Peretz Parody Alert

Marty Peretz lobs up a basically unsubstantiated hit piece on Elizabeth Warren, which argues ... well, it's difficult to figure out what it's arguing. It claims she made a mistake in bringing up Scott Brown's nude photoshoot, to which I say, yeah, probably. Then it kind of idly muses about whether Elizabeth Warren is or isn't attractive, and whether men do or don't like her. Buried three paragraphs from the end is the claim that Warren "say[s] obvious things" (such as? Alas, we have a whole political party predicated on the notion that asking a factory owner to contribute his fair share is Bolshevik, so I have no idea what is and isn't "obvious" to this polity).

And then finally, two paragraphs from the end, we are asked to wonder whether Warren knows anything about foreign policy. "Ask her about the Arab Spring, Israel, and the peace process, human rights and Africa, the American relationship with Venezuela." Hey, here's an idea Marty: Ask her about China! That will turn out well for you.

Now, I have to say, so far this is a pretty standard entry in the genre of intellectually vapid beltway punditry -- a mix of story-of-the-day (the Brown/Warren barbs over the nude shoot), smart-women-make-the-boys-cry (Hillary Clinton! Nancy Pelosi!), and unsupported babbling about whether Harvard Law Professors are really "qualified" to serve alongside the likes of Jeff Sessions in the US Senate.

But what puts it over the top is the final paragraph. Remember, this elephant of a non-sequitur comes right after Peretz complains about Warren's alleged lack of foreign policy chops:

And then there’s one of the Republican candidates for president, Herman Cain. “When the moon hits your eye … Like a big pizza pie. That’s amore.” He’s running second among all the professional politicians in the Republican race for president. Oh, yes, and he’s a black man. It can’t be. Republicans favoring a … a … a black man? Wow. There’s been very little about this phenomenon in the press. I’ve found no pretense in the man. He’s got common sense. He tells it like it is. Will someone write something serious about him?

Herman Cain. You just finished talking about the need to have thunk deep thoughts about foreign policy, and now you're waxing lyrical about Herman "Palestinian right of return" Cain? A guy who openly brags about his lack of knowledge on foreign affairs? Color me crazy, but I think there's a tension here.

Oh but yes, Cain "tells it like it is". He's bold enough to bravely tell largely White audiences that most Blacks are idiots who can't think for themselves. Surely, it is a minor miracle that the Republican Party finds that sort of Black man appealing (unless he displays the slightest bit of discomfort with the word "niggerhead". Then he's a race-baiter like all the rest).

On the Cheapness of a Harvard Honor

James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates both have great posts on the burgeoning controversy over Harvard honoring Marty Peretz, who has a history of saying some pretty nakedly bigoted things. Coates' point, that one can be a bigot and a great journalist is particularly well-taken (regardless of whether Peretz qualifies as a great journalist or not):

The notion that we must choose between the two, that one mitigates the other, that good people don't do deplorable things, that deplorable people don't do great things, emanates from our own inability to understand that bigotry is not strictly the preserve of orcs.

Not Harvard's finest hour, to be sure.

North to the Future Roundup

Flying to Minnesota tomorrow -- I may or may not be posting tomorrow and Thursday. I also may or may not give an election update with the primary results tonight.

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The Tea Party begins its Jewish outreach project as part of a broader diversification campaign. Why Jews first? "I think that there is a more open debate to be had (in the Jewish community), but there is no genius behind that. I had to start somewhere." Don't tell Karol de Gucht.

A few days old, but James Fallows regrets the harsh things he didn't say to Marty Peretz.

Like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Matt Yglesias, I find it strange that resisting British colonialism is now a slur. If you're African (if you're White, it's a Tea Party!).

Meanwhile, Adam Serwer's post on how this whole "Kenyan anticolonialism" thing is a blatant racial dog-whistle is excellent.

No link, but a conservative friend of just cried out over Facebook: "Why don't Delaware Republicans want to win the Senate?"

American support for Israel is up following the relaunch of peace talks.

Engage lists its greatest hits.

Is Donna Edwards really threatened in her primary race (I voted today, but she's not my Congresswoman).

Abusive

The ever-more disgusting Marty Peretz: "I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse." Take a guess on who "these people" are.

If Peretz didn't own the damn place, this is the sort of thing that would get one fired. What an embarrassment. (Incidentally, Alex Pareene is correct that if TNR's in-house critics can't weigh in on this, then what's the point of having them around?).

Wailing Wall

While I may be too timid to put The People's Voice directly to the people, it does stand a chance of finally making this joke (yeah, yeah, it's Marty Peretz) obsolete:

A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time. So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site. She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.

'Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?'

'Morris Fishbein,' he replied.

'Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?'

'For about 60 years.'

'60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?'

'I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims. I pray for all the wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible adults, and to love their fellow man.'

'How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?'

'Like I'm talking to a fuckin' wall.'

Heh. Heh. *Sigh*

The Anti-Settler Turn

An old friend of mine remarked to me a few weeks ago that he thought my opinions on Israel had changed dramatically since we first met. I was skeptical: I always (well, at least since we met) supported a two-state solution. I always was a strong advocate that liberals and leftists pay more attention to the rampant anti-Semitism latent in Palestinian terrorism (and the global reaction to it). Insofar as I have changed, it's more a matter of focus: noting and calling out the human rights abuses committed by Israel and Israelis, while still not letting that excuse Palestinian acts of terror.

But one area in which I think I may have changed pretty substantially has been my views on the settlers. I wouldn't say I used to be "pro-settler", per se, but I didn't think of them as a huge deal. People living in houses in the desert were not "obstacles to peace". I wasn't committed to letting them stay -- but it rang uncomfortable to me that "peace" was taken to mean a Judenrein Palestinian state.

In recent times though, I've begun to revise my opinion. And I think the events surrounding the evacuation of settlers in Hebron have crystallized this instinct, not just for me, but for many other pro-Israel commentators. In their actions, the settlers have revealed themselves to be not just "obstacles to peace", but murderous, terrorist thugs. Their response to the Hebron evacuation was to launch what was called by both Ha'aretz and Israel's own Justice Minister a "pogrom". Marty Peretz says "shame on us". Eamonn McDonaugh of the Z-Word blog calls the settlers "religiofascists" who need to be "crushed" by the Israeli government.

Israeli commentators warn that the settlers, left unchecked, could lead to "civil war". Other writers continue to urge that we take the settler threat seriously as something that can single-handedly derail the peace process. Steve Clemons suggests officially labeling extremist terrorist factions working to propagate violence as "terror organizations", allowing their assets to be frozen.

The point being, we seem to be seeing (inside and outside of Israel) a broad-based backlash against the crypto-fascist settler movement whose primary political agenda at this point is to sabotage the peace process. The trick, now, is to get that outrage translated into some action. The Israeli government, slowly and belatedly, seems to be waking up to the threat that radical right-wing settlers pose to the state's liberal democratic character. And pro-Israel groups in the US are starting to recognize that the settlers are an insult to the very idea of Israel that they want to protect. Together, they can get something done. But it will take guts, and it will take courage.

Count me in.

UPDATE: Current (but outgoing) Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert joins the chorus:

"We are the children of a people whose historic ethos is built on the memory of pogroms," Olmert said. "The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than pogrom. Even when Jews do this, it is a pogrom.

"As a Jew, I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing."

He was addressing the riots last week in which Jewish settlers -- angry over the forced evacuation of a contested house in Hebron -- attacked Palestinians, setting fire to their houses.

In a statement released by his office, Olmert told the Cabinet that he chose the term "pogrom" -- a Yiddish word meaning an organized massacre, usually referring to such attacks against Jews -- "after much thought."

"I formulate these words with the greatest care that I can," the prime minister said.

The CNN article's headline says Olmert called the events "tantamount" to a pogrom. I didn't see the caveat.

Guest List

Am I the only one who finds it strange that Hilzoy and Jamie Kirchick are guest-blogging at Andrew Sullivan's place at the same time?

For those of you who don't know, Hilzoy--a professor of philosophy and bioethics at Johns Hopkins University who normally makes her home as the lead poster at Obsidian Wings, is a pretty well-established progressive blogger--one of the best out there, in my (and Marty Lederman's) humble opinion. As for Jamie Kirchick, his day job is officially to be Marty Peretz's assistant, and unofficially, to prevent The New Republic from re-establishing any of the progressive credibility it used to enjoy by being obnoxiously and pugnaciously neo-conservative at The Plank.

One of my friends asked me if it was going to be like arena combat between the two. I said that, if it does turn into a war, it will resemble an arena only in the sense of the lion versus the Christian. By way of example, see here, where Kirchick tries to say that there is an "Obama doctrine" of non-intervention in cases of genocide, compared to here, where Hilzoy essentially rips it apart.

Agitators and Race-Baiters: A Rhetorical History From Past To Present

Recently, the Wall Street Journal (with concurrence from Marty Peretz) compared the Duke Lacrosse Defendants to the Scottsboro boys. It's a vile and inaccurate comparison--one can recognize the injustice in the Duke case while noting the massive qualitative distinction between being released before trial and having your prosecutor disbarred, versus being sentenced to death twice and spending up to 20 years in prison before being released.

I spent much of last summer reading local news coverage of the Scottsboro Cases in the Montgomery Advertiser. I was curious to see how they dealt with the case, how they responded to the sentiment that the defendants were facing a "legal lynching" and the stunning rebuke the Supreme Court dealt when it reversed the death sentences and sent the cases back to trial.

Here's an editorial from the Advertiser responding the Court's ruling in the first Scottsboro case:

“But one significant fact stands out in this long and sordid story:

While Alabama has been blackguarded the round world over for the manner in which these men were tried and convicted, there was no conscious attempt on the part of any group of Alabamians to intimidate the Jackson county court that tried them, while intimidation of the crudest, more spectacular, and most obnoxious sort has been practiced by agitators who appointed themselves the special friends of these felons.”

“In the end insolent mobs marched in Washington with the sole purpose in mind of intimidating the highest court in the republic...

But no mobs marched in Alabama demanding the conviction of these men when they were put to trial.”

“But if there is any reasonable doubt in disinterested, responsible minds as to the fairness of the first trial, another will be granted cheerfully.

But Alabama stands conscience-clear and unashamed before the world!” [“The Supreme Court and the Scottsboro Case,” 11/8/32, (editorial), pg. 4]

It's worth noting that the paper is being somewhat disingenuous: there were mobs demanding the "conviction" of the defendants, and the paper reported them:

“Feeling as intense here last night as mountaineers from throughout the section came trooping into town…At times the crowd was estimated to number 300 and a few times there were shouts of ‘lynch them.’” [“Negroes Taken to Etowah Jail: Judge Orders Removal of Prisoners to Gadsen Under Military Escort,” MA, March 27, 1931 at pg. 1]

When the trial occurred, the paper also reported a crowd of 10,000 people gathered outside the courtroom but remained "orderly."

But what I want to focus on is the rhetoric in the editorial. Specifically, the word "agitators." "Agitators" is a word that seems to serve a very specific purpose in this article. It is designed to discredit the advocates of racial reformers just on face. In other coverage of the trial (including news pieces), the paper called the Scottsboro defendant's advocates "radicals" or "radical sympathizers."

To an extent, such wording strikes as quaint. But I think that it has some contemporary cousins whose potency might help illuminate what "agitators" and "radicals" did then. Imagine if a paper today wrote "terrorist sympathizers" and you have, I think, roughly the stimulus that "agitators" served in 1930s Alabama.

Yesterday, for my research this summer, I ran a Lexis search for "race-baiter." Here's some of what came up:

“Ex-producer for Imus calls Sharpton 'race-baiter',” Mobile Register (Alabama), May 12, 2007 Saturday, Pg. A08.

“LETTERS - Race baiters on both sides,” The Providence Journal (Rhode Island), April 15, 2007 Sunday, All Editions, EDITORIAL; Pg. D-07, 85 words. (“[Don Imus] should be punished further as a result of his whiny mea culpa at the feet of that race-baiting punk "the Rev. Al Sharpton," and the equally vile "Rev. Jesse Jackson," the worst spokesman of any ethnic group in history.”)

David Limbaugh, “Why Would Bush Adopt the Wild Rhetoric of the Race-Baiters?, “ Human Events Online, September 20, 2005 Tuesday 9:58 AM EST, , IN THE NEWS, 766 words (“The president said: "As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well. And that poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action."I was more than a little disappointed when I heard him utter these words…. his injection of race into the speech is troubling if for no other reason than it gives ammunition and a degree of legitimacy to the race-hustlers' unconscionable ploy to blame delays or inadequacies in the federal response on the administration's alleged racial prejudice against blacks…. It is difficult to quantify the cumulative destructive impact of all the reckless, knee-jerk charges of white racism leveled by race-exploiters of both races who have something to gain by their accusations and by fanning the flames of racial tensions.”)

LIES OF THE RACE-BAITERS, The New York Post, December 19, 2006 Tuesday, All Editions; Pg. 42, (Noting that a majority of the officers implicated in the Sean Bell shooting were Black, “But the race-baiters never let facts get in the way of their trouble-making.”)

MEDIA, OTHERS ARE BUSY RACE-BAITING, Modesto Bee, September 8, 2005, Thursday, ALL EDITION, LOCAL NEWS; Pg. B7 (“Am I the only American who sees Jesse Jackson, the Congressional Black Caucus, CNN, MSNBC and some in the print media as race-baiters and a serious problem to our country?... When will the administration, members of Congress and responsible media call out these troublemakers and tell them simply they are creating racism where there is none? When will we, the consumers, speak out with our wallets and insist that this cabal of hate-promoters be ignored?)

In a subsequent post, I wish to explore the function such rhetoric serves by its wielders. I think the comparison of Duke to Scottsboro is instructive in this regard. But for now, I'm interested in how the current use of "race-baiter" strikes y'all when juxtaposed next to the past use of "agitator." Do you see a link? Does it distress you? Or are you completely confident that we have jettisoned that aspect of our past and our descriptions are fair and accurate?

The TNR Problem

I'm a proud New Republic subscriber. But I think there is a lot to be said about this profile of TNR by Eric Alterman in the American Prospect. It focuses on Marty Peretz, who is, to be fair, a big problem for the magazine, even if he is out of step with most of the other writers on staff. The piece ends with a quote from a blog commenter: "Peretz is batshit crazy. TNR produces a lot of good stuff. Such are the ironies of life." Fair enough. The vast majority of TNR's output is both very good and very much in line with the prevailing liberal consensus. But there are some very notable exceptions, including much of what Peretz writes and a significant portion of their foreign policy analysis. The latter, however, seems (at least temporarily) suitably chastised by the utter failure of the Iraq War (much as I am). It remains unclear where they will go from there in the mid- to long-term. And as for Peretz--well, I think that TNR's long-term viability is dependent on getting him out of there entirely. His time has passed.

I first found the piece via LGM, and they have chosen to focus on this passage of Alterman's piece:

It is a sad but true fact of American political life that liberals rarely exercise so much influence as when they happen to be endorsing conservative causes, and this temptation has proven consistently irresistible to Peretz and his magazine. TNR under Peretz has been a vehicle that proved extremely helpful to Ronald Reagan's wars in Central America and George Bush's war in Iraq. It provided seminal service to Newt Gingrich's and William Kristol's efforts to kill the Clinton plan for universal health care and offered intellectual legitimacy to Charles Murray's efforts to portray black people as intellectually inferior to whites. As for liberal causes, however … well, not so much.

Is there something to this? Of course. Anytime a politician, intellectual, or institution steps outside its established narrative boundaries, it's going to receive far more attention than when it toes the line. Chuck Hagel's turn on the Iraq War will invariably garner far more media attention than all of his other mainline conservative positions (which is why he has a primary challenger). It's perhaps lamentable, but then, I don't see how to avoid it in TNR without draining the "electricity" of debates that Alterman admits flows through TNR at its best. Perhaps if the official editorial line was more unabashedly liberal, that could be the compromise we're looking for? In which case, the next few months or years could be crucial--if Franklin Foer, who himself is not detested on the left, can affect such a change, that might be able to revive TNR's liberal standing without sacrificing its unique position as an engagement ground for ideas, rather than a proving ground for ideological purity.

The other thing off this, of course, is that TNR can no longer be contrarian just for the sake of it. I don't think it is unreasonable to pressure liberals on how to incorporate moral and democratic values into their foreign policy (which isn't to say they should win that argument--here is an excellent post by Publius that provides a strong challenge to a "democracy promoting" foreign policy). But I don't think that providing space and cover to "The Bell Curve", or the notion that liberal critics of hawkish foreign policy are unserious kooks is in any way justified by being a magazine of ideas. Sometimes, its important to challenge prevailing liberal orthodoxy. However, there is a fine line between that, and throwing down gauntlets just to prove how "independent" you are. The latter needs to be reined in if the magazine is to be taken seriously.

But if Alterman provides a compelling critique of the sins of the magazine, he also highlights many of its virtues (not just its back page literary reviews, either). Alterman does us all a service when he notes that TNR, even at the moments when many thought the magazine was at its nadir, has continued to make an important and positive contribution to the American political discussion. Neither this, nor its legacy as a flagship publication in American progressive politics, should be forgotten in our haste to condemn it over a misguided foreign policy. I think that TNR has a valuable role to play in the evolving conversation of the 21st century left. It is beyond clear that they have some sins to work out. It is also beyond clear that they contribute a lot of positive work to the body of liberal journalism (how many "hail mary's" are equivalent to the good TNR did getting George Allen's racist past mainstream media attention--and with it, control of the Senate?). Any magazine which provides a consistent outlet for Jonathan Chait, Michelle Cottle, Ryan Lizza, and John Judis has a role to play in my liberal sphere.

Jonathan Stein--of the staunchly liberal Mother Jones, calls the piece a "hit job" (which I think is too harsh, and if Stein is stunned to be defending TNR, I'm shocked that I'm saying MoJo is being too easy on them), and says that--sins notwithstanding--its time to reincorporate TNR into the progressive liberal discussion. No free passes, but an opportunity to make amends. I concur, and I hope that TNR can continue to right its ship and be a force for a positive, progressive agenda in the coming years.