Martin Peretz Out at the New Republic!

It is not I who first discovered that as one ages past 70 one tends to mess up memory.   I often joke these days that I am still sufficiently youngish with the bull,  essays, and multiple choice, it’s the short answer stuff  which  stimies me at times……usually at inconvenient times……..and for those more experienced in this story  of aging life than I and can laugh about it,  I often can’t remember what I did five minutes ago.

So ….with the name “Marty Peretz” seen  while  browsing through Pajamas Media, I stopped!   “I know that name” I reported to myself.   I probably have a reserve of serveral hundred names in this political business stuff  for whom I can recognize as a political person with a political-social view of some sort.  

Example:   Paul Krugman was a hack, thug, screwball, bigotted writer for the New York Times ten years ago, and has remained roughly  the same except  he has slipped  even from his previous standards of low life writing.  Go to Paul Krugman for a mechanical Marxist oriented recitation void of thought.

Immediately ‘Liberal’ came to memory accompanied with a flicker of pleasantness…..reminding me that  Mr. Peretz was a name for some Liberal I could trust as a thinking person who represents his political positions well…….

“Oh, yes, I thrilled…..He’s the Peretz  at the “New Republic”.    (as with the name, Christopher Hitchens, Peretz is on the list of those I want to know what they are writing about)…. I found the following report by Ron Radosh at Pajamas Media, one of the best, most reliable conservative blog sites available for reliable information and conservative opinion.  Ron Radosh writes:

“Martin Peretz has been a pillar of responsible liberalism since buying The New Republic magazine in 1974.  While establishing himself as a respected teacher at Harvard, he also made TNR into one of the most exciting publications of the post Vietnam era.  Peretz gave graduate students like Michael Kinsley, Leon Wieseltier and Andrew Sullivan the opportunity to establish themselves as important public intellectuals and in return they helped him give a second life to The New Republic, a magazine of politics founded by Herbert Croly and Walter Lippmann in 1914. Peretz defined its unique blend of muscular political journalism and literary and cultural criticism.  By the 1980s, TNR was the most influential small circulation magazine in the country, and unique among liberal publications in its defense of America in a time of Soviet advances and leftish infatuation with the Sandinistas and other totalitarian adventures, and also in its steadfast defense of Israel when the “progressive” attack on the only democracy in the Middle East, which Peretz saw would become a roar on the left, was still just a murmur.

In 2007, Peretz sold TNR to the Canadian media conglomerate Canwest, but retained his position as editor in chief.  Two years later, as the magazine’s circulation continued to fall, he formed a group of investors to buy it back.  Throughout all the changes, Peretz established himself as the liberal the left loved to hate, primarily because of his resolute  defense of Israel in an era when progressives, acting in concert with Islamic extremists, insisted that it was a reincarnation of Hilter’s Germany.  Peretz’s enemies bided their time, waiting for an excuse to isolate and stigmatize him. Their moment came a few weeks ago when he wrote in his New Republic blog, “The Spine,” about how the primary target of Islamist violence is other Muslims.  “Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims,” Peretz wrote.  “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 they will abuse.”

The reaction was immediate.  Leftist commentators from the elite media like The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof denounced Peretz’s Islamophobia.  Students at Harvard picketed him with signs calling him a “racist rat.”  Intellectuals such as Kinsley, Peter Beinart, The New Yorker’s Hendrik Hertzberg, and others whose careers Peretz made, left him twisting slowly in the wind. It was a full fledged public burning that culminated in a recent New York Magazine article titled “Peretz in Exile.” The piece by Benjamin Wallace-Well portrayed Peretz as an intellectual pariah who was unbalanced and ultimately undone by his betrayal of the left, and most of all by his rear guard commitment to Zionism.

Wells broke the story that as of the first of this New Year, Peretz would be stepping down and given the new largely honorary position of Editor in Chief Emeritus. Moreover, it was reported that his popular blog on TNR’s website, “The Spine,” would be dropped from the magazine’s site. This turned out not be true. I spoke to Peretz, who is teaching in Israel, by phone. He pointed out to me that he is actively writing new blog entries — as he has the past few days. Moreover, rumors that he was forced out of the editorship are not true. He was contemplating leaving that post the last few years, he said, and only pleas by Frank Foer and Leon Wieseltier kept him from doing so. Involved in other projects, Peretz feels he had no time for the responsibility and day to day work of an editor in chief, and felt that now was the right time to relieve himself of the job. Moreover, the implication that the Board of TNR wanted him out are also not true; nor were the rumors that they had a controlling share in the magazine and that he had to bend to its desires.