Last week Politico's Michael Calderone wrote a piece about the left-wing "Journo-list" listserv set up by the American Prospect's Ezra Klein. There are several hundred members, including left-wing bloggers, mainstream reporters, members of the administration, and their hangers-on. The communications are all off the record, but Klein assured Calderone that the forum is nothing more than a place "where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely."
Mickey Kaus got his hands on one of the discussions inside what he calls the "secret liberal media email cabal." The issue: Whether or not the New Republic editor and owner Marty Peretz is an inveterate "crazy-ass" racist. The participants include Chris Hayes, Eric Alterman and Katha Pollitt from the Nation magazine, Matthew Yglesias from the Center for American Progress, and New Republic writers Jonathan Chait, Issac Chotiner, and Clay Risen. Alyssa Rosenberg, a correspondent for Government Executive and occasional contributor to the New Republic, also pops up in the discussion. The emails are all dated March 24, 2009.
Chait defends his boss and chides the other members of the group for the "junior high quality" tone of the conversation. He also questions whether the others have the courage to make their charges in public. Hayes says he'd be "more than happy to call Marty Peretz a racist to his (electronic) face." Hayes has written for the New Republic several times in the last year.
Chait says in his email that Peretz is attacked on the list "2 or 3 times a week," and another New Republic staffer, Jamie Kirchick, seems to be attacked so frequently that Alterman casually uses his name as an epithet.
This has all the makings of a boffo reality show. Call it High School Musical IV: Journalism Class.
