His name may not sound familiar, but Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is no stranger to pissing off lots of people and adding fuel to race, sex and gender debates instead of putting out the fires.
In short, he is not in the business of extinguishing any type of tension. And that was evident, once again, in his latest column in the Post, which was his attempt to evaluate the misunderstood Republican Party. Instead, he basically suggested that all conservatives hate interracial marriage and lesbians.
But not just hate them…Cohen said that the thought of an interracial family was gag-worthy to conservatives. And he justified that gag-reflex to just being conventional…not racist. HE BASICALLY DEFENDED RACISM BY SAYING THAT IT WAS JUST NOT THEIR CONVENTIONAL IDEA OF AMERICA!
Dude. That’s racist. Here’s exactly what he said:
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.
Anyone else angry?
But this isn’t Cohen’s first time. In fact, we’ve rounded up a few times he’s stirred the pot and needed to have a seat.
Several at that – take a look.
That time he defended George Zimmerman, suggested the killing of Trayvon Martin was justified, supported the stop-and-frisking of young black males and justified America’s fear of the black male…all at the same damn time:
I don’t like what George Zimmerman did, and I hate that Trayvon Martin is dead. But I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize. I don’t know whether Zimmerman is a racist. But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.
Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news.
Those statistics represent the justification for New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk.
Read the rest of the column, here.
That time he connected Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance to the Steubenville rape case:
She’s a cheap act, no doubt about it, but for me her performance was an opportunity to discuss one of the summer’s most arresting pieces of journalism — a long New Yorker account of what became known as the Steubenville Rape…
So now back to Miley Cyrus and her twerking. I run the risk of old-fogeyness for suggesting the girl’s a tasteless twit — especially that bit with the foam finger. (Look it up, if you must.) But let me also suggest that acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels. What is being celebrated is not sexuality but sexual exploitation, a mean casualness that deprives intimacy of all intimacy. Cyrus taught me a word. Now let me teach her one: She’s a twerk.
Read the rest of the column, here.
That time he argued that Americans don’t care about race. It’s irrelevant:
We should never confuse unfair with illegal. Still it would be nice if every once in a while they coincided. That is especially the case in matters such as this because the justification for affirmative action gets weaker and weaker. Maybe once it was possible to argue that some innocent people had to suffer in the name of progress, but a glance at the White House strongly suggests that things have changed. For most Americans, race has become supremely irrelevant. Everyone knows this. Every poll shows this. Maybe the Supreme Court will recognize this.
Read the rest of the column, here.
That time he blamed the spread of AIDS on “disgusting” gay males:
Tragically, this juvenile reasoning partially accounts for the apparent upsurge in HIV infections among gay males — and the emergence of a virulent new strain that has health officials plenty worried. Simply put, it is the determination of some gays — a minority, but a substantial one — to disregard all the rules for safe sex because being gay, they think, means you don’t have to follow any rules at all. That’s just plain dumb…
But while gays clearly have their enemies, that should not mean they are immune from criticism. The fact remains that a portion of the gay population — maybe 20 percent, Kaiser estimates — conducts itself in ways that are not only reckless but just plain disgusting. Unprotected, promiscuous sex in bathhouses and at parties and using drugs such as crystal meth to prolong both desire and performance are practices that should be no more acceptable for gays than for heterosexuals. Gays don’t get some sort of pass just because they’re gay.
Read the rest of the column, here.
That time he supported sexual harassment and then wanted you to forget that it actually happens (when discussing Clarence Thomas’ indiscretions). Well, one of the many times:
In elementary school, some kid must have plastered a “kick me!” sign on Clarence Thomas’s back — and it has never been taken off. Every 20 years or so, some woman surfaces to accuse the now-Supreme Court justice of being a male chauvinist pig — to resurrect an old term from the tie-dyed era — but falls frustratingly short of making a case for true sexual harassment. Thomas stands nearly alone on the court in his shallowness of his scholarship and the narrowness of his compassion. But when it comes to his alleged sexual boorishness, he stands condemned of being a man…
I have nothing against McEwen, but I hope her book fails to find a publisher. Some of this is self-protection. I was young and boorish once myself and have turned out to be a veritable saint. I venture to say we all did and said terrible things when we were young, which is why nature protects the elderly with failing memories. I want to forget both Hill and Thomas. Let us media types let go of this story. It no longer says anything about them. But it says nothing good about us.
Read the rest of the column here.
Now, tell me again. How does Cohen still have a job?
SOURCE: Washington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Screengrab
