Harry Reid: Totally In Touch with America....in the 1960s

That Harry Reid is fairly out-of-touch with modern politics and the needs of the country and his party has been evident for awhile. Still, suggesting during the 2008 campaign that Obama had "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one" really shows an offensive anachronism that makes his other outdated understandings of politics and culture seem harmless. Nothing will come of this, but it does serve as yet another example of why the Democrats need a newer, more in-touch leader at their helm to accomplish the things the party and its voters are by-and-large demanding.

Verbatim Marty Peretz: "I'm Sick of Nancy Pelosi, Her Sanctimony, and Her as Speaker; Maybe She Should Hand the Gavel over to Jane Harman"

Marty really outdid himself this time.

He goes on:

Nancy Pelosi is one of those Democrats who is trying to keep the ghost of George Bush alive so that his dishonesty and bumptioun continue to deflect from what's going on in Washington now.

Have to love this--here's a man who will jump at every possibility for references to Munich getting after someone for remembering a past that is all of 3 1/2 months ago!

Of course, the real reason Peretz doesn't like Pelosi is that she doesn't like torture and she's not entirely in the pocket of Israel. That he would name Jane Harman as a better choice is hilarious. Harman is the California representative who met with AIPAC (the leading pro-Israel lobbying group) and agreed to help kill the espionage case against members of that group lobbying for her to keep her position on the House Intelligence Committee.

But for Peretz, the only thing that matters is the fealty one is willing to show Israel. A secondary concern is how racist you are toward Arabs and brown people more generally. And Harman fits at least the former to a tee.

As commenter charles1649 says:

I can't believe Marty Peretz just griped about someone else's sanctimony. He's been spewing this Israel first stuff for years under the guise of some sort of moral fortitude- making Joe Lieberman look positively nuanced and thoughtful on the issue. Pot meet kettle?

Indeed.

Peretz--Not Only Racist Toward Palestinians!

New Republic owner Marty Peretz's racism toward Palestinians is well documented, particularly by our own former writer Matt Duss. See this example:

I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) "atrocities." They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures. That comparison shouldn't comfort us as Americans. We have higher standards of civilization than they do. But the mutilation of bodies and beheadings of people picked up at random in Iraq does not scandalize the people of Iraq unless victims are believers in their own sect or members of their own clan. And the truth is that we are less and less shocked by the mass death-happenings in the world of Islam. Yes, that's the bitter truth. Frankly, even I--cynic that I am--was shocked in the beginning by the sectarian bloodshed in Iraq. But I am no longer surprised. And neither are you.

And Matt has many more examples here.

But now, Peretz is expanding his game, attacking other brown people as well, particularly the Mexicans. This is what he had to say yesterday about Mexicans:

Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor.

Marty, what about the fact that everyone is lazy? Aren't there some stereotypes from Speedy Gonzalez cartoons you could throw in there too? One could take apart Peretz's stereotypes, but why bother. He's a racist, but a rich racist who owns what used to be one of America's greatest progressive magazines, so he has a soapbox from which to spout hate.

H/t to Lindsay

Peretz

I had to steal this awesome bit from Cogitamus. This is from a 1976 story about Peretz taking over The New Republic.

Martin Peretz, a very wealthy young man who has used his money sometimes wisely and always enthusiastically but not always with satisfying results in politics, contributed to the last campaign of Senator Ralph Yarborough. Yarborough had courageously tried to be an authentic liberal all his life, but because the effort had had to be made within the twisted and oppressive confines of Texas politics, he had himself become somewhat twisted and paranoic. He hated intensely and he admired intensely; after receiving his money from Peretz and talking with him for a while, over beers, Yarborough slammed an arm around his new patron's shoulder and expressed his admiration: "Marty, I like you. I like you lots. Your motivations in politics are the same as mine -- spite and revenge."

That is hilarious. And so so true.

Peretz Just Can't Resist

Marty Peretz, no doubt vacationing in Paris on the dime of his heiress wife, just can't resist a jab at Muslims:

"To be sure, I did not go the banlieues where the vast numbers of Muslims, mostly North African Arabs, have concentrated. Paris center is a segregated city. You have to go far beyond the boulevards of Baron Haussmann even to notice the people who have transformed French society for the worse and stimulated its politics to the good."

It gets even better. When fantasizing about Muslim women, he notes:

"They wore make-up including lip liner and provocative lines around their eyes; their hair had been to a hairdresser at least as expensive as John Edwards."



Zing!!! A gratuitous shot at John Edwards too!

How in the world did this guy get to run (into the ground) a major magazine?

Oh Yes He Did

Marty Peretz on George Soros:

"His authority comes from nothing more than his money."

Hey, but at least it's his own money, right Marty?

Ignatius J. Peretz Has A Posse

Regarding the rather entertaining dustup between Matt Yglesias and a small confederacy of dunces, let me just say, first, that having your views on Palestinian politics recommended by Marty Peretz and Jonah Goldberg is a bit like being hailed as the world's greatest living poet by Jewel and the person who cleans Jewel's pool.

Second, any analysis of the Fatah-Hamas conflict which attempts to ignore or exonerate forty years of Israeli occupation, and the cultivation of Palestinian disunity which has been a central goal of that occupation, is, quite simply, not to be taken seriously. Blaming the factional violence in Gaza on the supposedly inherently violent nature of Palestinian Arab society (which, remember, doesn't really exist, according to Peretz), while turning a blind eye to the myriad ways in which the Israeli occupation has proscribed, manipulated, and handicapped Palestinian political life during the last four decades, is as racist as it is daft.

Peretz Droppings

I know that I cannot be the only one who finds Marty Peretz’s smug satisfaction at the escalating violence in Gaza to be reprehensible, even if it isn’t the least bit surprising. There is literally nothing that transpires among the Palestinians that Peretz will not attempt to use as a prop for his rancid bigotry, as he rehearses yet again the utterly discredited, racist hasbarist myth that “there is no such thing as Palestinians.”

Let's face facts. Only if you are "Eyeless in Gaza" can you believe that these people are a "nation."

And:

There were no Palestinians until there were Israelis. And there will be no Palestine until Israel imposes it. Then it will be a nation-state like most of the other non-nation-states in the Middle East. Yes, a fraudulent nation-state.

More :

Why are men wearing ski masks on the streets of Gaza? So that they will all look alike, and people will think that this proves the unity of the Palestinian people.

It gets worse, if you can believe it :

And, as Steve Erlanger reported, the Palestinian death toll from Palestinian killing rose to 17 on Wednesday. Any bets on high it will go on Thursday?

What kind of twisted pervert thinks, let alone expresses, these sorts of things? And what kind of “liberal" journalistic establishment allows him to get away with, virtually without censure, for so many years?

Today's Clown Show

Marty Peretz, confusing the words "analogy" and "libel":

The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is in the news again. The first time I'd heard of this group was when it picketed our old offices on 19th St, NW, for perhaps a week. I don't recall exactly what provoked them. But, hey, this is a free country: Let them picket to their hearts' content. OK, they made it a bit uncomfortable for staff to get in the building, and the other tenants suffered through dull, rhythmic sloganeering. One thing you know is that any country for which CAIR cares would have locked up the picketers and maybe even tortured them, just for the hell of it.

Since that time, we've run a few articles warning that this is not the ADL of the Muslims. A more apt analogy, though dated, would be the German American Bund to the Nazis or the Labor Youth League to the Comintern. Here, and here.

Now The New York Times has run a story about CAIR and its ties to Hamas and Hezbollah. Not a conclusive article. But still ... .

But still...nothing. Nothing in the Times article which supports Peretz's contention in he slightest. From the article:

A debate rages behind the scenes in Washington about the group, commonly known as CAIR, its financing and its motives. A small band of critics have made a determined but unsuccessful effort to link it to Hamas and Hezbollah, which have been designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department, and have gone so far as calling the group an American front for the two.

...

Government officials in Washington said they were not aware of any criminal investigation of the group. More than one described the standards used by critics to link CAIR to terrorism as akin to McCarthyism, essentially guilt by association.

“Of all the groups, there is probably more suspicion about CAIR, but when you ask people for cold hard facts, you get blank stares,” said Michael Rolince, a retired F.B.I. official who directed counterterrorism in the Washington field office from 2002 to 2005.

But still...nothing. The only thing that the Times story had to say about CAIR's "ties to Hamas and Hezbollah" is that they are constantly asserted by CAIR's critics, and remain completely unproven by anyone. So the article actually is pretty conclusive that there's nothing to the defamatory accusations which Peretz is trying to keep alive through the clever use of ellipsis.

Compounding his dishonesty, Peretz instalinks to two TNR articles by Joseph Braude as if they made his case, when in fact they undercut it. The first is an article about Abdurahman Alamoudi, the head of an entirely different organization, and mentions CAIR only briefly; the second is about the response of various Muslim groups to the July 2005 London bombings, and notes only that CAIR issued an immediate and unqualified condemnation of the attack. But still...Nazis and Communists, according to Marty Peretz.

Sold

Sadly, even though Marty Peretz has sold his remaining share of The New Republic, he will not be retiring to go and volunteer with traumatized children in Gaza. As part of the deal, Peretz will retain the title of editor in chief (and, of course, retain the shiny satin bowling jacket which identifies him as such) and continue to contribute to the magazine in the print edition and, Michael Calderone writes, in "his pugnacious blog, The Spine." Pugnacious, right. In the same way that Ann Coulter is "flamboyant" or Professor Griff was "outspoken."

I guess I understand Marty's requirements here. There's no way he would be able to wait for his semi-annual Wall Street Journal op-ed (for which he's usually brought in to bash some Democrat or Democratic initiative) for the opportunity to reiterate, once again, his view that Arabs are subhuman, their culture stinks, and Palestinian identity is just another word for Jew hatred. Peretz's kind of obsessive bigotry requires a regular forum to be properly and satisfyingly indulged, which, come to think of it, is probably what led him to buy TNR in the first place. Boy, times have sure changed since then (fade in harmonica, creaking of rocking chair.) Back in the 70's, in order to get published in a prominent political magazine you had to work hard, write well, and have something interesting to say. That, or marry someone with enough money to buy you your own prominent political magazine. Here in the future, we possess all kinds of new and wonderful tools which enable us to participate in political conversation in ways that our forebears couldn't have imagined. Broadcasting one's obsessions and advertising one's prejudices is now no longer the sole purview of trained journalists and wealthy cranks.

Andrew Sullivan marks the end of an era with a single tear rolling down his cheek. I can understand that Sullivan has warm feelings for Peretz because Sullivan began his career at TNR, but I wonder whether he would have written such praise for Peretz if, for the past several decades, Peretz's bile and loathing had been directed at homosexuals and gay culture, rather than Arabs and Arab culture?

Eric Alterman has more.