In the weeks that followed, as the ACLU slapped her school board with a lawsuit and McMillen began speaking to the media, she proved to be a preternaturally mature teen who had unwavering convictions and a mesmerizing self-assurance. “I’m not going to go to prom and pretend like I’m not gay,” she said matter-of-factly to Ellen Degeneres. “Otherwise there’s no point in me going.” Throughout the ordeal, McMillen was charming, sincere — and impressively sane.

In the end, her prom may not have had an entire happy ending — in a twist straight out of a lame teen comedy, the school ended up staging a “secret” prom to which she wasn’t invited. But she still came out a winner. The “Ellen” show awarded her a $30,000 scholarship, she appeared at the GLAAD Awards, and even rode as a grand marshal in the NYC Pride parade. Constance McMillen may not have had the senior year of her dreams, but she got something much better: a well-financed education, the recognition of millions of people across the country and self-respect. And she reminded the rest of us that when it comes to facing down bigotry, there’s no better weapon than a cool head.

Like everybody, he’d made a few jokes about the bloodbath. He’d even brazenly done an opening bit in Leno drag, big chin and all. But on January 14, he went above and beyond. Appearing via satellite on the “10 at 10″ segment on Leno’s own show, Kimmel defiantly, genially ripped the guy a new one. “I have a lot of questions to ask you about this whole thing,” he said cheerily, speaking for everybody at home. And it was more than just crazy chutzpah to then go on to tell Jay Leno — and his audience — that the best prank he ever pulled was that “I told a guy that, five years from now, I’m gonna give you my show. And then when the five years came, I gave it to him, and then I took it back almost instantly.” It was utterly sane.

Kimmel’s “10 at 10″ appearance had none of the usual easy smarm that comes from simply making a crack in a monologue. “This show’s canceled, right? Nobody’s watching this show,” he quipped, right to Leno’s face. Oh, but we did watch. How could we not, as Kimmel pleaded, “Conan and I have children. All you have to take care of is cars. We have lives to lead here. For God’s sake, leave our shows alone!” It was direct, it was pointed, it was brave, and most of all, it was funny as hell. And when the dust cleared, it turned out Kimmel was the guy who best demonstrated that he understands his job as an entertainer is to entertain us. Entertain he did, with a degree of wit and honesty that would ultimately prove the most graceful moment in one of television’s ugliest spats.

In this climate, President Obama would only acknowledge the right of organizers to build their community center near ground zero; he went out of his way not to “comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.” Chuck Schumer, the New York senator with a magnetic attraction to television cameras, clammed up, communicating only vague sentiments through a spokesman. Anthony Weiner, the House firebrand who’s been hailed by many progressives as a model for political courage, spent the summer inventing new and ever-more clever ways to duck the issue. And on and on.

Which is what made New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Aug. 3 speech on the subject so refreshing — and so important. With the Statue of Liberty behind him, Bloomberg went farther than any other major American leader in defending the project, daring to remind listeners that Muslims shared in the pain of 9/11 and linking the construction of the center to our country’s highest ideals. He didn’t just say it could be built; he insisted that it should be built.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans,” Bloomberg said. “We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.”

He added: “The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our Constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

It’s hard to find any political advantage in Bloomberg’s move. Nationally, polls showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans opposed the project. Within New York City, more than 60 percent did. He would have paid no price by staying silent or joining the pile-on; in fact, he might have helped his poll numbers by doing so. Instead, he staked out an uncommonly rational and principled position and stuck with it unapologetically — showing more leadership than the president of the United States. (It was almost enough to make us forget about that whole term limits thing … )

In it he takes aim at groups like the Anti-Defamation League and AIPAC “for scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace” — when that vision clearly does not match reality. ”Morally, American Zionism is in a downward spiral,” he wrote, citing the opposition of American Jewish institutions to “a Zionism that challenges Israel’s behavior in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and toward its own Arab citizens.”

Beinart’s essay met intense hostility from his former allies on the foreign policy right. But he has followed the New York Review essay with a series of columns for the Daily Beast zeroing in on, among other things, Israel’s Gaza embargo, the ADL’s hypocrisy, and the disingenuousness of Benjamin Netanyahu.