There has, thankfully, been substantial outcry over Peretz’s comments, and he has been uninvited from speaking at at a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Harvard’s Social Studies Department.  But a pair of writers at other respectable liberal publications, Jack Shafer at Slate and Andrew Sullivan (a former New Republic editor) at The Atlantic, have kinda/sorta risen to Peretz’s defense.  While not defending Peretz’s statements themselves, both point out that, 1) Peretz has been a racist for a long time, so why the fuss now?; and 2) Peretz has been a positive influence on journalism by giving a forum to talented young journalists and giving them freedom to push the political debate.

Also at The Atlantic, Ta-Neisi Coates offers a wonderful response, pointing out how beside the point Shafer and Sullivan’s praise for Peretz is, and lamenting the fact that someone can remain an esteemed and influential figure despite open bigotry, so long as they have the right mix of means, friends, and talent:

This is all about firepower. The fact is that Peretz has the social and economic guns to be a bigot, to then be defended by even those who acknowledge his bigotry, and finally be honored at the highest levels of American academia.

While Coates’ takedown is pretty thorough, there’s a passage in Sullivan’s semi-defense that I found worth highlighting.  Sullivan writes:

And as someone who knows this human being extremely well, I’d like simply to say that in his deepest heart, I believe Marty is a good man who has done good things. He has a real conscience and a history of great kindness, compassion and generosity.

Peretz’s general warmth and affection for his fellow (non-Muslim) man is, at best, irrelevant, and, at worst, makes his vitriol towards Muslims more jarring.  It’s no defense to bigotry to point out how nice someone is to the people against whom he isn’t prejudiced.  If Peretz thought that all life was cheap and treated everyone accordingly, he wouldn’t be a bigot, just an asshole.

-AR

Update:  As a commenter has pointed out, Peretz has not been uninvited from the Harvard event.  Harvard will be inaugurating a research fund in his honor, and he will have the opportunity to speak at the event.

In case you haven’t heard, Brown got caught calling a British woman named Gillian Duffy a bigot when he didn’t realize his microphone was still on.

Several things are funny/infuriating about this story. First, Brown called Duffy a bigot after a conversation on the street in which Duffy made this somewhat remark about immigrants: “You can’t say anything about the immigrants because all these eastern Europeans, where they are flocking from?”

Although Duffy’s question does not literally make much sense – I mean, presumably she knows that “all these eastern Europeans” are flocking from eastern Europe – Brown understood her to be complaining about the same sort of thing the Duffys of America like to complain about, except regarding “the Mexicans.” So let’s see, that type of complaint is generally associated with . . . what is the word I’m looking for here? It means being impartial to your own group, like maybe your own racial or ethnic group, and intolerant of those who differ?

So Brown was pretty justified in referring to this woman as a bigot, especially because he was polite enough not to say it to her face. But now he’s been forced to apologize, which is the second thing that is infuriating/hilarious about this story. The third thing is Brown’s non-apology apology, which AR would just love.

My absolute favorite thing about this story, though, is that when confronted with the news that Brown had called her a bigot, Duffy did not know what the term meant. But then she complained about Brown by implying that calling someone a ‘bigot’ is ignorant: “He’s an educated person. Why is he coming at me with words like that?” Classic.

In honor of “Bigotgate,” then, let’s all have fun justifiably calling someone or something a bigot today. I pick Arizona’s Russell Pierce. You? Remember: it’s even more fun if the person might not know what the term ‘bigot’ means.

-AS