It has become a staple of an increasingly openly bigoted movement in America to insist on their right to bigotry while simultaneously expressing outrage at anyone who actually calls them on it.

For all their complaints about affirmative action, the right-wing is benefiting greatly from what can best be described as an affirmative action media policy, otherwise called "balance."

The Clinton/Maddow spat is just a passing fancy. But the nature of Clinton's defense of himself says something deeply depressing about the shifting center of gravity of political discourse in an era of historically high levels of inequality.

Marty Peretz apologized for saying he wasn't sure whether Muslims deserve the same rights as other Americans, but refused to apologize for having said that "Muslim life is cheap, especially for Muslims."

Poverty is at a fifteen year high and inequality at an all-time high. And yet it has become a more-than-respectable mainstream view that we're too far in debt to spend more money. This version of respectability is deeply informed by class.