Jonathan Chait has an overwrought response to my column last week about the hyping of Islamophobia. He writes:

There is an echo here of longstanding, familiar tropes of conservative thought on racial issues here. In the 1960s, conservative organs like National Review opposed civil rights, but most of the opposition came in the form of opposition to opponents of civil rights rather than a straightforward defense of segregation (though straightforward defenses of segregation were made.) The real issue was the smug sanctimony of Martin Luther King, the stereotyping of white Southerners, etc. That particular brand of anti-anti-discrimination conservatism wasn’t so much straightforwardly wrong – sure, you could find examples of sanctimony and reverse-stereotypes — as a wildly obtuse reading of the power dynamics.
Likewise, the notion that Americans who oppose the construction of Park51 are subject to some systematic atmosphere of hate is bizarre. Even if we take Goldberg’s analysis of Hollywood, the New York Times op-ed page or liberal blogs at face value, these organs are, as conservatives remind us endlessly, far more liberal than mainstream America. The idea that we can take the temperature of the culture by examining the Times op-ed page and liberal blogs is hysterical. I’m pretty sure that bigotry against blacks was fairly absent from the Times op-ed page in 1964, too — or at least that condemnations of the white South were far more common. So, I guess that means racism wasn’t a problem in America, either.
A couple days after Goldberg’s column, a deranged man asked a cab driver in New York if he was Muslim, and then stabbed him. Then, amidst mass protests against the construction of a mosque in Tennessee, somebody set fire to the construction equipment, and then the next day somebody shot up the site. Now, this may not be entirely typical of the atmosphere faced by American Muslims, but it isn’t exactly a totally isolated case, either. And the notion that white Christians or opponents of Park51 face a comparable or worse atmosphere is, at this point, a pretty sick joke.

Okey dokey. Rather than get into the weeds, I’m tempted to just pocket Chait’s concession that the conservative critique of Hollywood and the New York Times’ bias is basically correct. But it strikes me as obtuse for him to suggest that somehow these institutions don’t stand for much in terms of the American cultural or political climate. Absolutely, you can’t take the temperature of the culture simply by looking at the New York Times and Hollywood — which is why I didn’t do that, and why I did mention all of those hate crime stats, which the proudly “emprical” Chait conspicuously avoids discussing. But, again, it’s worth noting that if you do want to take the temperature of the culture, looking at Hollywood and the most influential newspaper in the country is hardly a waste of time.

More important, I find Chait’s effort to insinuate that I come from the grand tradition of a racism that doesn’t have the guts to admit its bigotry, to be both insulting and intellectually hackneyed and lazy.

The laziness doesn’t stop there. For starters, he can’t be bothered to point out that the stabbed Muslim cab driver is an opponent of Park51 and the assailant a supporter. That would complicate his narrative a bit too much.

Jonathan might also try to read a bit further outside his comfort zone. Attacks on Christians — because they are Christians – are not as rare as he seems to think. David Limbaugh’s Persecution would be a good place to start. I doubt he’ll be persuaded by Limbaugh’s ideological or religious arguments, but the collection of anecdotes is pretty compelling.

Of course, most incidents against Christians are non-violent (which is also true of most incidents against Jews and Muslims as well). But if a teacher threw a Koran in the garbage or disciplined a Muslim for praying, it would certainly make bigger news — and be instantly cited as proof of a “backlash” by the likes of Chait.

By the way we’re coming up on the eleventh anniversary of the Ft. Worth Church shooting. From Time magazine:

Here is the way one survivor tells it. When Larry Gene Ashbrook walked into the church sanctuary with his guns–a 9-mm semiautomatic and a .380-cal. one–he paused. He had already started a shooting spree outside that left two dead. But once inside he was approached by one of the teens who had been singing along with a Christian rock ‘n’ roll praise band. What the youngster offered the black-jacketed killer was heaven, saying, “You need Jesus.” Ashbrook, 47, answered, “It’s all bulls___, what you believe!” It was only then that he opened up on the over 100 defenseless worshippers, killing five more, wounding seven, creating martyrs.

Of course, Time then spent the rest of the article clawing back this martyr storyline. Indeed, the major ideological valence this incident got from many liberals at the time was how it made the case for gun control.