Reader Kiril pointed me to a great piece about Peretz from 1975. He was just as much of an asshole then as he is now:
Peretz gets angry when he hears the accusation that his Zionism was involved in Karnow’s resignation. Karnow is trying to give their squabble more substance than it had, Peretz says. He calls Karnow a “whiner,” “a perpetual malcontent,” and a “kvetch.” Karnow’s expensive habits were a main source of friction between them, Peretz says; Karnow had a predilection for dining in fancy, expensive French restaurants with news sources and charging it to Peretz. Peretz says he was also charged with Karnow’s long-distance phone calls to his friends.
Karnow in reply says that Peretz never raised any issues of expenses with him and that Peretz is trying to demean him in the easiest way. “He’s trying to drown the issues between us in that kind of trivia…his arguments on that subject merely reveal his pettiness,” he says. Karnow also says he has repaid Peretz for everything he owed him.
The next head to roll at The New Republic was the executive editor’s. Peretz was reading Time magazine in his office the week after Karnow quit, he recalls. An article on the events at The New Republic quoted some remarks by Walter Pincus, the executive editor, who specialized in articles on Watergate. (A “Watergate obsessive,” Peretz says.) Time reported that Pincus was disconsolate and would quit soon. Pincus told Time that Peretz was “a guy on an ego trip who doesn’t know where he wants to go.” That was enough for Peretz. As he recalls, he put down the magazine, walked into Pincus’s office and said: “Walter, I read in Time that you say I don’t know where I’m going. Well I know where you’re going–out!”
[…..]Peretz acknowledges that the editors who left the magazine charge him with unprofessionalism, but he bristles, “What the fuck do they know?”
A lot of the criticism of The New Republic these days focuses on its knee-jerk Likudism. But I’ve always found its glib contrarianism much more annoying. I always blamed this on the Michael Kinsley years (it can’t be a coincidence that Slate is exactly the same way). Of course, it was Peretz wanted things that way:
If Marty Peretz were writing an article on the changes The New Republic has undergone since he bought it he would say that he is trying to revive the old tradition of The New Republic or as the magazine said in 1914, “to create a little insurrection in men’s minds.” Peretz says The New Republic had developed a “knee jerk liberal” quality in recent years and that he would like it to be “less predictable without sacrificing its fundamental liberal commitment.”
It’s hard to overestimate the damage this dedication to not being “predictable” or “knee jerk liberal” has done to American public discourse. An enormous number of the “sure you think genocide is bad, but once you get past the conventional wisdom of our hippie overlords blah blah blah” style wankers came out of the Slate or TNR mill — Charles Lane, Kinsley himself, Kaus, Andrew Sullivan (who does this a lot less than he used to) — and that’s not even getting into the ones who took it so far they went completely insane (or were simply insane to begin with) — Barnes, Krauthammer, Kagan, Ledeen, Michael Kelly.
I’m not sure how damage Peretz has done on the issue of Israel. Everyone knows the magazine has been in the bag on that issue for the last 35 years and I don’t think anyone takes it seriously. But by raising a generation of smart-ass, crackpot commentators — who are inexplicably taken seriously in many quarters — he’s done incalculable harm to our society in many other areas.
burnspbesq
As far as I’m concerned, Fallows had the last word on Peretz: paraphrasing because I’m too lazy to link to the quote, young Peretz would have “excoriated” today’s version.
Time has passed him by. It’s time to hang it up, Marty.
El Tiburon
I once was a subscriber – but mainly for the glossy pages.
I found its contrarianism the most interesting aspect of the magazine. Pre-internet tubes (or at least the robust one we have today) it was a good source (for a while) of decent and intriguing articles.
I stick to The Nation and The Texas Observer for my dead-tree reading these days.
Jay B.
They also have Leon W. and I think they used to employ Lee Seigel. They do pompous and overwrought as easily as they do superficial and glib — all while losing circulation for years. It’s quite obvious that the numbers don’t matter as much as who reads it.
I’m totally with you on this one — although i don’t think “smart-ass” is bad.
eemom
@burnspbesq:
how old IS this guy anyway? I mean if he was being an asshole as far back as 1975, I think someone even said 1967, and there was some earlier point at which he was sane?
fwiw I never even heard of him before I started reading this blog.
Robert Waldmann
Kondracke is seriously pissed you left him off the list. It sure happened during the Kinsley years. I blame Peretz, but that’s cause I still like the young Kinsley. Also Kinsley is nowhere near as bad as Kaus — just no comparison. I’d rate Kaus as one of the crazy to begin with (not far right crazy just driven mad by self love).
The interesting thing is that so many people who clearly have oversized egos were willing to suck up to Peretz.
I hear he is even worse in person.
Dan
Kaus-type contrarianism is just about some of the most awful commentary on the internet today, but I do think there are a bunch of writers at Slate who contribute decent analysis. Is Kinsley even affiliated with Slate anymore?
DougJ
@Dan:
I don’t think Kinsley is affiliated with Slate anymore. I agree there are a few good writers there. In fact, I like some of the writers at TNR a lot these days too (mostly Cohn and Chait, but I find other stuff there I like too).
My gripe is that there’s a “house style” at both and it’s glib contrarianism.
burnspbesq
@eemom:
Peretz is 71, so in theory his hate-on for Moozlims and Ay-rabs could go all the way back to the formation of Israel in 1948.
DougJ
@Jay B.:
You’re right, “smart-ass” is a poor choice of words.
Leon W. and Lee Siegel are a bit special cases to me. I think they’re decent as critics (LW of literature, Siegel of art), it’s just that they should never write about anything else. That’s one of the weird TNR things to me — that you can come in writing about fiction and next thing you know you’re a foreign policy expert — but somehow it feels slightly different from the glib contrarianism.
burnspbesq
Trying to imagine Martin Peretz meeting his old lover on the street.
Just. Can’t. Do. It.
Jay
Michael Kelly doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with the other jerks; dude died doing his job.
liberal
@Jay:
We’re supposed to feel bad for him? He supported the invasion, as pointed out by Wikipedia.
sherparick
I loved parts of the New Republic, especially the literary and movie reviews, but Peretz just drove me away. Eric Altermann says it best, he ruined one of the great Liberal institutions in America, (although the Michael Straight years are also a bit troubling due to his being a KGB spy, although an apparently repentant one who ratted out is other friends/spies).
Jay
@liberal-
Yeah, he supported the invasion, and he backed it up by looking at it from the front. No way Fred Barnes would do that.