In The New Republic, literary editor Leon Wieseltier has accused Andrew Sullivan, the magazine's former editor, of anti-Semitism for writing this sentence about Bill Kristol, after Kristol questioned Barack Obama's faith:

"A non-Christian manipulator of Christianity is calling a Christian a liar about his faith."

Those words prompted Wieseltier to write,

Ponder that early adjective. It is Jew-baiting. I was not aware that only Christians can judge Christians, or that there are things about which a Jew cannot call a Christian a liar. If Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew. So this fills me with a certain pascal wrath. Nice litle blog you have there, Obama boy. Pity if frogs or locusts should happen to it. Let me people be!

To which Sullivan responds,

To be called a “Jew-baiter” in the pages of a magazine I was once proud and honored to edit, and which I love and support, is an extremely wounding blow. It is also untrue and unfair.

…I agree wholeheartedly with Leon that, “if Kristol is wrong about Obama, it is not because Kristol is a Jew.” It is because he is a cynic about faith, and a ruthless partisan indifferent to the truth when it cannot be harnessed to the wielding of power.

….when accusing someone of “Jew-baiting,” a writer might be a little more careful in his own use of language. I am 44 years old, a former editor of the magazine Wieseltier works for, married, and adult. And yet this is the tone of Leon’s scorn: “Nice little blog you have there, Obama boy.”

Little? Boy? African-Americans and gay men have had one thing in common over the decades and centuries. When we are being put in our place by our superiors, we are called “boys.”

Just for the record, I’ve had my tiffs with both of these writers. But on balance, I think Andrew is a very sweet guy who truly wants to do what he can to make the world to be a better place, while Leon, for all his many gifts and a truly remarkable mind, is not particularly interested in improving the planet, and moreover, can be one of the meanest people I’ve ever encountered, particularly when he harnesses the power of his pen to conjure insult.

Not for that reason, however, I’m going to take Sullivan’s side on this one. Perhaps his criticism of Kristol was inartfully phrased, but Andrew’s no anti-Semite, and any hint therein was certainly not deliberate.But Wieseltier’s “Obama boy” language was artfully phrased—a play, of course, on YouTube’s “Obama girl,” and at the same time deeply patronizing, and, yes, possibly homophobic—and its double meaning was very much deliberate. All of the double meanings in Leon’s prose are deliberate; he does not leave accidents within his work.

That said, I think Andrew was wrong in his criticism of Kristol, whose column doesn’t seem so objectionable to me. I disagree with it, but I don’t find it offensive….

The conclusion? It’s Hillary’s fault. The nastiness with which she has infused this campaign is spreading; she is dragging all of us down into her gutter.

I’m half-joking about that. But I’m half-serious, too…….