eric alterman discusses his book at busboys and poets in washington, d.c. the program is just over an hour. >> the right wing that i am these days. a did a tour a few years ago, everywhere i went someone would call up the bookstore and say that i was sick and i had to cancel. and when i was doing a bookstore in l.a., they called c-span to cancel and c-span called me and said, you know, we're sorry you're sick and i said, well, i'm not sick. and the event went on but somebody killed all the electricity in the store while i was speaking. and it was one of those stores i don't want to disparage hippies or anything but -- it was one of those stores where nobody knew where the fuse box was. [laughter] so i had to hold the audience for 45 minutes while they found out how to get the electricity back on. [laughter] >> and i don't have 45 minutes worth of, you know, clean jokes. [laughter] >> so it was rough so i'm glad to see, you know, i'm flying under the radar now. we're okay. so far. so thank you for coming. i wrote this book. it's called "kabuki democracy: the

[applause] >> eric alterman is a columnist for the nation and the "daily beast." as well as in english and journalism professor at brooklyn college and cooney graduate school. he is the author of numerous books including "what liberal media?." >> here's a portion of one of our programs. >> in addition to a questionnaire that covered a wide variety of background items, the astronomers were asked to imagine the nation's history from 1966 to the end of the century. in other words, the year 2000. and so they were looking ahead or 34 years and imagining what they perceived or what they were viewing as what would happen to our country for the remainder of the century. and a graduate student who is doing the study, richard brown guard, was surprised by what he described as the believe of yaf members that a continued trip to the welfare state and socialism and moral decay would be reversed in the near future by an awakening of the american people, resulting in moving the train of events back to common sense. >> he also surveyed members of students for a democratic society