Media Matters columnist Eric Alterman, a man who once floated the idea of a blogger’s council that would blackball people he didn’t agree with, was arrested in the CNN debate “spin room” after refusing to leave a private function.

Alterman is doing a little spinning of his own after his unseemly behavior. Alterman (or somebody pretending to be Alterman for you conspiracy minded Ron Paul supporters) posted a comment on the CNN page detailing the story. It reads in part:

A guy came over and asked me who I was and I told him I was a columnist for The Nation and he told me I had to leave. I thought he was kind of rude, so I asked him his name, thinking it might go into Altercation the next day. He refused to answer me I asked again. He refused again. But I was following him out when he went to get a cop. The cop told me to leave the room and I did. We left the room, past where the people were handing out badges to go into the reception and I figured the entire drama was over. But the cop kept yelling at me to leave. I didn’t understand. I thought I had left. I asked him to stop yelling, I had left. He kept telling me to leave. In retrospect, I guess he was kicking me out of the building and I didn’t understand, but it was really mystifying and annoying and I told him I wanted to speak to his commanding officer.

We went over to the commanding officer and I, calmly and politely, sought to explain that I didn’t know why this cop was continuing to hassle me. The first cop kept interrupting me as I tried to explain myself and finally I turned around and said, “Can I please finish a sentence here?” That’s when the first cop decided to arrest me. He handcuffed me behind my back and took me outside.

(A funny aside, Congressman Ed Markey happen to walk by then and came over to say hello to me and stuck out his hand for a shake. I had to say, “Sorry, Ed, I’m being handcuffed.” He laughed, and told the officers that he would vouch for my character and walked away.)

Anyway, I never refused to leave and the only time I raised my voice was when the first cop would not let me explain what I had thought was a massive misunderstanding to his commanding officer. Once I was arrested and brought to the Goffstown station, I actually had a pretty nice time with the cops there, who were very friendly and understanding of my situation. When they learned I was a writer and planned to write about this incident, they wanted to make sure that I knew that the cop who had arrested me was not one of theirs, but was from another town and had been working on an “reciprocity” arrangement.

In other words, I acted like the trailer trash on a Cops episode, threatened to smear the cops on my website and demand that everyone reading about my childish behavior toe the Media Matters line on this story which I will print later.

Classy.

White folk are funny. They seem to have no idea how to not get arrested when dealing with cops. Alterman thought you could argue with cops and threaten them with bad press, and was mystified when he got cuffed afterward. And ever notice that everyone who’s ever gotted arrested after showing their ass to a cop later says they “calmly and politely” interacted with the officer. As if some cop wants to fill out hours of paperwork for some random calm and polite dude they decided to arrest on a lark?

Sorry Eric, if you were either calm or polite, that cop would have let you skate. Take it from a guy who has had to talk to the cops a few times, they aren’t interested in slapping the cuffs on you, they just want to finish their shift and go home.

Expect to hear a lot more about this one in the coming weeks.