For anyone who doubts that there is a double standard regarding racism in the U.S. media, read Marty Peretz's blog post (New Republic, 6/19/10) on the "crooked little emirate" of Dubai, in which he glibly comments that "Arabs are deft at disguising reality."

Peretz will certainly be able to continue to freely publish his anti-Arab screeds with little condemnation, yet Helen Thomas was pushed out of her job and rebuked by President Obama himself (AP, 6/8/10) and some pundits (FAIR blog, 6/14/10) for her comments telling Israelis to "get the hell out of Palestine" and to "go home" to Poland, Germany or the United States.  Thomas promptly apologized (FAIR blog, 6/9/10) and announced her retirement, but Peretz has written similar rants in the past regarding Arabs and Muslims that didn't raise many eyebrows.  Apparently, anti-Arab sentiment remains an acceptable part of the discourse on the Middle East.

Here's Peretz again, in language that was later scrubbed from the New Republic's website without comment (Salon, 3/6/10):

There were moments--long moments--during the Iraq War when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right.  Go ahead, prove me wrong.

One more from Peretz (New Republic, 3/19/10):

Alas, in the Middle East, it’s mostly continuity and cruelty. This is a culture so unhinged by modernity that it clings to its crippled civilization. And who will tell me that the civilization of the Arabs, the civilization of Islam, is not crippled?

Where's the media outrage on this one?

(H/T Matt Yglesias.)

Glenn Greenwald (8/27/09, ad-viewing required) of Salon's series of New Republic quotes morphing from condemning a perceived "anti-Lieberman jihad" to calling for "knocking off Democrats like Conrad and Joe Lieberman" charts the outlet's "rapid and total reversal--one effectuated without the slightest acknowledgment that it even occurred."

Calling the change "just the accountability-free nature of Beltway punditry," Greenwald also spies "a more important point highlighted here":

namely, it is a sign of how dysfunctional the Democratic Party is--and how meaningless is their glorious super-majority--that even the New Republic, which long prided itself on safeguarding the party from nefarious left-wing influences, is now calling for "centrist" Democratic senators (even including Joe Lieberman) to be thrown out of office by means of primary challenges (I believe that was once called a "purity purge"), even if doing so results in a loss of Democratic seats. [TNR editor Jonathan] Chait's rationale is that allowing "centrist" dominance within the party means that the same corporate interests (rather than the interests of constituents) and the same political agenda end up being served regardless of which party is in control, meaning that--as he put it--even "a filibuster-proof Democratic majority isn't worth having" because nothing meaningful changes. You don't say.

But, notes Greenwald, "that, of course, was exactly the motivating premise of those who sought to remove Joe Lieberman from the Senate in 2006." Those were "the people Chait demonized back then as 'left-wing fanatics' who 'refuse to tolerate any ideological dissent.'"

Writing on Salon (5/31/09, ad-viewing required) of the "controversy surrounding Jeffrey Rosen's New Republic anonymity-driven smear attack on Sonia Sotomayor's intellect and character," Glenn Greenwald sees more evidence that

the one trait that defines establishment pundits more than any other is a pathological inability ever to accept blame or admit error. That's because they work in the most accountability-free profession in America, where people like Bill Kristol (with a record like this) and Jeffrey Goldberg (with a record like this) get promoted despite no retractions or remorse, and establishment media stars in general can pretend that they bear no responsibility for enabling the abuses and crimes of the Bush years. And all of that is simply an extension of the prevailing ethos that political, financial and media elites should be immunized from accountability in general--which is why the Beltway elite class collectively scoffs at the very notion that there should be any consequences at all when our highest political leaders commit the most serious crimes.

Greenwald recounts for us how, in the New Republic's latest contribution to "that grand accountability-free tradition," Jeffrey "Rosen blames everyone but himself for what he did, but then melodramatically announces that he will no longer 'blog'--as though it's the medium, rather than his own standards and choices, that are to blame for what he did."

Jonathan Schwarz has a quick post (3/27/09) over on his A Tiny Revolution blog asking readers, "Have I Lost My Mind?" or "is it really true that the New Republic published a 6,000-word profile of Larry Summers" that wondered if "Summers might appear to have less to contribute on the bank and credit-market front" since "his exposure to Wall Street over the years has been limited."

Schwarz has to ask how it was possible to print that passage

without mentioning Summers spent several years as a managing director of D.E. Shaw, one of the world's largest hedge funds?... That's such an incredible dereliction of basic journalism that I wouldn't think even the New Republic would be capable of it.

A New Republic editorial (3/4/09) about the decline of the mainstream media points a finger squarely at media critics:

The master narratives of both the right and the left have come to include the same villain: the hypocritical, biased elite media. And their combined grouching has helped foment the anti-media backlash.

Both sides do it--now there's a new one. The magazine uses Bernie Goldberg's skimpy (and error-filled) book Bias as an example of right-wing media criticism, then moves on to the left:

A mirror version of this critique emerged on the left. In this telling, it was the timid, lazy press corps that failed to rigorously challenge the president's core (mendacious) claims about his tax cuts and rationale for heading to war. Very valid criticisms. But these specific objections morphed into populist broadsides against what the left came to describe as "the mainstream media"--avatars of establishmentarian groupthink who bend to the latest conventional wisdom emerging from D.C. cocktail parties and neurotically fret that they might be just as biased as their conservative critics allege.

It's hard to know what to say about this, but let's try to find our way through the thicket. Left critics accuse the media of failing to challenge the Bush White House on the Iraq war and tax cuts. That's not the problem, even for the New Republic--those were "valid criticisms."

No, the problem is that this valid criticism has somehow "morphed into populist broadsides" against the media (which somehow the left recently took to calling "the mainstream media," in quotes because there's something suspicious about the name).  If that's not bad enough, the press is routinely criticized for being "avatars of establishmentarian groupthink who bend to the latest conventional wisdom emerging from D.C. cocktail parties."

It's hard to see how this caricature of left press criticism is any different from the "valid" criticism of the Bush White House--in fact, it's mostly the same thing. Corporate media rely on Beltway insiders to dispense Beltway conventional wisdom. The sales job on the Iraq War was an example of that, not an exception (though it may have been a rather extreme example).

The New Republic warns that this kind of anti-media rhetoric

creates a poisonous atmosphere. By assaulting the credibility of the press, it destroys its authority in the culture, giving cover to politicians who would rather avoid dealing with reporters in the first place.

If you believe that an overreliance on government spokespersons and official sources is part of the problem, then it's hard to lose much sleep worrying about politicians who will "avoid dealing" with the press. As for destroying media's "authority in the culture"-- well, one can only hope.