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October 04, 2005

Richard Cohen Is On F'n' Fire

Yes, Richard Cohen. The WaPo's usually tired, predictably hack liberal columnist. Writing about the Democrats' mau-mauing of William Bennet (is it racist to say "mau-mau"? I certainly don't want to offend anyone), Cohen blasts:

Actually, it is Reid and the others who should apologize to Bennett. They were condemning and attempting to silence a public intellectual for a reference to a theory. It was not a proposal and not a recommendation -- nothing more than a possible explanation. But the Democrats preferred to pander to an audience that either had heard Bennett's remarks out of context, or merely thought that anytime that conservatives talk about race, they are being racist. The Democrats' obligation as politicians, as public officials, to see that we all hear the widest and richest diversity of views was suspended in favor of partisan cheap shots. (The spineless White House also refused to defend Bennett.)
Because I came of age in the McCarthy era, I have always thought of the Democratic Party as more protective of free speech and unpopular thought than the Republican Party. The GOP was the party of Joe McCarthy, William Jenner and other witch-hunters. Now, though, it is the Democrats who use the pieties of race, ethnicity and gender to stifle debate and smother thought, pretty much what anti-intellectual intellectuals did to Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, when he had the effrontery to ask some unorthodox questions about gender and mathematical aptitude. He was quickly instructed on how to think.

He also takes the Democrats to task for claiming Tom DeLay is guilty until presumed innocent and for having no original ideas.

Thanks to Megan.

posted by Ace at 11:39 AM

Comments

Even the blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while.

Posted by: BrewFan on October 4, 2005 11:44 AM

I liked his line "speech isn't free if it costs you your job."

Posted by: carin on October 4, 2005 11:52 AM

Yeah, call me a cynic, but Cohen's line of thinking will get about as much play in the MSM as the KC Royals will get in the World Series!

Posted by: Bohemian on October 4, 2005 12:06 PM

It's good to see someone on the Left who actually believes that propaganda is a less-than-ideal form of civil discourse. I didn't think there were any like him.

He will be completely ignored, of course, because propaganda works. Propagandists appeal to stupidity and emotion, and don't respond thoughtfully and rationally when you call them on it. They just shout louder.

Posted by: Phinn on October 4, 2005 12:11 PM

Cohen has obviously not spent much time on a university campus recently if he thinks the left is protective of free speech.

Posted by: Border Reiver on October 4, 2005 12:18 PM

Dawn Comes to Marblehead

Posted by: lauraw on October 4, 2005 12:24 PM

indeed. Why, one could almost say Richard Cohen Chanced some Spring awakening!

Posted by: ace on October 4, 2005 12:37 PM

Laugh it up dickweed.

Your day will come.
And I'll be there, with a clown nose on and a seltzer bottle.

Posted by: lauraw on October 4, 2005 12:39 PM

indeed. Why, one could almost say Richard Cohen Chanced some Spring awakening!

Indeed. His garden is certainly blooming brilliant.

Posted by: Slublog on October 4, 2005 12:41 PM

Shouldn't you be painting something?

Posted by: lauraw on October 4, 2005 12:46 PM

I hate to be cynical (even though it's pretty much reflexive), but this reminds me of some of the soul-searching essays a few brave Muslims in the Arab world have written. Props to the writers, of course, and props in this case to Richard Cohen, but I doubt this will have any impact whatsoever on the people he's blasting. Still, it was a nice read.

As was lauraw's drunk post. It reminded me of a poem I once wrote to a stripper on a cocktail napkin when I was really, really drunk. Quite beautiful, in its way.

Posted by: utron on October 4, 2005 12:53 PM

It reminded me of a poem I once wrote to a stripper on a cocktail napkin when I was really, really drunk.

Yeah, but what was the stripper doing on a cocktail napkin?

Posted by: OregonMuse on October 4, 2005 12:58 PM

One of the worst bits of online lefty 'Mau-Mau' was over at the American Prospect. Ynglesias and DeLong (on his blog) say 'Hey, Bennett wasn't actually advocating abortion' and maybe we can talk about the race crime thing.

That Garance Franke-Ruta chick goes off on em for it, enforcing party mind-think, basically saying that the isssue isn't whether it's true but whether they can use it to drive blacks away from Republicans. Armando and the comments jumped on them too. Sailer covers it here.

Yglesias stands by his guns, saying "I recant nothing." Delong cracks, offering up a post entitled 'partial recantation,' which Garance smilingly accepts (along with a Sullivan 'rethink') for the party noting: " Good for them. As Leon Wieseltier once said, the great weakness of blogging is its notion that one's first thought is one's best thought." Sailer covers that, too here. A grown man cowered and it was ugly.

Posted by: Dr. Reo Symes on October 4, 2005 12:59 PM

I saw Cohen's column in this morning's Daily News and thought "Wow, a clock is stopped somewhere."

Posted by: TC@LeatherPenguin on October 4, 2005 01:00 PM

Shouldn't you be painting something?

No, we're at the unpacking boxes stage now.

I'm tempted to make another reference to the drunken poem here.

Posted by: Slublog on October 4, 2005 01:04 PM

Never thought I'd be agreeing with that guy. Could someone please ask Charlie Rangle to check and see if hell is kind of cold right now?

Posted by: EarthenVessel on October 4, 2005 01:21 PM

Dear droid owner,

We are very sorry for this apparent lapse in performance.

However, the Cohen unit, being a cheap MediaHack™ droid model, was fitted with non-parity memory as a cost reduction measure. We suspect a stray cosmic ray from the recent solar flare flipped a few bits and caused it to deviate from its normal programming.

There is a $500 ECC memory upgrade and AutoRantCPU™ shield kit available that should prevent these unfortunate incidents in the future.

If you really need sustained maintenance free performance we suggest you trade up to one of our industrial strength Schumer Grade™ political droids. The ShumerGrade™ has all the same distortion and lie modules that the cheaper MediaHack™ line has, but is designed from the bottom up for grueling field operations in the toughest conditions. ECC memory, dual AutoRantCPUs™,and a mirrored SCSI drive unit for seamless failover capability. A SchumerGrade™ will never let you down.

Posted by: Purple Avenger on October 4, 2005 02:27 PM

I am posting this just to give some love to Purple Avenger's comment. That was good! :)

Posted by: Sue Dohnim on October 5, 2005 09:06 AM

If the squerrls are looking for nuts they should try where ever the eco-freaks are hiding out although these nuts are too green to eat and too big to store away

Posted by: spurwing plover on October 10, 2005 10:16 PM

Amazon.com Widgets

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Funniest thing I've read about the Virginia mess. Back when they were hustling the referendum through the assembly both Senators, Warner and Kaine, advised them to go slow and play by the rules. Louise Lucas said she respected them but didn't need advice from the "cuck chair" in the corner. The gerrymandering was overturned and Louise is heading for the big house. Edward G. Robinson voice "where's your cuck now?"
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Chris
@chriswithans

"Ahhhhh ahh I put my career on the line for Louise Lucas and Jay Jones thinking they'd vault me into presidential contention and we ended up costing Democrats 20 House seats and unleashing a Reverse Dobbs ahhhhh ahhh"

Forgotten 80s Mystery Click That Sums Up the Democrat Communist Party Today
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Somebody else holds your heart, yeah
You turn to me with your icy tears
And then it's raining, feels like it's raining

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"It's f**king f**ked."
-- reportedly a genuine comment offered by a "senior Labour source"
Correction: I wrote that Labour is losing 88% (now 87%) of the seats it is "defending." I think that's wrong. The right way to say it is the seats they are contesting -- that is, they don't necessarily already hold these seats, but they have put up a candidate to run for the seat. It's still very bad but not as bad as losing 87% of the seats they already held.

Basil the Great
@BasilTheGreat

🚨ED MILIBAND [a Minister in Starmer's government] SAYS KEIR STARMER WILL RESIGN AS PRIME MINISTER

He has reportedly reassured Labour MP's that Starmer will be resigning following the disastrous results tonight

It's over

"The end of the two party system in the UK" as first the Fake Conservatives and now Labour chooses political suicide rather than simply STOPPING THE INVASION
Incidentally, the only reason this didn't already happen in the US is because of the Very Bad Orange Man (who is right on 85% of all policy calls and extremely, existentially right on 15% of them)

No political party that is NOT also a doomsday religious cult would EVER choose a cataclysmic loss -- and possible extinction as a party -- to support a toxically unpopular favoritism of NON-CITIZEN ILLEGAL MIGRANTS over actual citizen voters.

Only a cult does this.

Now they've lost 84%.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg
@zatzi
If this continues Labour loses 2,148 seats tonight.

That is much worse than the worst case predictions I’ve seen.

Cataclysmic

Update: They've now lost 88% of the seats they're defending. As I mentioned earlier, I think I heard that London will not bail them out, as many of those Labour seats will probably flip to "Muslim Independent" or Green. Detroit's 5am vote will not save them.

Yup, Labour is losing 80% of its seats...

The British Patriot
@TheBritLad

🚨 BREAKING: Labour have lost 80% of all seats contested as of 2:25 AM.<
br> If this continues, Keir Starmer will be out of office next week.

Reform has surged and projected to pick up between 1700-2100 seats.

Wow, up to 1700-2100 seats. It's not incredible that this is happening. It's incredible that the Davos crowd is so absolutely determined to privilege Muslim "migrants" over the actual native population who elects them, no matter how loudly the natives scream that they want to be prioritized, that they will gladly self-extinguish as a party rather than simply representing the interests of their own voters. Astonishing.
Remember, when they call other people "cultists" -- they are the ones so imprisoned in their social reinforcement and discipline bubbles that they will choose political death rather than dare upset the Karen Enforcement Officers of their cult.
Update: Now they've lost 83% of the seats they were defending.

(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges

Reform are basically wiping Labour out in the North. It's not a defeat. It's not even a rout. Labour are simply ceasing to exist.

Nick Lowles
@lowles_nick

Tonight’s results are calamitous for Labour. Not just for Keir Starmer's leadership, but for the very future of the party

STARMERGEDDON: In early returns, Reform gains 135 seats, Labour loses 90, the Fake Conservatives lose 36 (and I didn't even know they could fall any further), the Lib Dems lose 4, and the Greens gain 6. Note that the only other party gaining seats is the Greens and they're only gaining a handful of seats.
Update: Reform now up 145, Labour down 98.
Labour projected to lose Wales -- where they've ruled for 27 years.
Fulton County Georgia just discovered 400 boxes of ballots for Labour
Update: REF +156, LAB -107, CON -45
Brutal: In four out of five council seats where Labour is defending, they've lost. 80%.
I'm sure it's not this simple, but Reform is straight taking Labour's and the "Conservatives'" seats. They've lost almost exactly what Reform gained. If understand this right (and warning, I probably don't), all of London's council seats are up for election, and Labour might lose hugely there, as their old voters abandon them for Reform, Muslim Indenpendents, and the Greens.
REF +190, LAB -134, CON -56.

Updates on the Labour collapse in council elections -- which wags are calling #Starmergeddon -- from Beege Welborne. There are about 5000 seats up for grabs, Labour is expected to lose 1,800, Reform will probably gain 1,580, up from... zero. So this would be more than that.
People claim that while Labour has adopted the Sharia Agenda to appeal to the million Muslims it allowed to migrate to the country, those voters are ditching Labour to vote for the Muslim Independent Party or the Greens. Delicious. This shadenfreude is going straight to my thighs.
Oh, and if Starmer loses about as badly as expected, Labour will toss him out of a window Braveheart style and replace him. He will announce he is resigning to spend more time with his Gay Ukrainian Male Prostitutes.

Media bias and senationalism are as old as, well, the media:

That was written by Denny O'Neill and illustrated by, get this, Frank Miller. Editor to the Stars Jim Shooter was in charge at the time.
I always thought the gag was original to the comic book, but in fact the "Threat or Menace" headline was a satirical joke about media bias and sensationalism for a long while. The Harvard Lampoon used it in a parody of Life magazine: "Flying Saucers: Threat or Menace?"

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