Cogitamus: Richard Cohen - I've Run out of Wankerifics

Cogitamus: Richard Cohen - I've Run out of Wankerifics: Richard Cohen, best described by Atrios as "America's Concern Troll," has outdone himself again today. Yes, today he once again revisits the theme of the awesome maverickiness of John McCain, while asking what has Obama ever done that is admirable?  [Obviously Obama's impressive academic and electoral achievements mean nothing -- he wasn't tortured by the Vietnamese.] And don't tell him about no stinkin' speeches.

Well, the obvious answer is that in the Glorious Summer of War, Obama stood his ground against the foolish invasion of Iraq.  And did so for all the right reasons.  Cohen, grudgingly acknowledges this, but, of course, immediately dismisses it as a no risk gambit for a state senator from Hyde Park.  Obama's decision may look risk free from the post-clusterfuck perspective we can bring to bear in 2008; however, prior to the war this decision appeared fraught with risk for any politician with national ambitions.  Ask John Edwards or Hillary Clinton.  To be against the war was to be a dirty fucking hippy, inviting the scorn of wise men like Cohen, Tom Friedman, Joe Klein, and our other sages of the Op-Ed world.  It was simply not a popular position, despite Cohen's attempt at revisionism.  (Being for the surge, on the other hand is teh awesomest profile in courage yet.)

Once again, Cohen dismisses the fact that McCain has turned his back on virtually all of his previous high profile deviations from Republican orthodoxy.  Once again, no mention of the actual positions of Obama or McCain on issues, because we all know that the next president will have to raise taxes and cut benefits, and in the end, issues don't matter, character does.  Cohen's continued craven sucking up to McCain and his utterly sophomoric world view give new credence to a suggestion by a friend that the Post improve its quality and save money by simply running two blank pages at the end of the "A" Section in lieu of the Op-Ed pages.

A Post writer recently claimed in an online chat that the left blogoshpere's critiques of the mainstream media all essentially boiled down to journalists being either stupid or venal.  I think she left out the all important "stupid and venal'' category.            

Posted by Sir Charles at 07:42 AM | Permalink

From <>:

Matthew Yglesias
(July 29, 2008) - The Unknown Obama (Media): The Unknown Obama 29 Jul 2008 10:04 am One pundit who I guess we can be sure won't be falling out of love with John McCain is Richard Cohen who today writes that he can name more admirable stuff McCain has done over the course of his live than he can about Barack Obama. This turns out to be especially true if you take a question Obama was right about, the decision to invade the war in Iraq, and decide that it doesn't count because he was representing a liberal constituency. But things like John McCain's opposition to a prescription drug benefit for Medicare and his "very early call for more troops" in Iraq do count even though McCain was representing a very conservative constituency. Basically, since John McCain has been alive a lot longer than Obama, if you focus only on the positive actions of both men but refuse to count any of Obama's positive actions then McCain comes off looking much better than Obama. Consequently, to Cohen Obama is a bit of a sketchy unknown figure: I know that Barack Obama is a near-perfect political package. I'm still not sure, though, what's in it. Now in an ideal world candidates for office might release statements, speeches, documents, etc. about their policy ideas. People could scrutinize these ideas. Most people, of course, might be too busy to plow into detail. But a professional newspaper columnist, at least, would be able to sit down and really dig into what Obama is proposing to do on taxes versus what McCain is proposing to do. You could look into their plans for health care and for the environment. All sorts of things like that. And then even a guy with a relatively brief record in federal office wouldn't appear to be such a blank slate. So it's really too bad nobody does that. You would think that with the dawn of the internet candidates could at least put something up on their website under an "issues" tab or something. Oh well.