Nir Rosen did a really shitty thing. Now rightwingers are trying to demolish his reputation on the basis of stupid tweets that revealed anger and gross insensitivity for which he has apologized.
The man’s a wonderful reporter, with great politics. I sure hope people can’t ransack my mind for all the racist and sexist ideas that have tracked their mud through my thoughts– actually I bet they will be able to do so before long, with the next generation of the internet. (And it will be a good thing, actually. I will have to expose all my oldfashioned mean attitudes, and mankind will progress; and so by the way will Jeffrey Goldberg and Elliott Abrams and the fools who pushed the Iraq war have to show what they thought about Israel.) Here’s a good interview of Nir Rosen by Charlie Eisenhood at NYU newspaper:
Why were you compelled to resign from NYU so quickly? Were you asked to step down?
US academic establishments are already under attack from the right, and my Center at NYU stood to be harmed by the pack of dogs sent to take me down, and I did not want to harm a very important center or the work of people I greatly admire.
Do you think your tweets have been unfairly attacked or blown out of proportion?
I think certainly my tweets have been unfairly attacked and blown out of proportion. That does not excuse my lapse of judgment for making them in the first place. I stupidly didn’t think that some crude banter would become fodder for thousands and I was not aware of the right wing attack machine waiting to take me down, nor did I realize, even though I was criticizing the celebrity culture in the media, what happens if you mock one of those celebrities, especially if you do it in such an offensive way as I did.
That said, I find the reactions sanctimonious and silly.
A few crude jokes on twitter do not make a philosophy, they just make you a momentary jerk. I didn’t mean it and I have a record of eight years of risking my life for justice to prove my values. Had I been a right-wing writer I doubt this would have happened to me.
