If you blinked this weekend, you probably missed it.
The New Republic late last Friday retracted a vicious and horribly written opinion article attacking South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as the “Uncle Tom” of the gay community. Incredibly, at least one New Republic editor is now suggesting that the since-deleted article was supposed to be taken as satire.
We recognize “that this post crossed a line,” editor-at-large Chris Lehmann told CNN’s Brian Stelter, “and while it was largely intended as satire, it was inappropriate and invasive.”
Uh-huh.
The since-retracted article, titled “My Mayor Pete Problem,” argued that the mayor is simply not gay enough. It also claimed Buttigieg would likely spend his entire presidency experimenting with sex and drugs and the other supposed gay rites of passage he has not yet experienced on account he only recently came out of the closest. Also, rather than simply call him “Uncle Tom,” the article’s author, gay literary critic Dale Peck, refers the 2020 Democratic candidate repeatedly as “Mary Pete.” Very clever stuff indeed.
Here is just a small sampling from the article Lehman claims was “largely intended as satire”:
Move over, Jonathan Swift.
In place of where “My Mayor Pete Problem” once stood now stands a curt editor’s note that reads: “Dale Peck’s post ‘My Mayor Pete Problem’ has been removed from the site, in response to criticism of the piece’s inappropriate and invasive content. We regret its publication.”
New Republic editor-in-chief, Win McCormack, said elsewhere in a note of apology published Saturday evening that the article should have never gone to print in the first place.
“Yesterday we made a mistake, but we remain committed to honoring the tradition of high standards and journalistic integrity that have been the hallmark of the New Republic for more than 100 years,” McCormack said. “As the New Republic’s owner, I want to extend our sincerest apologies to Mayor Buttigieg, as well as to our readers.”
He added that the op-ed, which was as cruel as it was poorly written, was “inappropriate and offensive.”
Oddly enough, the New Republic is not the first serious news organization to launch such a broadside against Buttigieg. The Outline did the same thing in April when it published an article titled, “Why Pete Buttigieg is bad for gays.” The subhead reads, “Mayor Pete might be the most palatable gay man in America. That’s precisely the problem.”
But the weirdest thing here is not so much the New Republic’s disastrous decision to run Peck’s dreck or the Outline’s own contributions to the narrative that the mayor is simply not gay enough. The weirdest thing is not even the New Republic’s cowardly, marble-mouthed “explanations.” The weird thing is that the high-profile attacks against Buttigieg and his sexuality have so far come from media outlets that most would consider “woke” or good allies to the gay rights movement.
If you told me in 2016 that the lion’s share of opposition to a gay presidential hopeful would come from left-leaning newsrooms, I would not have believed you. Yet, here we are.
