thomas III^[1][2] (born 25 April 1951) is an American journalist and author. He currently teaches journalism at Princeton University.^[3]

Life and career[link]

Thomas was born in Huntington, New York and was raised in Cold Spring Harbor, New York. A graduate of Phillips Andover, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia School of Law, since 1991 he has been the assistant managing editor at Newsweek. He formerly worked for TIME. Thomas began his reporting career at The Bergen Record in New Jersey. He won his numerous journalism awards, including the National Magazine Award in 1998 for Newsweek’s coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal,^[4] and the 2009 Clarion award.

Thomas is a regular panelist on the weekly public affairs TV show "Inside Washington".^[5]

June 5, 2009, while being interviewed by Chris Matthews on Hardball with Chris Matthews, Thomas provoked controversy by stating that Barack Obama was "sort of God."^[6] In response to criticism of this comment, Thomas responded with the following:^[7]

What I said was: "In a way, Obama's standing above the country, above -- above the world, a sort of god." I was not being literal. During a discussion about presidential rhetoric, I was comparing Ronald Reagan's patriotic appeals with Obama's attempt to transcend parochialism.

Family[link]

He is the son of Anna Davis (née Robins) and Evan Welling Thomas II, an editor who worked for HarperCollins and W. W. Norton & Company.^[1][8] His grandfather, Norman Thomas, was a six-time Presidential candidate for the Socialist Party of America.^[9]

He is married, and he and his wife, an attorney, are the parents of two daughters. They live in Washington, D.C.

Works[link]

• Robert Kennedy: The Empathetic Leader in Walter Isaacson (ed.) Profiles in Leadership (W. W. Norton & Company, 2011)
• The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898, Little, Brown and Company, 2010, ISBN 978-0-316-00409-1
• A Long Time Coming: The Inspiring, Combative 2008 Campaign and the Historic Election of Barack Obama, PublicAffairs, 2009, ISBN 9781586486075
• Sea of Thunder: Four Naval Commanders and the Last Sea War, Simon and Schuster, 2007, ISBN 9780743252225
• John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy, Simon and Schuster, 2004, ISBN 978-0-7432-5804-3
• Robert Kennedy: His Life, Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 978-0-684-83480-1
• Back from the dead: how Clinton survived the Republican revolution, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1997, ISBN 978-0-87113-689-3
• The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA, Simon and Schuster, 1996, ISBN 978-0-684-82538-0
• The Man to See: The Life of Edward Bennett Williams Simon and Schuster, 1992, ISBN 978-0-671-79211-4
• The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made, Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas, Simon and Schuster, 1986; Simon and Schuster, 1997, ISBN 978-0-684-83771-0 ^[10]

See also[link]

• Norman Thomas (grandfather)

References[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Evan Thomas

External links[link]

• Booknotes interview with Thomas on The Very Best Men: Four Who Dared, December 17, 1995.

Look up Evan in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Evan ( /ˈɛvən/) is a Welsh masculine given name, although it has on the rare occasion been given to girls as well, as with actress Evan Rachel Wood. The name is derived from "lefan", one of the other Welsh forms of John and is closely related to "Ivan", "Ian", and "Juan"; the name John is derived from the ancient Hebrew name יְהֹוחָנָן Yəhôḥānān, which means "YHWH Is Gracious". Evan is also a Celtic name meaning "Young Warrior". It can also be the shortened version of the Greek name Evangelos. Evanna is an extended name from Evan, usually named for girls, while Eva is a shortened name from Evan for girls. Evan used as a last name can be Evans.

Popularity[link]

The popularity of the name Evan in the United States has risen steadily over the past fifty years, from the 440-ranked name in 1957 to the 38-ranked name in 2008. Overall, Evan has been the 48th most popular name in the world and the sixty-third most popular name in the 1990s.

Notable people with the given name Evan[link]

See also: All pages beginning with "Evan"

• Evan Alexander, American politician
• Evan Bayh, former Governor of Indiana and United States Senator from Indiana
• Evan Bourne, ring name of American professional wrestler Matthew Joseph Korklan
• Evan Chambers, American musician
• Evan Cooper, former professional American football player
• Evan Dando, American musician
• Evan Dara, American novelist
• Evan Davis, British economist and journalist
• Evan Dobelle, American educator
• Evan Dunham, American mixed martial artist
• Evan Eschmeyer, former American professional basketball player
• Evan Forde, American oceanographer
• Evan G. Galbraith, former United States Ambassador to France
• Evan Gray, former New Zealand cricketer
• Evan Harris, British politician
• Evan Howell, American politician and soldier
• Evan Kaufmann, ice hockey player
• Evan Kim, American actor
• Evan Longoria, American professional baseball player
• Evan Lysacek, American figure skater
• Evan Price, Welsh politician
• Evan Pugh, First President of Penn State University
• Evan Roberts, Welsh revivalist
• Evan Roberts, American radio personality
• Evan Tanner, American mixed martial artist
• Evan Lorimer Thomas, Welsh clergyman
• Evan Thomas, American journalist and author
• Evan Turner, American professional basketball player
• Evan Rachel Wood, American actress
• Evan Royster, American professional football player
• Evan Stewart, Zimbabwean Olympic diver
• Evan Williams, American singer
• Evan Wright, American writer
• Evan Yo, Taiwanese pop singer

Popular culture references to the name Evan[link]

• Evan Almighty, a mainstream movie released on June 22, 2007 as a sequel to the popular Bruce Almighty.

See also[link]

• Euan

This given name-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. v t e

Robert Sean Wilentz ( /ˈʃɔːn wɨˈlɛnts/) is the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor of History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.^[1]

Background[link]

Born in 1951 in New York City, where his father Eli ^[2] and uncle Ted ^[3] owned a well-known Greenwich Village bookstore, the Eighth Street Bookshop,^[4] Wilentz earned one B.A. at Columbia University in 1972, before earning another at Oxford University (Balliol College) in 1974 on a Kellett Fellowship. In 1975 he earned an M.A. at Yale University and in 1980 he received his Ph.D. also from Yale, under the supervision of David Brion Davis.

Scholarship[link]

Wilentz' historical scholarship has focused on the importance of class and race in the early national period, especially in New York City. Wilentz has also co-authored books on nineteenth-century religion and working-class life. His highly detailed The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (W.W. Norton, 2005) won the Bancroft Prize. His goal was to revive the reputation of Andrew Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy, which was under attack from the left because of Jackson's support for slavery and especially his harshness toward Indians, including his forced removals. Wilentz returned to the pro-Jackson themes of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who in 1946 had hailed the pro-labor policies of Northern, urban Jacksonians.

He has more recently turned his scholarship to modern U.S. history, notably in The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008, published in May 2008.

Columbia professor Eric Foner, a long-time friend, says Wilentz "has written some of the very best examples of the avant-garde of the 70s and the avant-garde more recently. Back then we were trying to recover a lost past or neglected past. More recently historians have been trying to integrate that vision into a larger vision of American history as a whole."^[5]

Music[link]

A contributing editor at The New Republic, Wilentz writes widely on music and the arts as well as history and politics. He received a Grammy nomination,^[6] and a 2005 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary (liner notes) for his work on the musician Bob Dylan.^[7]

Wilentz lives in Princeton, New Jersey and is married to University of Chicago historian and distinguished professor Christine Stansell who also received her Ph.D. from Yale University.^[8]

Politics[link]

Wilentz has prominently engaged in current politics. Wilentz was reportedly a long-time family friend of the Clintons.^[9] He appeared in contemporary politics, as a staunch defender of Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton: he appeared before the House Judiciary Committee on December 8, 1998 to argue against the Clinton impeachment. He told the House members that, if they voted for impeachment but were not convinced Clinton's offenses were impeachable:

"...history will track you down and condemn you for your cravenness."

His testimony cheered Democratic partisans but was criticized by the New York Times, which lamented his "gratuitously patronizing presentation" in an editorial.^[10]

In 2006, he wrote an article denouncing the George W. Bush presidency, titled "The Worst President in History?" ^[11] which appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. The article received an immediate national response from conservatives; National Review attacked Wilentz's analysis as "blinkered" and called him "the modern Arthur Schlesinger Jr."^[12]

Wilentz followed up during the 2008 general election with another article in Rolling Stone, describing how the failures of the Bush administration had caused a "political meltdown" of the Republican Party, with potentially enormous long-term effects.^[13]

In 2008 Wilentz was an outspoken supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton.^[14] He wrote an essay in the New Republic analyzing Sen. Barack Obama's campaign, charging Obama with creating "manipulative illusion[s]" and "distortions," and having "purposefully polluted the [primary electoral] contest" with "the most outrageous deployment of racial politics since the Willie Horton ad campaign in 1988."^[15] During the Democratic National Convention, Wilentz charged in Newsweek that "liberal intellectuals have largely abdicated their responsibility to provide unblinking and rigorous analysis" of Obama. "Hardly any prominent liberal thinkers" have questioned his "rationalizations" about his relationship to his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., or "his patently evasive accounts" of his "ties" to the "unrepentant terrorist William Ayers." For Wilentz, Obama is untested, cloudy, problematic—and liberal intellectuals have given him a free ride.^[16] Wilentz was criticized by bloggers and others for his criticism of Obama.^[17] He has also come under fire for the alleged historical inaccuracy of his attacks on the idea of nullification.^[18]

Awards[link]

• 1984 Beveridge Award from the American Historical Association for Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850
• 2006 Bancroft Prize for The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Writings[link]

• "On Class and Politics in Jacksonian America," Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 4, The Promise of American History: Progress and Prospects (Dec., 1982), pp. 45–63 in JSTOR
• "Against Exceptionalism: Class Consciousness and the American Labor Movement, 1790-1920," International Labor and Working Class History, 26 (Fall 1984): 1–24,
• Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788–1850 (1984)
• Merrill, Michael, and Sean Wilentz, eds. The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, "A Laborer," 1747–1814 (1993)
• Johnson, Paul E., and Sean Wilentz. The Kingdom of Matthias. (1994) excerpt and text search
• Andrew Jackson (2005) excerpt and text search
• The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005) excerpt and text search
• Wilentz, Sean and Greil Marcus, eds. Rose and the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2005)
• Wilentz, Sean, and Jonathan Earle, eds. Major Problems in the Early Republic (1992; 2nd ed. 2007)
• The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974–2008 (2008) excerpt and text search
• Bob Dylan in America, 1st ed., New York : Doubleday, 2010. ISBN 978-0-385-52988-4
• President Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle for Equality from Profiles in Leadership (2011) W. W. Norton & Company

About Wilentz[link]

• Altschuler, Glenn C. "Democracy as a Work in Progress," Reviews in American History, Volume 34, Number 2, June 2006, pp. 169–175 in Project Muse, review of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
• John Ehrman, "There He Goes Again: A review of The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008, Sean Wilentz" The Claremont Institute (2008), review by conservative scholar

References[link]

External links[link]

• Wilentz interview from 2005
• Wilentz interview NPR 2010
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Wilentz, May 7, 2006

The Holy Innocents by Giotto di Bondone.

The Massacre of the Innocents was an episode of infanticide by Herod the Great, the king of Iudaea Province. According to the Gospel of Matthew^[1] Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the village of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. The incident, like others in Matthew, is described as the fulfillment of a passage in the Old Testament read as prophecy,^[2] in this case a reading of Jeremiah: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, Weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children."^[3]

The infants, known as the Holy Innocents, have been claimed as the first Christian martyrs. The number of infants killed is not stated, with modern scholars disputing earlier accounts.^[4] The historicity of the episode is disputed: it is "an open question that probably can never be definitively decided",^[5] however according to Paul Maier "most recent biographers of Herod ... deny it entirely".^[6]

Biblical account[link]

10th century illuminated manuscript

In Matthew's account, magi from the east go to Judea in search of the newborn king of the Jews, having "seen his star in the east". The King, Herod the Great, directs them to Bethlehem, and asks them to let him know who this king is when they find him. They find Jesus and honor him, but an angel tells them not to alert Herod, and they return home by another way.

The Massacre of the Innocents is at Matthew 2:16-18, although the preceding verses form the context:

When [the Magi] had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. Get up, he said, take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him. So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son."^[7] When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more."^[3]

Matthew's purpose is to present Jesus as the Messiah, and the Massacre of the Innocents as the fulfillment of passages in Hosea, referring to the exodus, and Jeremiah, to the Babylonian exile.^[8][9] Raymond Brown sees the story as patterned on the Exodus story of the killing of the Hebrew firstborn by Pharaoh and the birth of Moses.^[9]

Historicity[link]

The single account of the Massacre comes in the Gospel of Matthew: it is not mentioned in Luke's gospel or by any contemporaneous historians, or by the later Roman Jewish historian, Josephus.

Modern liberal scholarship, says Marcus Borg, regards the biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus as symbolic narratives rather than factual history.^[10] Thus, according to Paul L. Maier, the majority of Herod biographers and theologians hold that the Massacre of the Innocents is "legend and not historical":^[11] Geza Vermes and E. P. Sanders, for example, regard the story as part of a creative hagiography.^[12] Robert Eisenman argues that the story may have its origins in Herod's murder of his own sons, an act which made a deep impression at the time and which was recorded by Josephus.^[13] Other arguments against historicity include the silence of Josephus (who does record several other examples of Herod’s willingness to commit such acts to protect his power, noting that he "never stopped avenging and punishing every day those who had chosen to be of the party of his enemies")^[14] and the views that the story is an apologetic device or a constructed fulfilment of prophesy.^[15]

Some biblical scholars hold a generally sceptical view of the incident's historicity. Whilst acknowledging that the episode "contains nothing that is historically impossible" Hill says that Matthew's "real concern is ... with theological reflection on the theme of OT fulfilment".^[16]

R. T. France argues for plausibility on the grounds, inter alia, that “the murder of a few infants in a small village [is] not on a scale to match the more spectacular assassinations recorded by Josephus”;^[17] Schnackenburg follows this line also,^[18] and Gordon Franz points to Josephus' failure to mention other pivotal events in the first century AD, such as "the episode of the golden Roman shields in Jerusalem which was the cause of the bad blood between Herod Antipas and Pontus (sic) Pilate".^[19] In similar vein Barclay follows Carr in finding Josephus' silence not relevant, drawing a parallel with the diarist John Evelyn's failure to mention the masscre at Glencoe.^[20] Maier argues that sceptics have tended to "regard opinion as fact, and have largely avoided a careful historical search into the parameters of the problem". After analysing the arguments against the historicity of the infant massacre Maier concludes they all "have very serious flaws".^[21] Maier follows Jerry Knoblet^[22] in arguing for historicity based on the "identical personality profiles that emerge of Herod" in both Matthew and Josephus;^[23]

Later accounts[link]

The story's first appearance in any source other than Matthew is in the 2nd-century apocryphal Protoevangelium of James of c.150 AD, which excludes the Flight into Egypt and switches the attention of the story to the infant John the Baptist:

"And when Herod knew that he had been mocked by the Magi, in a rage he sent murderers, saying to them: Slay the children from two years old and under. And Mary, having heard that the children were being killed, was afraid, and took the infant and swaddled Him, and put Him into an ox-stall. And Elizabeth, having heard that they were searching for John, took him and went up into the hill-country, and kept looking where to conceal him. And there was no place of concealment. And Elizabeth, groaning with a loud voice, says: O mountain of God, receive mother and child. And immediately the mountain was cleft, and received her. And a light shone about them, for an angel of the Lord was with them, watching over them."^[24]

The Massacre of the Innocents at Bethlehem, by Matteo di Giovanni

The first non-Christian reference to the massacre is recorded four centuries later by Macrobius (c. 395-423), who writes in his Saturnalia:

"When he [emperor Augustus] heard that among the boys in Syria under two years old whom Herod, king of the Jews, had ordered to kill, his own son was also killed, he said: it is better to be Herod's pig, than his son."^[25]

The story assumed an important place in later Christian tradition; Byzantine liturgy estimated 14,000 Holy Innocents while an early Syrian list of saints stated the number at 64,000. Coptic sources raise the number to 144,000 and place the event on 29 December.^[26] Taking the narrative literally and judging from the estimated population of Bethlehem, the Catholic Encyclopedia (1910) more soberly suggested that these numbers were inflated, and that probably only between six and twenty children were killed in the town, with a dozen or so more in the surrounding areas.^[4]

In the arts[link]

Cornelis van Haarlem, Massacre of the Innocents, 1590, Rijksmuseum

Medieval liturgical drama recounted Biblical events, including Herod's slaughter of the innocents. The Pageant of the Shearmen and Tailors, performed in Coventry, England, included a haunting song about the episode, now known as the Coventry Carol. The Ordo Rachelis tradition of four plays includes the Flight into Egypt, Herod's succession by Archelaus, the return from Egypt, as well as the Massacre all centred on Rachel weeping in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. These events were likewise in one of the Medieval N-Town Plays.

The theme of the "Massacre of the Innocents" has provided artists of many nationalities with opportunities to compose complicated depictions of massed bodies in violent action. It was an alternative to the Flight into Egypt in cycles of the Life of the Virgin. It decreased in popularity in Gothic art, but revived in the larger works of the Renaissance, when artists took inspiration for their "Massacres" from Roman reliefs of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs to the extent that they showed the figures heroically nude.^[27] The horrific subject matter of the Massacre of the Innocents also provided a comparison of ancient brutalities with early modern ones during the period of religious wars that followed the Reformation - Bruegel's versions show the soldiers carrying banners with the Habsburg double-headed eagle (often used at the time for Ancient Roman soldiers).

Rubens' Massacre of the Innocents, Toronto

The 1590 version by Cornelis van Haarlem also seems to reflect the violence of the Dutch Revolt. Guido Reni's early (1611) Massacre of the Innocents, in an unusual vertical format, is at Bologna.^[28] The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens painted the theme more than once. One version, now in Munich, was engraved and reproduced as a painting as far away as colonial Peru.^[29] Another, his grand Massacre of the Innocents is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The French painter Nicolas Poussin painted The Massacre of the Innocents (1634) at the height of the Thirty Years' War.

The Childermass, after a traditional name for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, is the opening novel of Wyndham Lewis's trilogy The Human Age. In the novel The Fall (La Chute) by Albert Camus, the incident is argued by the main character to be the reason why Jesus chose to let himself be crucified—as he escaped the punishment intended for him while many others died, he felt responsible and died in guilt. A similar interpretation is given in José Saramago's controversial The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, but there attributed to Joseph, Jesus' father, rather than to Jesus himself. As depicted by Saramago, Joseph knew of Herod's intention to massacre the children of Bethlehem, but failed to warn the townspeople and chose only to save his own child. Guilt-ridden ever after, Joseph finally expiates his sin by letting himself be crucified (an event not narrated in the New Testament).

The Massacre is the opening plot used in the 2006 movie The Nativity Story.

The folk group Show of Hands wrote a song from the perspective of the families of the massacre, called "Innocen'ts song/ Gwithian".

Feast days[link]

Triumph of the Innocents by William Holman Hunt

The commemoration of the massacre of these "Holy Innocents" — considered by some Christians as the first martyrs for Christ^[30]—first appears as a feast of the western church in the Leonine Sacramentary, dating from about 485. The earliest commemorations were connected with the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January: Prudentius mentions the Innocents in his hymn on the Epiphany. Leo in his homilies on the Epiphany speaks of the Innocents. Fulgentius of Ruspe (6th century) gives a homily De Epiphania, deque Innocentum nece et muneribus magorum ("On Epiphany, and on the murder of the Innocents and the gifts of the Magi").^[31]

Today, the date of Holy Innocents' Day, also called Childermas or Children's Mass, varies. 27 December is the date for West Syrians (Syriac Orthodox Church, Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, and Maronite Church) and East Syrians (Chaldeans and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church). 28 December is the date in the Church of England, the Lutheran Church and the Roman Catholic Church (in which, except on Sunday, violet vestments were worn before 1961, instead of red, the normal liturgical colour for celebrating martyrs). The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates the feast on 29 December.

In the 1962 Roman Catholic calendar, the violet vestments for Holy Innocents were eliminated (red used instead), and if December 28 falls on Sunday, this feast is commemorated on the Sunday within the Octave of Christmas.

In Spain, Hispanic America and the Philippines^{[citation needed]}, December 28 is a day for pranks, equivalent to April Fool's Day in many countries. Pranks (bromas) are also known in Spain as inocentadas and their victims are called inocentes, or alternatively, the pranksters are the "inocentes" and the victims should not be angry at them, since they could not have committed any sin. One of the more famous of these traditions is the annual "Els Enfarinats" festival of Ibi in Alicante, where the inocentadas dress up in full military dress and incite a flour fight.^[32] Various Catholic countries had a tradition (no longer widely observed) of role reversal between children and their adult educators, including boy bishops, perhaps a Christianized version of the Roman annual feast of the Saturnalia (when even slaves played "masters" for a day). In some cultures it is said to be an unlucky day, when no new project should be started.

In addition, there was a medieval custom of refraining where possible from work on the day of the week on which the feast of "Innocents Day" had fallen for the whole of the following year until the next Innocents Day. This was presumably mainly observed by the better-off. Philippe de Commynes, the minister of King Louis XI of France tells in his memoirs how the king observed this custom, and describes the trepidation he felt when he had to inform the king of an emergency on the day.^[33]

Notes[link]

See also[link]

• Flight into Egypt
• Seven Sorrows of Mary
• Matthew 2:16
• Matthew 2:17
• Matthew 2:18

References[link]

• Albright, W.F. and C.S. Mann. "Matthew." The Anchor Bible Series. New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971.
• Clarke, Howard W. The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
• Robert Eisenman, 1997. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls (Viking/Penguin)
• Goulder, M.D. Midrash and Lection in Matthew. London: SPCK, 1974.
• Jones, Alexander. The Gospel According to St. Matthew. London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1965.
• Schweizer, Eduard. The Good News According to Matthew. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1975.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Massacre of the Innocents

• Catholic Encyclopedia: "Holy Innocents"
• Images of the "Massacre of the Innocents"
• The Holy Martyred 14,000 Infants

Alter in Manchester, New Hampshire, January 7, 2008

Jonathan Alter (born October 6, 1957) is an American journalist and author who was a columnist and senior editor for Newsweek magazine from 1983 until 2011. He is currently a lead columnist for Bloomberg View, a new commentary website. He is also a contributing correspondent to NBC News, where since 1996 he has appeared on NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC. When the shows were on the air, he could often be heard on Imus in the Morning and The Al Franken Show on Air America Radio. He is the author of The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope, a national bestseller published by Simon & Schuster in 2006, and Between the Lines: A View Inside American Politics, People and Culture, a collection of twenty years' worth of his columns published by Borders Books. His 2010 book is The Promise: President Obama, Year One, published by Simon & Schuster, a behind-the-scenes look at Obama's eventful debut. The Promise was a New York Times Best Seller reaching #3 on the list at its peak.

Life and career[link]

Alter is a Chicago native. He graduated from Phillips Academy in 1975^[1] and Harvard University in 1979.^[2]

For a decade in the 1980s, Alter was Newsweek's media critic, where he was among the first in the mainstream media to break tradition and hold other news organizations accountable for their coverage,^{[citation needed]} a precursor to the role later played by blogs. When Newsweek launched his wide-ranging column in 1991, it was the first time the magazine allowed regular political commentary in the magazine, other than on the back page. After the election of Bill Clinton in 1992, during which Alter was a consultant to MTV, he was among a small group of reporters and columnists who had regular access to Clinton, though he was far from a reliable supporter, particularly during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. "Alter bites me in the ass sometimes, but at least he knows what we're trying to do," Clinton was quoted as saying in the book Media Circus by the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz.

Two months after the September 11 attacks, Alter wrote an article for Newsweek called "Time to think about torture" which became one of his best known^{[by whom?]} articles. In the column, he suggested that the U.S. might need to "rethink ... old assumptions about law enforcement." Stating that "some torture clearly works," he suggested the nation should "keep an open mind about certain measures to fight terrorism, like court-sanctioned psychological interrogation," and consider transferring some prisoners to other countries with less stringent rules on torture.^[3]

Alter was a fierce critic of President George W. Bush,^{[citation needed]} emphasizing what he considered Bush's lack of accountability and his position on embryonic stem cell research. Alter, a cancer survivor, has written about his own bout with lymphoma and experience with an autologous adult stem cell transplant.^[4] On NBC's Today Show, Alter was the correspondent for several stories about the effect of the Iraq War on returning veterans. The Defining Moment, which was reviewed respectfully, surprised some critics with its analysis which concluded that the United States had come very close to dictatorship before Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, painting him as the savior of American democracy and capitalism. During an interview with 60 Minutes on November 14, 2008, then-President-elect Barack Obama said he had recently been reading The Defining Moment and hoped to apply some of Roosevelt's strategies that were outlined in the book into his own administration.^[5]

In 2009, Alter was the commencement speaker at Western Connecticut State University, which awarded him an honorary doctorate.^[6] He also has received honorary degrees from Utica College (2008) and Montclair State University (2009).

In April 2011, Alter left Newsweek.^[7]

He lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with his wife Emily Lazar, a producer of the Comedy Central show The Colbert Report, and their three children. Alter serves on the Board of Directors of DonorsChoose,^[8] which allows teachers to post online proposals for classroom materials, and The Blue Card,^[9] a national Jewish organization assisting Holocaust survivors.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jonathan Alter

• Jonathan Alter's website
• Jon Alter's blog at The Huffington Post
• Video debates/discussions featuring Alter on Bloggingheads.tv