The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fall Off The Planet, Cohen

Posted on | November 13, 2013 | 28 Comments

by Smitty

Richard Cohen stepped into a pile of ObamaCare on the 11th of November, emphasis mine:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.

One might be tempted to write it off as Maher-tian logorrhea, but then he’s all “Wut? I’m offended anyone’s offended”:

“I don’t understand it,” said the columnist, who lives in New York City. “What I was doing was expressing not my own views but those of extreme right-wing Republican tea party people. I don’t have a problem with interracial marriage or same-sex marriage. In fact, I exult in them. It’s a slander” to suggest otherwise. “This is just below the belt. It’s a purposeful misreading of what I wrote.”

Let’s break that down:

What I was doing was expressing not my own views So far so good.
but those of extreme right-wing Republican tea party people Really? I’d wager you can’t name one.
I don’t have a problem with interracial marriage Neither do the bulk of Americans, if you’d care to Escape From Your Bubble.
or same-sex marriage. Which will always be an oxymoron to me, on a personal level, but if voters choose it, well, there you have it.
In fact, I exult in them. Pictures, or it didn’t happen. Wait. I’m happier sight unseen.
It’s a slander” to suggest otherwise. Speaking of slander, honest Americans would like to forgive you for what you just said.
“This is just below the belt. Isn’t that where you like to, you know, swing?
It’s a purposeful misreading of what I wrote.” I’ve met some Lefties who at least try to argue honestly, Richard. However, the last ten years have revealed a vast crop of bullies who argue in bad faith, and project only the worst intents upon those who don’t agree with them.
While falling short of pigeonholing you, Richard, I will say that, like President Obama, I don’t believe a godforsaken thing you utter, and assert that a position roughly 180° off of your viewpoint is likelier to correspond to reality and truth.
Category: Journalism, Media Bias

Comments

28 Responses to “Fall Off The Planet, Cohen”

  1. KamaainaInOC
    November 13th, 2013 @ 8:22 pm

    RT @smitty_one_each: Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/UoyVPUuQsi #TCOT #P2 #UniteBlue

  2. smitty_one_each
    November 13th, 2013 @ 8:24 pm

    @rsmccain Oh, I see you’d already pummeled Cohen. Sorry. I was irritated enough to double down. http://t.co/76VdWehJLC

  3. jakee308
    November 13th, 2013 @ 8:51 pm

    Poor Richard. He intended to slander Sarah Palin and the TEA Party and the Republicans and Conservatives but somehow his rabid trigger happy fellow traveler victimologist liberal friends decided he was talking about them and that He was a juicier target.

    Ah the Schadenfreude is just dripping off this.

  4. Susannah72
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:05 pm

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/AzXRd8kuu5 (Via @smitty_one_each )

  5. smitty_one_each
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:23 pm

    “Poor Richard. He intended to slander Sarah Palin and the TEA Party and the Republicans and…” — jakee308 http://t.co/q35TmCuq9o

  6. Mike G.
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:33 pm

    Dontcha just hate when that happens?

  7. thatMrGguy
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:33 pm

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/NX6KOcAORo

  8. DavidD
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:36 pm

    What he’s saying is that people on the lLeft have views he still, as liberal as he claims to be, finds unconventional; he insulted everyone on the Left who wants to pretend that their own views are “the new normal”.

  9. The Bearded Bastard of Babylon
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:41 pm

    This is a veritible Zeitgeist Scheißgeysir!

  10. DaveO
    November 13th, 2013 @ 9:46 pm

    Cohen, and others of his generation, like Dowd, are being prepped for Emeritus status by the grandchildren who escaped abortion, but not the heavy disdain that columnists like Cohen and Dowd have for the society they must endure. Cohen should be proud: he is finally to experience a delayed-abortion: his one. And, delivered by a younger generation raised on his every column.

  11. Quartermaster
    November 13th, 2013 @ 10:20 pm

    Condign punishment, sez I. Next comes the survivors of abortion euthanizing the boomers because of quality of life issues. Karma, tit for tat, whatever term rocks your boat.

  12. BeccaJLower
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:08 pm

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/14GNHU47HC via @smitty_one_each #tcot #teaparty

  13. rsmccain
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:25 pm

    RT @BeccaJLower: Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/14GNHU47HC via @smitty_one_each #tcot #teaparty

  14. sokeijarhead
    November 13th, 2013 @ 11:50 pm

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen : The Other McCain http://t.co/qpkcUV3vVf

  15. Adjoran
    November 14th, 2013 @ 2:01 am

    Nice point-by-point dissection. You are late to the party by a few decades, Cohen was already an established regurgitator of the leftist talking points in the early ’80s. If he’s ever written anything beyond boilerplate liberal pablum, it was purely by chance and passed unnnoticed like the rest of his writing.

    That a vacuous fool like Cohen could keep an op-ed column for thirty years at a newspaper the size of WaPo just underlines how very unserious that city has become.

    The Nomenklatura cares little for ideology beyond the recognition that liberal policies feed the Nomenklatura. For they exist not even to serve ideology, but only the Nomenklatura. Their only goal and purpose is to serve and expand the Nomenklatura and resist vigorously every attempt to prune even gangrenous limbs.

    To the extent the Nomenklatura might read Cohen, they would find nothing objectionable in his work. And that’s what every citizen should find most objectionable in it.

  16. ChandlersGhost
    November 14th, 2013 @ 2:11 am

    You mean the Richard Cohen the cuckold?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/richard-cohen-huma-abedin-stayed–and-so-did-i/2013/08/05/1f03cfd0-fdf1-11e2-9711-3708310f6f4d_story.html

  17. LNSmithee
    November 14th, 2013 @ 2:12 am

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen http://t.co/O7UDdbLCE2

  18. Funeral guy
    November 14th, 2013 @ 2:37 am

    You can add the (not missed) Frank Rich, Paul Krugman and Thomas Friedman to your list if progressive hacks who haven’t had an original thought in decades.

  19. Adjoran
    November 14th, 2013 @ 5:10 am

    I disagree on those three. They remind me of Dr. Johnson’s response to one of the many unsolicited works sent to him by aspiring writers: “I found your manuscript to be both good and original; however, that which was good was not original, and that which was original was not good.”

  20. Fall Off The Planet, Cohen | Dead Citizen's Rights Society
    November 14th, 2013 @ 8:32 am

    […] Fall Off The Planet, Cohen […]

  21. Dana
    November 14th, 2013 @ 8:43 am

    Mr Cohen was putting together a straw man argument, which he had to do, because he couldn’t find anybody of note who had published anything along the lines of what he assumed that he assumed Mr de Blasio’s opponents must think, and, gosh, us evil reich-wingers simply must think what he believes we think.

    I’m not a New York voter, but I would be concerned by Mr de Blasio’s policies; those are the only things which will affect other people.

    The esteemed Mr Cohen, telling us what “extreme right-wing Republican tea party people” believe is an hilarious exhibition of his complete misunderstanding of the TEA Party phenomenon. The Taxed Enough Already people were complaining not about whom liberal politicians actually screwed, but about liberal policies figuratively fornicating their wallets. Nancy Pelosi’s and Barack Obama’s and Bill de Blasio’s and Harry Reid’s sex lives don’t concern me; their efforts to dig their collective hands deeper into my wallet do concern me.

  22. Lockestep1776
    November 14th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen: by Smitty Richard Cohen stepped into a pile of ObamaCare on the 11th of November, … http://t.co/AAIJmhJtFg

  23. MrEvilMatt
    November 14th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen: by Smitty Richard Cohen stepped into a pile of ObamaCare on the 11th of November, … http://t.co/8O194B4ObV

  24. jwbrown1969
    November 14th, 2013 @ 10:38 am

    Fall Off The Planet, Cohen: by Smitty Richard Cohen stepped into a pile of ObamaCare on the 11th of November, … http://t.co/nEJRBOheH7

  25. BornOnTheBayou9
    November 14th, 2013 @ 10:50 am

    RT @jwbrown1969: Fall Off The Planet, Cohen: by Smitty Richard Cohen stepped into a pile of ObamaCare on the 11th of November, … http://t…

  26. Federale
    November 14th, 2013 @ 3:01 pm

    Revel in homosexual marriage? Really, why? And was he reveling 30 years ago, or in 2008 unlike Obama?

  27. Bob Belvedere
    November 15th, 2013 @ 4:24 pm

    The thing about the Nomenklatura was that it was both self-serving/position-climbing and Ideological. I still use the word because it describes a type of climber only found among the Ideologues. If you get a Nom drunk, he’ll reveal that he believes his scramble for position is good for the ultimate cause.

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