Thread by @JeffreyASachs

Ever so briefly coming out of Twitter Vacation. I really shouldn't, but today's contretemps are just too contre to pass up. In short, I think The Letter is fine. I'd quibble with some passages, but overall it's a good thing.

However! Let's keep a few things in mind.

After Kristof cancelled Marty Peretz in 2010, a whole wave of then-current and former TNR employees came forward to ruefully admit that, well shucks, they had ALWAYS been aghast at their boss's bigotry, but just didn't feel comfortable saying anything at the time.

(In fact, iirc, @mattyglesias wrote a whole Think Progress piece about TNR's conspiracy of silence over Peretz. Doesn't seem locatable right now, but here's another post, this time in conversation with @jonathanchait, that gets at my point.)

archive.thinkprogress.org/clark-anti-sem…

Something similar happened at NR when Rich Lowry ever so gently showed Derbyshire the door (at @jbarro's urging, I recall). Especially among younger writers, there was a great deal of "Of course I was always embarrassed to have Derb there, but it wasn't my place to say anything."

I expect this sort of thing happens fairly frequently in media. You know, where writers censor themselves because they know that if they were to ever say aloud what they really think about their boss's or co-worker's publicly stated opinions, they'd be fired immediately.

You can see where I'm going with this. On the one hand, the letter makes some important and laudatory points. On the other hand, I'm quite pleased to live in a moment where writers feel comfortable speaking critically, forcefully, loudly about their bosses and co-workers.

In other words, let's not idealize the recent past. The pre-2010 (or whenever) status quo for journalism was not great. It was a time when Marty Peretz could be, as @Max_Fisher puts it, flat-out "monstrous", and everyone there would just cower with fear.

vox.com/2014/12/5/7339…

I mean, just read this stuff. Imagine how it must have felt to be a black or Arab or Muslim writer at TNR. If you had a byline back then and you said nothing, what would you like me to think about you today? I'm seriously asking. How should I feel?

theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Could someone like Peretz or Derbyshire get away with that sort of thing today? Probably, but it'd be harder. That's a good thing too.

Look, none of this is to say that our new, more vicious journalistic age does not bring with it its own costs, its own pathologies. These have been much discussed in recent weeks. I expect they will continue to be discussed going forward. Good.

But again: Something was gained. Something was gained. Because I remember the way that it used to be. The fear, the self-censorship, the ritual abasement in print or at the office Christmas Party. Readers know about this. You journalists get that, right?

All of it usually hidden so carefully from view, which is what made Peretz's cancellation so remarkable. For once, the music stopped. Would that it had not taken thirty-six years!, but it stopped. And then finally, the professional opinion-havers told us what they really think.

That's my point. Something has been gained. And if you can't admit that, it probably means that you would have thrived at TNR.

Now back to Vacation, and this time I mean it.