Journolist's Eric Alterman Explains His Nascar "Retard" Statement

Journolist member Professor Eric Alterman explains his infamous comment about Nascar fans:

I don’t have anything at all against people who like Nascar, (though even the concept of how such a thing could be enjoyable, admittedly, continues to elude me). People can like whatever they want, as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone. To the degree that I do have an objection to Nascar, it is ecological.

What I objected to, and what I’ve written about frequently—and would have been understood, I imagine, by most of the people in that private, off-the-record conversation—was the putatively liberal mainstream media treating the folks who like Nascar as “real Americans” and the rest of us who like jazz, foreign films, and prefer pinot noir to Budweiser as un-American commies who should have no say in our country’s future. This is why I am always defending New York, academics, the Upper West Side, even Zabar’s which always appear to be fair game with the So-called Liberal Media.

Professor Alterman doesn't mind criticizing the Nascar fans who pay taxes to subsidize his job.