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.

There’s another important point to be made that’s particular to the gay marriage context.  The unwillingness of opponents of gay marriage to have their opposition made public demonstrates the hollowness of the dramatic rhetoric their movement employs.  The “why does this matter to you?” question is a difficult one for opponents of gay marriage, as Jonathan Chait demonstrated last year in The New Republic when he convincingly took apart any argument against gay marriage based on anything beyond simple discomfort with homosexuality.  As much as opponents of gay marriage talk about heterosexual marriage being the backbone of our society and the fight to protect traditional marriage as being the real civil rights battle, the unwillingness to publicly state these views when there could be reprisals shows that they are not taken seriously even within the anti-gay marriage movement.  To the extent that there are actual threats being made against opponents of gay marriage, they cannot be nearly as serious as the threats faced by Civil Rights activists in the 1960s.  But because African Americans actually had their freedom and their welfare at stake, Civil Rights leaders and activists fought for their rights in the most public ways possible, whatever the costs.  If opponents of gay marriage truly believed that allowing gay marriage would have the dire consequences they claim, there would be no shortage of brave activists willing to publicly take this stand and suffer whatever consequences may come.

-AR