Yet another progressive is reaping praise and honor for easy words unaccompanied by difficult deeds. 

Peter Beinart, a fixture of progressive punditry ever since he joined the New Republic decades ago, is garnering hosannas (a mensch!) for confessing that he, too, has enjoyed what he calls affirmative action in "The Atlantic: Reflections of an Affirmative-Action Baby," with rending of figurative garments:

White men from fancy schools advanced quickly at the New Republic. Asking how much of their success was due to race, gender, and class would have meant asking the same of myself. ...

White men from fancy schools advanced quickly at The New Republic because that's who the owner and editor in chief, Marty Peretz, liked surrounding himself with. He ignored women almost entirely. There were barely any African Americans on staff.

Beinart is feeling guilty.  And he recounts various sins he must account for.  So brave!

But accountability has its limits and doesn't seem to involve anything much more than verbal self-flagellation.  Ethan Epstein at The Weekly Standard calls out Beinart's empty virtue-signaling:

[T]he piece ends on a rather discordant note. "What kind of journalistic career would I have had without affirmative action? A less successful one, probably," Beinart winds up in anguish. "Ensuring that I am never again complicit in an institution that tolerates sexual harassment means embracing a world in which I lose some of my undeserved advantage. Only by doing that can I offer the women of the New Republic the apology they deserve."

It's profound, moving, self-critical point: Beinart realizes he must surrender some of his privilege. I don't doubt his sincerity at all. So, to truly begin to remedy the injustices that Beinart so eloquently elucidates in his piece, there can only be one solution: He must resign from his role at the Atlantic, and from the City University of New York, where he holds a professorship.

The world is zero-sum, particularly at strapped institutions like magazines and public universities. Each dollar that Beinart receives from the Atlantic and the CUNY is one dollar that could be going to less privileged women and people of color. Beinart, as he admits, was born on the equivalent of third base; he didn't really earn his prominent role through merit.

The ball is in Beinart's court.  Don't count on any sacrifice on his part.