I can’t sleep again, so I am sitting here actually reading all of the comments, and I have to say, some of you all still have not learned. I worry that some of you never will, or if there is just a sort of decency in the liberal DNA that keeps you from figuring this out.
This is not the fucking time to say “Can we all just agree that Richard Cohen is an asshole and move on?” Haven’t y’all been doing that for several decades (I’m kinda new to the cause, having converted late)? How has that worked out? Moving on and not talking about him has meant several more decades of talking about him. How about we once and for all do something about it?
This is what shocks me over and over and over again. Wingnuts, at any perceived slight, go for the throat- and more often than not they get the head. Don’t believe me? Ask Phil Donahue and Ashleigh Banfield and Dan Rather and David Schuster and on and on and on. And those are just media folks- you could start with Shirley Sherrod and work your way through public servants all the way through academia down to the smallest most insignificant guy working for ACORN. They go for the kill.
And here, we have an allegedly well-meaning guy who just wants to translate to the 75% of un-enlightend Americans why interracial marriage is unconventional dead to rights, and folks wanna say “Let’s just move on.”
No. I’m not ready to move on. Moving on means moving forward, and moving forward means rejecting the status quo and working towards something better. And we can’t move forward until folks like Richard Cohen and his ilk are put out to pasture. If you want to change shit, do it one shithead at a time. I’m tired of waiting for David Broder to die while Fox News elevates Karl Rove.
Because I’m beyond sick and tired of putting up with this crap, and I’m done moving on.
Redshirt
We need scalps.
John O
He should be humiliated in to retirement. Duh.
In other news, this just popped up on my Yahoo! news feed:
“GOP to try to impeach Attorney General Holder.”
We live in some strange fucking times.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Kick ’em until they fall down, and then kick ’em until they can’t get up.
John O
But it doesn’t matter in this case, John. Cohen is a “liberal.”
There’s no win to scalping one of “your own.”
Richard Cohen: Get off my lawn!
David Koch
Schuster taken down by the Hillbots.
dollared
This. And Lara Logan next. We really, really don’t need to be reasonable. We need to fix this country, and we have to fucking start somewhere.
David Koch
@John O:
/fixed
mclaren
Cole is right — as usual. The dismissals I’m hearing on this forum are the progressive mirror image of Peggy Noonan’s ““Sometimes in life you just want to keep walking,” referring to the Yoo torture memos.
No, we need to push back on this shit hard. R*E*A*L hard. We need to grind these punks into hamburger and flamethrower the grease stain off our pavement.
Ripley
Exterminate all the brutes.
cmorenc
@John Cole:
So what do you suggest we all do about Richard Cohen, beyond writing some very stern letters to the editor of the Washington Post? It’s not as if we can threaten to cancel our subscription to the Washington Post, since so very few of us have one. And Richard Cohen has written so many embarassingly stupid columns, it’s going to be hard to embarass him into quitting.
We have to get his drinking buddies at the Post, the ones who have coddled him through all those idiotic posts he’s written, into gently turning on him and suggesting he can still come to their parties and poker games if he retires.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
So what you’re saying is that you’re not ready to make nice?
John O
@David Koch:
I was kind of thinking how politically stupid that would be…in a, “Look! A squirrel!” kind of way, iffin’ it gets any traction. In the vernacular, it would pump some proverbial oxygen back into the ACA vacuum room.
So the modern version of the House GOP will probably go for it.
cokane
hear hear.
fuck that asshole
piratedan
I await eagerly with anticipation your campaign to remove Mr. Cohen from the Op-Ed pages of the WaPo… please regale me with the strategy that will compel the rest of the village to purge him from the ranks of the circled wagons and cocktail weenies.
Not saying it can’t be done, just curious as to how you’re gonna do it.
Omnes Omnibus
@John O:
No, he is not. That is the point. Cohen is an establishmentarian. He will defend it whether it is right or wrong. I don’t want him associated with my side.
Omnes Omnibus
@cmorenc: Do what TNC did. Make him an embarrassment. Someone who should not be taken seriously.
wasabi gasp
operation prime shipping
John O
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know he’s not, OO, thus the quotes around liberal.
Your description is apt. I would just call him a whore for what he selfishly thinks were “simpler times.”
I hope I’m not that un-self aware when I’m 72. For sure I won’t have a fucking WaPo column, though.
mclaren
@piratedan:
If enough people cause a big enough stink, even the biggest organization starts to pay attention. Mass email campaigns, call-in campaigns, letter-writing campaigns, threats of a boycott, cancelled subscriptions…that’s a start.
Whatever, do something. Just don’t sit there in that standard liberal “learned helplessness” mode whimpering we can’t do anything it’s hopeless hopeless hopeless.
wasabi gasp
Funk Factory – Rien Ne Va Plus
handsmile
Urge Eugene Robinson to write a column addressing his WaPo colleague.
Patronize Barnes & Noble (and urge friends/family to do so) this holiday season.
Make a contribution to Strike the Debt (it won’t do anything about Cohen’s on-going employment at the Post, but you know it would piss off him and Fred Hiatt).
that’s the best I can came up with before now going to bed…..
Viva BrisVegas
Liberals are liberals because their first reaction is to not go for the throat. The essence of Liberalism is reasonableness. Note the root of that is “reason”.
This is the distinction between Liberals and Conservatives, one reasons and the other rants.
If you changed that then we wouldn’t be Liberals anymore, maybe Libertarians (ugh) instead.
Anyway wasn’t the whole point of Cohen’s article that the Tea Party was not racist, because racism was a conventional response to things they don’t like and conventionality can’t be racist.
That sounds so amazing stupid to me, that maybe I was reading it wrong.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s not how the GOP does it. They call up one of their billionaires and have them threaten to bury the paper if they don’t fire the guy.
We have entirely too few billionaires to do our bidding.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Well, we don’t have the billionaires. So mockery and making sure the person can’t be taken seriously ever again is our option. Or have you thought of something else? I am open to suggestions.
JordanRules
@? Martin:
“We have entirely too few billionaires to do our bidding.”
Why do you think that is?
Nora Carrington
@Omnes Omnibus:
This, exactly. There’s nothing quite like a TNC smack down to make the point plain. No one with two brain cells, no matter how weaksauce, can read that piece and not get that “context” and “intent” are both utterly beside the point.
If you can’t call nausea at the modern American family racism on its face, Full Stop, then you’re too clueless to live let alone get paid to think and write.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: All of my better suggestions are felonies. Only billionaires can take effective action without running afoul of the law.
piratedan
@mclaren:
I’ve worked phones and donated time and cash to causes locally and nationally (as has been noted on this site in the past)…. If you want to embark on a campaign to remove this guy, by all means feel free to do so, love to see it happen, I’m all for the shame tactic, just that it’s tough to shame folks like these because of their willing obtuseness and the amount of wagon circling that takes place inside the beltway, but by all means go for it.
I would like a few scalps just as much as the next guy, but YOU don’t get to sit on this thread and subject me to a purity test…. you poniless wonder
mclaren
@Viva BrisVegas:
There. Fixed that for ya.
mclaren
@piratedan:
shorter piratedan:
Duly noted.
JordanRules
The sleep window is eluding me tonight too. Nothing new and annoying still.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin: Sorry, I just don’t accept that the only way to win is to break the law. We have had the Progressive Era, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and the New Frontier. Legislative victories for the good guys. Let’s fight for that again, ne c’est-pas?
Anne Laurie
Yeah, well, I would be the first to applaud Richad Cohen’s removal from the Washington Post — or better yet, his banishment from the Polite Discourse brigade entirely. But Cohen is a distraction, a jackalope, a rodeo clown, what Weigel calls an “outrage muppet”. Cohen is the shiny flappy object, the sudden nasty smell, meant to distract us from the real media criminals — at the moment, IMO, the rightwing ratfvckers who so very nearly succeeded at pumping the latest Benghazi lie, via Lara Logan, into the ‘what all serious people know’ category.
Sure, let’s call for Cohen’s dismissal (for all the good that’s liable to do). Cohen’s only readership is the vanishingly small number of poltical junkies looking for confirmation of their own biases… mostly, I strongly suspect, leftwingers and center-leftists like John G. Cole and the followers of JGC, looking for an adrenaline burst of righteous outrage. Meanwhile, something like a hundred thousand times as many MSM newscast viewers have watched Lara Logan promulgate very specific multi-media lies about a specific geopolitical incident, lies intended to weaken not only President Obama but the entire Democratic Party and the modern Foreign Service.
Let’s not permit the ratfvckers to turn CBS into another pukefunnel unimpeded, because we’re busy circulating petitions to Jeff Bezos about his least useful employee.
mark
Hell yes! Sign me up. I;m ready
Stan
@Viva BrisVegas:
Sums it up perfectly.
Fred Fnord
I’m all for seeing the hind end of this damfool. But… really? This is the fight you pick? If you want to go for someone’s throat, and for some reason you don’t want it to be a Republican politician, or a weak-ass Democrat, why not pick a journalist that is read by more people than fit in a phone booth? Friedman, maybe. Douthat. David mother fucking Brooks. What will winning this fight buy you, aside from an underpants gnome fan club membership card?
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred Fnord: Why should this be the only fight?
Jewish Steel
I think John’s point is that this one is dancing in the crosshairs begging to be put of his misery. So let’s not get squeamish.
piratedan
@Anne Laurie: sorry Anne, that’s not pure enough :-) /////
John Cole
@Anne Laurie: I’m with you. The connections between Logan and her husband would have melted the kerning off anything in 2004. And as bad as CBS is, I actually think the Disney folks at ABC are worse.
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah, but those periods all accompanied events terrible enough to cause the masses to finally give a shit. Basically, we win only as a byproduct of suffering and destruction. That also got us Obama and all that came with him. That also got much of what Bush wanted as well.
What destruction and suffering should we tolerate for the next great leap?
Omnes Omnibus
@Fred Fnord:
Casual racism has no place on our side of the aisle. To the extent that Cohen purports to be on our side of the aisle, and he does, he needs to be pummeled. This doesn’t mean that others aren’t deserving of a pummeling as well.
JordanRules
@Anne Laurie: The media is the common denominator here. There is a direct line from Cohen to Logan. One where she sees her cushy career and retirement plan laid out on a platter of priviledge via this insane profit industry masquerading as a vital 4th estate. Where certain behaviors are rewarded and highlighted in haughty editorials more is sure to follow. Mediocrity and wink/nod-approved framing will continue to reign in support of this corpratocracy.
They are so related that it’s hard to understand anything less than total disdain for the entire operation, our so called-press.
Omnes Omnibus
@? Martin:
Well. let’s just give up then. Right?
? Martin
@Omnes Omnibus: Yeah. I’m having an amazingly shit day. Maybe I’ll have a better outlook later.
wasabi gasp
Azealia Banks – Liquorice (Explicit)
jenn
I don’t think Cohen should be allowed off the hook – by all means, let’s humiliate the clueless bastard. But the utter moral bankruptcy of Lara Logan concerns me far more, because she purports to be a journalist rather than an opinion-writer. If we have enough outrage to aim at both, by all means, let’s do it – but if we think we’re going to have to pick our battles, I think we have to aim at Logan and CBS – not because Cohen doesn’t deserve it, but because of what Logan/60 Minutes claims to represent.
JordanRules
@Omnes Omnibus: No, we can’t give up but when I picture that long moral arc of the universe bending towards justice I can’t help but think it serves their purposes if we keep having to fight the same battle over, not ever really moving towards more justice. Don’t know what the answer is. If we can’t make the greater strides thru incremental progress and instead find ourselves incrementally repeating the same battles then we need to really rethink some things. There are certain baselines that should be fucking settled by now. And a relatively small powerful group is making sure they aren’t by using all kinds of tactics. 99% staticism is required to enable progress for 1% apparently.
jenn
@Anne Laurie: See, if I’d just scrolled down a bit further, I could’ve just said: This.
Villago Delenda Est
John is looking at this like a warrior.
Which is appropriate in this situation.
These people are not just people we disagree with.
It is their intention to destroy everything that’s been accomplished over the last 80 odd years. Social Security. Civil Rights.
These people want to destroy the modern American state and bring back their country.
The Confederacy. Which was crushed by Union armies 148 years ago.
It needs to be crushed again, this time with the same fervor and zeal that were employed to crush Nazi Germany and Militarist Japan.
No surrender. No retreat.
Nellie in NZ
The comments section at the Wa Post is a cesspool.
But, I submitted on Cohen’s column and an article about the controversy, trying my best to both mock him and also to call for him to be shoved out of his job.
Small potatoes but this was what I could do from here.
karen marie
@piratedan: A contest to redefine his name a la Santorum, then google bomb it in conjunction with Wapo. Childish, I know, but it will for sure leave a permanent mark.
Sourmash
Spot on John. And team, read what Cole says; if you want to change shit, do it one shithead at a time. Logan or Cohen? Doesn’t matter, pick one and don’t stop until they stop breathing.
NotMax
Pretty much a universal sentiment between about 45 and 55. After that age, it tapers off.
Adopting tactics one in the same breath decries and couching that in “but our side is in the right” mumbling still erases a vital distinction.
Point out and hammer about how wrong or how repugnant something/someone is? Absolutely. tatter their credibility with refutation by way of fact, example and experience? Certainly. But the politics of personal destruction carries a woeful cost to both the destructee and the destructor.
Move forward (which is different from moving on), yet never forget what has been encountered on the journey. Both the high road and the low road may exit at the same spot; choose wisely which road is the correct one, as both are one-way paths.
Calming influence
You know the first, simplest, and very helpful thing progressives could do in this direction? That would be, like maybe when someone like Alan Grayson decides to go a little nukular and invoke Nazis or some shit to describe what he sees going on in the House? That simplest, easiest, non-complicating thing we could do is shut the fuck up. That’s right, just no-comment no-analysis no-“I agree with his anger but I don’t care for his tone” fucking silence.
Real war is ugly. Wars of words are orders of magnitude less so, but if even that makes you squeamish, please suck it up and do your part in the war effort. It’s not hard. Just shut the fuck up.
FonzieScheme
Another thing liberals can do is to KEEP FUCKING HARPING ABOUT IT, you bunch of lazy-ass quitters. Also, don’t write the editors, write the advertisers, you fucking morons. Sheesh. It’s like people forget about all the times boycotts of sponsors actually work in the real world.
Volume solves a lot of problems, and if the Post realizes it can’t keep Cohen on its staff because of the additional ire, scrutiny, and loss of revenue he’s bringing the paper, they’ll shitcan him right quick and everyone will know it’s because of his history of offensive columns. Tolerating it means that you don’t think it’s a problem.
raven
yawn
TheOtherWA
See, this is why I love you, JC. We libs are so concerned about being better than the cons we make it easy for the shitheads to keep causing problems. We need to be as ruthless as they are and take a few scalps.
joel hanes
A generation ago, the Republican Party abandoned all scruple and embraced the abyss.
Later they became the abyss,
and the Democratic Party has had a looong deep look, and when you look into the abyss …
MikeJ
Is gagging at the sight of an interracial couple “conventional”? The Crown would like to call Mr Wreckless Eric. In 1977, he stated that when he was a young boy his mother said to him, that there’s only one girl in the world for him and she probably lives in Tahiti. Note that he was 27 at the time of this utterance 36 years ago, and was recalling statements presumably made at least 20 years before that. Over 50 years have passed since the initial utterance until today.
Furthermore, he states that:
I should be lying on that sun-soaked beach with her
Caressing her warm brown skin
And then in a year or maybe not quite
We’ll be sharing the same next of kin
In 1977, not only did brown skin not disgust one of the whitest men then extant, but it didn’t disgust his mum.
JPL
Washington Post has another story about CBS news and their latest healthcare story. TPM highlights the important parts of the article. link Maybe CBS and Washington Post can get into a spitting match. This is good news for Rupert Murdoch.
@raven: Good morning. The new pup is adapting to his new home. I have to get a video of his peeing. He pees while walking on his front legs. In the morning it takes about sixteen steps to empty his bladder.
Anya
That’s weird. What happened to my comment?
raven
@JPL: Ha, lil dude will get it eventually.
Schlemizel
What do you propose we do Johnny?
I have been a street fightin’ liberal for something like 50 years and in all that time I really don’t remember ever getting a scalp. Oh sure, the GOP likes to claim it was liberals that brought down Nixon be we all know that it was his own megalomania and the nations common decency that did that.
I have written letters, made phone calls, sent emails, participated in boycotts and gotten others to do all those things too. Through all those years and many various attempts to demand heads roll for shit like this there is not one time it happened. Not. One.
Get used to it, its a feature of life on the light side
Anya
@raven: Seriously? Racism is boring? Saying that the sight of interracial family makes one gag is boring?
I really don’t get this reaction or saying that Richard Cohen’s comments are a distraction. What Richard Cohen said and the views he absolved are what makes it okay for the police to profile and shoot young black men without any ramification. They are the reason discrimination in housing, employment and all aspects of life is tolerated. If you and others think this is not worthy of outrage then that makes me think that you do not understand the issue fully. You cannot comprehend how dehumanizing it is that your whole existance can make someone nauseous.
Kay
I think what’s missing is who Cohen is really talking to, who he’s really agreeing with or defending. In all of the pieces I have (now!) read linked here on BJ, he’s ostensibly defending a person (Gingrich) or group (the Tea Party, older conservatives) but by doing that he’s also backing the people who back the Tea Party and Gingrich, and the people who back them have a lot of money and are powerful.
When he says this in the Washington Post:
he’s not defending rank and file Tea Party members, because they don’t read the Washington Post. He’s defending all of the financial backers and “respectable” (and powerful) Republicans who may not carry confederate flags but back every bit of the Tea Party or hard Right agenda.
When he says Gingrich is concerned about the “urban poor”, that isn’t directed to GOP voters it’s directed to powerful and influential people who approve of Newt Gingrich but are uncomfortable with Gingrich’s sleaziness and constant career-long dog-whistling. He makes them respectable.
And that’s why he doesn’t get fired.
patty \
A-freakin-men!!!!
MomSense
@JPL:
A new pup!! Hooray!
MomSense
Go after the advertisers. That is how we got rid of Glenn Beck. A lot of us called the advertisers and said that Beck’s stink sticks on them so we won’t shop there anymore. We got rid of Buchanan the same way. We also got a bunch of companies to leave Alec.
I have no idea who buys ads at WaPo but that would be the place to start.
Can’t believe I didn’t start with this, but I plan to tell Amazon that I won’t order anything from them including this Christmas if they still have that racist POS writing at their newspaper. Cohen reflects on amazon now.
Kay
I do think it’s great how pundits like him used to be able to pull off writing all kinds of nonsense like how the (relative) pittance we spend on aid to the poor was this huge threat to American values and by doing so pretend they were brave and bold liberal contrarians, when really they were just agreeing with and reflecting the opinions of powerful and wealthy people. Now they get called on it constantly. Which is great.
Comforting Newt Gingrich and the people who back the Tea Party and assuring them they’re not racists is not bold and brave, and it shouldn’t be mistaken for bold and brave.
MomSense
List so far
Amazon!!
BankofAmerica
Capital One
Conrad Hotels
SteveM
Replace “Richard Cohen” with “Lara Logan” and I’m with you. Substitute “Fox News” and I’m with you times a million. Unlike Cohen’s columns, Logan’s story actually affects how this country is being governed right now. And Fox — don’t get me started. In a way, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are the co-presidents of the United States, and have been (with Limbaugh) for a generation.
I sometimes think the left should boycott the Murdoch empire — all of it. I mean not just Fox News and The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post but The Simpsons and Glee and all Fox movies and all HarperCollins books — the whole media empire. That would be an appropriate response to the sheer quantity of toxins Murdoch pumps into America.
Compared to the cancer Fox is responsible for, Cohen is just a tiny whitehead on America’s ass.
Botsplainer
@Calming influence:
Alan Grayson always sounds like a dumbass whose face needs a fist jammed into it, repeatedly.
He is a fucking human cartoon. Our version of Louis Gohmert, if you will.
MomSense
Chevron
Waspuppet
@cmorenc: Stern letters to the editors of the Washington Post are the equivalent to what the right wing does every day. It works – after all, not many of them subscribe either.
About as well as the same advice worked regarding Rush Limbaugh.
MomSense
Avis
IBM
Jeep
Land Rover
Aflac
Patricia Kayden
I agree with you John, but wonder how to go about pressuring Washington Post to fire Cohen. I’ve written to the Ombudsman to challenge the Post’s handling of Romney’s request to back off certain stories last year. I guess I could do the same about why the Post is allowing Cohen to spew racism on its editorial pages. Doesn’t seem like much but if everyone lets the Post know that Cohen must be fired, I can’t see how they can ignore us.
raven
@Anya: Well excuse the fuck out of me for not giving a shit about this asshole and endless goddamn blabber about him. And fuck McMegan and Sully while I’m at it.
El Cid
@Omnes Omnibus: If a variety of people on the ‘liberal’ side look like they aren’t too bothered about a supposedly ‘liberal’ columnist spouting complete utter obvious racism continuously, it sends a clear message to both non-whites and Republicans that they don’t mind it so much when it comes from ‘their’ side.
And if then they get really mad about some opinionmaker for some other reason — say, for saying something bad or even untrue about Obama — it looks like they are immoral hypocrites who care only about protecting a politian or party.
This is obvious.
Shitbags like the Washington Post‘s editors keep on worthless, mindless shits like Cohen precisely to keep an in-house ‘liberal’ to mouth right-wing platitudes from the ‘liberal’ side.
He will never be applaused by the right, and at least his value as Fred Hiatt’s establishmentarian mouther of the right for the ‘liberal’ side could be undermined.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What makes you think Cohen isn’t just trolling to get attention to himself and the Washington Post?
debbie
@Kay:
What Cohen is, is an enabler. And like Judith Miller and others who enabled Bush/Cheney’s romp into Iraq, he must be held accountable. To paraphrase, with freedom of speech comes consequences.
Anya
Some of you are still not getting it! It’s not about Cohen and getting him attention, it’s about naked racism. Minimizing it makes you an accomplice.
Racism is not a small thing to joke about. These ideas affect lives, impact on policy and have ramification for way this country is being governed. If this is tolerated why wouldn’t voter supression and all forms of racism be tolerated?
I just cannot understand how every decent human is not as revolted as John by Cohen’s disgusting racism.
I just give up.
Ksmiami
@jenn: @Villago Delenda Est: exhume Sherman’s body and destroy them
Violet
Thanks for this post, John. I was thinking much the same thing yesterday when people said they didn’t want to talk about him. The point of talking about him is to show that this column isn’t an isolated incident and to make him an embarrassment to keep around.
WereBear
It can be pretty simple.
We are right.
We should act like it.
Kay
So The Washington Post chooses to deliver the boring conventional boilerplate media lecture to de Blasio today on “school reform”, where they misrepresent test scores that they don’t know how to read or interpret and urge him to follow Bloomberg’s lead on teacher-bashing and privatizing public education.
and this is the first comment :)
Patricia Kayden
@Kay: Good first comment. Doesn’t let WP off the hook and keeps the pressure on.
Patricia Kayden
@Anya: No need at all to give up. Enough people are disgusted with Cohen that I’m sure a lot of pressure is being put on WP to take action against him. His latest racial outrage was all over the place. I don’t see him walking away scott-free.
bemused
There is no lack of bitter complaining here about our Dem legislators not taking a stand, their reluctance to loudly call out Republican liars, being too mamby pamby in general. I don’t see a difference from commenters who want to stop talking about conservative assholes and move on. It is either a common trait among liberals or we expect more from our elected legislators than we do from ourselves.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And Lara Logan’s boss at CBS is a former VP at FoxNews. I think it was DougJ (?) who said CBS is deliberately chasing the old white men who will still tune in to networks news. And the WaPo has a story about CBS pimping a fake story, following (once again) selective leaks from Darrell Issa.
And speaking of selective leaks from Issa, at least Logan is experiencing some pushback. Did anyone outside the blogosphere raise a peep about Jonathan Karl? I suspect Karl is socially better connected than Logan. “Jon Karl an incompetent partisan hack? Why, unpossible! We coached our sons in PeeWee soccer together!”
Gypsy Howell
Reposted from an old dying thread:
I didn’t follow it that closely at the time, but is there proof, beyond Logans own account, that she was sexually assaulted/gang raped in Egypt? Not trying to be inflammatory but just wondering now that she been exposed as a liar with an agenda. Interesting too that she was the only “American” journalist present when US soldiers pulled down the statue of Saddam, and that turned out to be a piece of propaganda too. All of a sudden her Egypt assault story has a whiff of Jessica Lynch to me.
gvg
Pressure on the advertisers may help so it’s worth naming his employers and his advertisers. We’ll have to keep a list though and he isn’t the only one we should monitor.
this still may not work right now, so if it doesn’t I do think it will help if we persistantly and thoroughly correct the idea he is liberal. We can say he calls himself liberal but doesn’t hold those views. We should also refer to him as the racist Mr cohen and if questioned be prepared to remind people why. He may be “hurt” but golly gee that comment was clearly racist.
Grayson lost his first reelection attempt at least partly because he was rude to constituants. People like my parents who worked hard to get a Dem elected when they were so mad at Bush & company’s screw ups, got really personally offended at the guy after he was in office. He is not just offensive to mad dog Republicans…he drove supporters away too. It’s his overall personality. That’s a flaw he needs to fix or he’s going to lose a few more. I don’t think he is electable unless his opponent is nuts which granted is a real possibility at this time.
We do need to get some of the real toxic people out. I don’t think we can really do much of this unless we can promote better media to prominence and financial sucess. The financial problems of newspapers and lack of profit is making it hard to get good quality news. At this time all I can suggest is telling people about careful sources like Al Jazeera and??? We need to kill off things like Fox and can’t do that unless there is something better.
Villago Delenda Est
This, right here, is so chock full of outright lies that my head spins trying to count them all.
It was SO obvious, five fucking years ago, that the entire teabagger movement wasn’t REALLY about taxes, or the deficit…it was about a Democrat winning a presidential election, and the Democrat happened to be a guy with a lot of melanin, which drove these fucking people batshit insane.
These people are “deeply troubled” that they can’t have their fucked up way…that they can’t impose their version of the pronouncements of their invisible sky buddy on everyone else in this country, totally contrary to its founding document.. They’re pissed that the descendants of slaves are not casting their 3/5 ballots to reinstate slavery, and outraged that the totally fucked up US health care “system” is being mildly reformed to cover anyone but them, as they rail from their government paid for hoverrounds.
Richard Cohen speaks for them.
Trinity
Thank you John! Well said.
debbie
O’Keefe’s back:
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obamacare-navigator-fired-over-undercover-video-showing-her-encouraging-applicants-to-lie/
The local Fox affiliate ran this last night, saying that “it’s clearly been edited, and O’Keefe’s gotten into trouble for this kind of thing before, but…”
am
The saddest part is that it should be _so easy_ to get Cohen. Bezos bought the WaPo. How can he possibly be happy to have his name and the Amazon.com brand associated with that racist garbage?
kc
@Gypsy Howell:
Oh no. Logan is awful, but do not go there.
Pen
That may be your definition of liberal, but don’t mistake it for a universal definition. You’re setting up a false choice here, that in order to be a liberal you must reason with your ideological opponents, that you can’t “go for the throat”. If you do you’re, at worst, a conservative and, at best, a libertarian.
Bullshit.
You know why I’m liberal? Because it’s fair. It supports the findings of science. It ensures that my 4-year-old son has the chance to grow up in a world that isn’t filled with banana republics, robber barons, and religious wars. I’m a liberal because I believe that, left unchecked, humanity will quickly find itself ruled by sociopaths.
Are all conservatives sociopaths? No, but their leaders are. As a function of the behavioral norms bell-curve they’re inevitable. They’re the ugly byproduct of empathy, and they need to be crushed every time they’re discovered.
If you aren’t willing to fight, if you think that “reasoned discussion” will always win, you’re just setting yourself up to be steamrolled by those willing to get their hands dirty.
Another Bostplainer
Cohen is a dick, but he is a distraction. The real damage is being done by “people” like Logan and the right-wing framing of news stories on the ACA rollout. As usual Democratic politicians roll up into the fetal position instead of going on the offensive. Its hard to get scalps when you’re curled up sucking your thumb. Where is the Democrat who will stand up in Congress and go after Logan or the shitty ACA reporting? Has it happened yet, I haven’t seen it. Every goddamned Democrat on the hill ought to be screaming for Logan and her enablers to be fired 24×7. That’s how you get a scalp, you don’t get it by passing a bill to undermine the ACA.
beth
@debbie: Clearly those “navigators” are conservative plants who got those jobs just so they could be filmed breaking the rules.
I had dinner with a friend who brought along another friend who’s an owner of a few sandwich shops. He was bitching about Obamacare (even though we finally determined it didn’t affect his business) and then his wife pulled up in a brand new Lincoln SUV which this idiot had no trouble telling me was a “business expense”. Why can’t we get undercover video of all these masters of the universe bragging on how they cheat the government on thieir taxes and other ways? Maybe if we see them all going on and on about how they cheat on their taxes we could get some real tax reform done. I’m tired of fighting fair. Maybe O’Keefe’s enough of a grifter to take on this job if he got paid enough.
Kay
@Another Bostplainer:
The law always needed a congressional champion; someone to take ownership of it and advocate for it.
I agree with you. It’s their work. They have as much a duty to defend and explain it as Obama does.
We saw how effective an ally in Congress can be for Obama when Reid played bad cop to Obama’s good cop in the shutdown battle.
Schumer is a “safe” Democrat and he’s a good talker and he’s not afraid to be blunt. I don’t know why they can’t pick someone to be the law’s main advocate from Congress. It just makes sense.
Another Bostplainer
Exactly, I am so frustrated with the non-response to all this nonsense.
Gypsy Howell
@kc:
Like I said, I didn’t follow the story closely when it happened, but is there a reason I should not question her version of it? She’s a person with an agenda. She’s proven that she’ll present lies as truth for propaganda value. Why does she get a pass on this?
Kropadope
@Anya: Disgusted? Yes. However, let me put it this way. Point to something our MSM is doing that isn’t disgusting.
Kay
@debbie:
Once again, I would like to see the outrage if any of the media people who promote O’Keefe were featured on one of his edited videos.
It is NOT FAIR for media to promote these videos. They’re not an accurate record of what transpired. They would not promote this if the people smeared by O’Keefe were in any way powerful or wealthy or famous.
Pretending that a video is somehow more reliable than O’Keefe himself is nonsense. They KNOW the videos are edited, yet they continue to treat these works of fiction as fact. It’s ethically wrong. It ruins reputations.
All if says to me is that they don’t give a shit about the reputations or lives of the low level people ALWAYS targeted by these smears. Would they promote an edited video of a wealthy or powerful or famous person? If not (and we know they wouldn’t) they shouldn’t do this to ordinary people.
Why does media have two sets of rules for reliability of information?
debbie
@beth:
Speaking of plants, is there any indication that any of the programmers were Conservatives willing to screw up the ACA Web site?
Tone in DC
@Schlemizel:
I have been a street fightin’ liberal for something like 50 years and in all that time I really don’t remember ever getting a scalp. Oh sure, the GOP likes to claim it was liberals that brought down Nixon be we all know that it was his own megalomania and the nations common decency that did that.
Not true.
Scooter Libby did actual jail time before that pardon. Pat Fitzgerald was a g00per appointee.
Charles Keating also made some license plates.
Bob Livingston, thanks to Larry Flynt, of all people.
Robert Bork (the country dodged a bullet there, in 1987).
Armstrong Williams and his “news videos”
There are others, I just can’t recall them. Sometimes a bit of vitriol and stubbornness can move things forward.
Patricia Kayden
@Another Bostplainer: Yeah, I’m beginning to not care about Repub shenanigans re the ACA given that Democrats aren’t even strong enough to support the ACA vocally and loudly in Congress, on television and throughout the media. Why does the President have to do every dang thing by himself? Why aren’t Democrats proud of the great accomplishment of passing a healthcare law that no other President could pass despite prior attempts? Why aren’t they out there disputing Repub lies about the ACA as vigorously as Repubs are out there spewing their lies?
It’s almost like Dems are mice and Repubs are cats. Democratic politicians really need to grow some spines. That’s why although he’s not perfect, I love Grayson. At least he appears to be fearless and speaks his mind. We need more like him.
NotMax
@Tone in DC
Libby never received a pardon. His sentence was commuted.
schrodinger's cat
Didn’t Cohen pen some egregious op-eds about candidate Obama in 2008 after the Rev. Wright fracas? Something, something Nation of Islam?
Kropadope
@Pen: The trick with that is partially in how the words liberal and conservative have been warped in our discourse. Reason should be a conservative value and should have no bearing on liberalness.
The American left seems to currently be dominated by conservative liberals, while the right is dominated by radical liberals. We’re showing up to a chess match which our opponent is treating like a knife fight. Frankly, I don’t mind trying to be well-behaved as the world falls down around me. There is a well-behaved way to resist these awful people like Cohen and Logan. Cole actually gets to that with suggestions such as letters to the editors. However, he comes dangerously close to suggesting we should fight just for the sake of the fight. This is what I and many other people find so off-putting about the Republicans.
We, for the most part, have the high ground. Why cede it? Perhaps it’s not producing results as quickly as you may like, but getting down in the mud with the pigs feels like taking a step backwards AND we’ll be fighting on their turf.
scott
As usual, John is right. Conservatives have spent at least the last 50 years ruthless working the media refs for any and all real or actual transgressions. The result is that they got a more pliant press which doesn’t challenge them very much and leaves dangerous ideas and assumptions unexamined. Liberals and progressives don’t do that, and the results are predictable. I don’t admire conservatives for their beliefs, but I do admire the fact (as John attests) that they actually believe the things they say they believe and are willing to go to the wall for them.
Kropadope
@scott: They have a more pliant press which more and more people are walking away from every day.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
Because they can…it’s the classic finger on the scales con.
They must be watched…and the watchers have to accept that they must be watched, too.
Paul in KY
@? Martin: Alas, most of my best ideas are felonies too.
Redshirt
The Dark Side of the Force clouds everything.
celticdragonchick
@karen marie:
That is entirely feasible. Suggestions?
MikeInSewickley
On target.
I’ve said for over 20 years that we’re in a bar fight with the wingnuts. If they have us down, they wouldn’t yell – “Winner!” and help pick us up.
When we have them down, we need to beat them until they spit blood.
All this crap is just a distraction from how the powers that be are using the ancient Roman way of keeping the populace unaware – “Provide bread and circuses and they won’t notice what’s happening to them.”
I’m getting old and tired of this and don’t see better times for my kids. Beat Cohen down to the ground till he doesn’t want to do get up in the morning and write more crap.
Pen
@Kropadope: Being well behaved is always the preference but,if someone brings a knife to your chess match, pull out your damn knife and deal with the problem. Quite frankly I don’t see the “common citizen”, even a large number of them, being able to do much to directly neutralize the actual puppet-masters, the oligarchs and religious leaders. The same can’t be said for their puppets and every time one of them steps over the line it’s practically our moral imperative to eliminate their influence by any means necessary. Call or write their editors, attack their advertising supports, dig up their secrets… Everything that can be done to legally take these bastards down is fair game.
You may be willing to stick to chess while the world burns, I’m not. That attitude went out the window the moment my wife said we were expecting. What little comity I had went out the window as well when even my ‘loving’ grandmother started ranting against the evils of the ACA,even though it is the only thing standing between my insurance and kicking my preemie off insurance for life.
For my family this fight isn’t abstract, it is a literal fight to the death. They win, they get their way, and my son’s life is in danger. I won’t tolerate that and I will destroy anyone that advocates those positions by any means necessary.
Liberty60
There isn’t any magic bullet that can get Cohen fired tomorrow.
But a constant drumbeat of outrage directed at the media, specifically calling them out on their class warfare, of being the elite courtiers of the powerful can work.
“Liberal media” took about 30 years to pay dividends.
Right now we have the advantage on racial fairness, sexism, and same sex rights- but pressing the message of class – speaking the word, CLASS, repeatedly, injecting it into every discussion, forcing the nation to address the word and the issue, can work.
I notice how often wingers turn even mundane local elections (like the mayoral race of Wasilla, Alaska) into referendums on hot button national issues like abortion/
Class needs to become our abortion issue, our gun control issue,the red meat thing that gets the base fired up.
Maybe starting with tweets and pictures of media types dining at the same restaurants as the Beltway politicians (after airing propaganda on cutting SNAP) , ambush interviews with them as they drop their kids off at private schools (after airing Michelle Rhee style school reform propaganda); cell cam footage of them mingling at a cocktail party with K Street lobbyists.
Make it personal, make their world an unpleasant place to be, make them visible as the enemy of Joe and Jane Millenial, the coveted advertiser demographic.
For starters.
celticdragonchick
@Gypsy Howell:
1) The pictures of Logan’s bruised face were circulated.
2) We really do not need to restart the “nuts and sluts” line of questioning whether a rape happened
3) Jessica Lynch was gang raped and beaten nearly to death. She is permanently disabled and will live in pain for the rest of her life. She had nothing to do with the fanciful story made by Army officials.
Joel
@piratedan: Well, share Coates’ article for one. Let people know about this guy. I mean, really know about this guy.
Liberty60
@Pen:
Amen.
I think people like me, who grew up in the 70’s and were assured of a world in governed by basic fairness and a social safety net , don’t really grok the ferocity needed to win these nice things.
If we faced a GOP of Howard Baker, Lowell Weicker, and even Bush Sr., we could probably use the modest civil methods. Except we don’t.
We face a coalition of plutocrats and white nationalists, who would happily turn America into the Handmaid’s Tale.
Our fight is more akin to the labor organizers of the 20’s and 30’s or the civil rights organizers of the 50’s, or gay rights organizers of the 70’s.
We need a Harvey Milk, a Malcom X, a Walter Ruether.
Another Bostplainer
@Liberty60: Two of those guys were shot for their troubles. Some women in Texas had a get together to talk about guns and you see what happened there. Legislators in Colorado were re-called for their stand on guns. The threat of violence against liberals is ever present.
Kropadope
@Pen: What about walking away while pointing out to everyone watching what a fool the guy standing there with a knife is?
Tone in DC
@NotMax:
He was still convicted in the first place. That was the point.
NotMax
@Tone in DC
If conviction was the point, why not say so and instead incorrectly state he was pardoned?
Original Lee
We’ve been talking about cancelling our subscription to WaPo for a while now. I think now is the time to do it, and use racist Richard Cohen’s recent columns as the reason.
Pen
@Kropadope: The only thing disengaging from the conflict does is ensure that your opponent is the one left to influence the crowd. “Be the bigger person” might sound great but, in reality, it’s little more than a way for people that are being walked over to feel good about themselves.
Liberalism never accomplished anything by walking away. The 40-hour work week, social security, desegregation, gay rights. I can’t think of a single liberal accomplishment in this nation that was accomplished without confrontation. I’m personally of the opinion that Liberty60 is right: our fight today has more in common with the pre-civil war erra or labor fights of the 20’s and 30’s than it does with any sort of ‘live and let live’ period in our history.
Can you really sit back and not go after the people disenfranchising voters to maintain power, who are attacking the healthcare system to bring back lifetime caps and insurance deregulation, who seem to want perpetual war at the expense of the social safety net? Can you do nothing to fight against the oligarchs turning the 4th estate into perpetual racial and class-based propaganda? Will you “take the high ground” when, every day, our nation further entrenches the rights of business over it’s own citizens?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. These are what we’re up against, and if you don’t engage them they win.
Kropadope
@Pen: Well, I was only around for one of those fights, gay rights. It seems we’re winning that fight by being correct and being patient. Every glitter bomb was a set-back. Winning slowly is better than sacrificing the progress you made for an emotionally gratifying tussle in the mud with your opponent (where they have the advantage).
Gypsy Howell
@celticdragonchick:
Jessica Lynch was most certainly not gang raped and nearly beaten to death. She was badly injured in an ambush when her vehicle flipped over, but the wargasm propaganda about her treatment by the Iraqis and rescue by American forces have long been debunked, including by her. Yet obviously there are many out there, including yourself, who still want to believe the original fabricated story.
J R in WV
I’m proud to say that I have never patronized any of the companies identified above as advertisers at the WaPo. Just Luck, tho.
Mostly the same for Rush Limbaugh’s advertisers. Although I did write letters to Home Depot and a couple of other companies, who wrote back to assure me that they were making changes in how their ad buys were handled to prevent their name from being associated with the Limbaugh show.
I agree with those who said we should never let up. I expecially think video editor O’Keiffe (or whatever the dick’s name is) should be followed around by a small group of folks with truthful signage about his video “work” – for various meaning of “piece of work”. How has that dick been able to avoid being bankrupted by libel/slander suits?
sharl
@Liberty60:
This boomer enthusiastically endorses your statement.
dollared
@Kropadope: Right. You really don’t fucking get it, do you? Gay rights happened because the 1% wanted gay rights. It didn’t cost them any money.
It’s about the fucking money, and it will take a fucking streetfight. Get on the bus to the fight or get out of the way.
srv
ahem:
Like I said last night, the John Cole bloggers of the Left need to put their money where their mouths are.
Kropadope
@dollared: Speaking of which, wasn’t one of the watershed moments of the Civil Rights movement when a woman sat in the front of a bus, then politely complied when asked to move, then politely complied with the police when they were called despite her previous compliance? Good behavior can make a strong point. If she had fought and not been an all-around upstanding citizen, we likely never would have heard of Rosa Parks.
TheOtherWA
@Tone in DC: Libby never spent a day in jail. He reported to the prison to be processed, then Bush commuted his sentence. He lost his right to vote because he’s a felon, but that’s about it.
burnspbesq
You empower jackalopes like Cohen by giving a shit about what they write.
I’m out of the business of empowering jackalopes.
You’re welcome to your opinion, John, but you’re wrong on this one.
Pen
@Kropadope: yes, and one of the other watershed moments was seeing Bull Conner sic police dogs and fire hoses at protesters on national tv.
Nonviolent protest isn’t the only tactic that’s valid and, depending on your opponent, it’s not even valid all the time. The strikes of the labor rights movement was, in many ways, similar to the civil rights era sit-ins. You know what the response was? Things like the Thibodaux massacre and people like the Pinkertons.
We’re facing the same power dynamic now; do we really think the modern day
PinkertonsTea Party “patriots” give a rip about civility? No, they want to crush us.You don’t win against people like Cohen’s puppet masters by ignoring them or walking away, you win by hitting them where it hurts. You hurt their reputation, their pocket book.
Kropadope
And I said going after them with letters and even boycotts is fine. It’s the “scalp count” mentality. Pick your fights and wait for the right opportunity.
celticdragonchick
@Gypsy Howell:
Her medical records are a fact. She did not want the details included in her book, but was pressured by her ghostwriter, unfortunately. Also, I note that you cannot answer the other points I mentioned.
Mandalay
@John Cole:
Really? Then you need to post that you have terminated your business relationship with the owner of the Washington Post.
Failing that, you lack any credibility.
nastybrutishntall
Boycott the paper, refuse to link, refuse to mention, until he’s fired. Anything else is weak sauce.
taylormattd
@mclaren: You spend 99% of your time making common cause with republicans for the sole purpose of taking down democrats. So you can go ahead and fuck off too.
Gypsy Howell
@celticdragonchick:
Are you talking about Lara Logan’s medical records? If so, then I concede, if these have been well documented.
As I said, I didn’t follow Logan’s story closely when it happened, but once the veneer of reliability has been cracked, it always makes me wonder how much of everything I’ve heard before is in fact a lie. That reaction served me pretty well in the Bush years- you could pretty much count on every single utterance coming out of the Administration and its attendant propaganda mills as being an outright lie or some pretty serious spin. And actually, it was the Jessica Lynch story that first opened my eyes to scope of what was going on. I actually remember the moment when the official Lynch story started falling apart that I realized with some horror “holy shit… it’s ALL a fucking lie.”
This is not about “blaming the victim” in a rape case — this is about questioning a documented liar and propagandist’s every word. But again, if the account of Logan’s rape / sexual assault has been incontrovertibly documented (and I’m not saying it hasn’t, only that I don’t know if it has or hasn’t), then that’s of course another story.
Mandalay
@Gypsy Howell:
Putting aside the honesty of Logan, and not doubting her courage for a moment, one thing is for sure: CBS were massively reckless and irresponsible in placing her in that situation, however willing she may have been. This is Logan’s description of what occurred:
Assuming all that is accurate and true, how the hell did CBS manage to place their star reporter in a highly volatile situation, and then lose her for 25 minutes? Did they not have any security for her? If there was security, what did they do? Nobody could have predicted what would have happened, even though there had been many prior reports of women being groped in Tahrir Square during protests?
CBS just seemed to get a free pass on all that.
different-church-lady
@mclaren:
What, no drum circle?