Richard Cohen: Bigoted Or Just Plain Stupid?

[Ulf_the_Unwashed]

…until graduation.

[Der_Trihs]

@Steve_MB

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.

Possible interpretations of the thought inside Cohen’s head that transmogrified into this particular serving of word salad, roughly ordered from “insulting to readers’ intelligence” to “offensive to human decency”:

[ul]
[li]Conservatives are squicked out by interracial marriage, but that doesn’t mean that they’re racist.[/li]
[li]Normal Americans “with conventional views” are squicked out by interracial marriage, independent of political affiliation.[/li]
[li]Interracial marriage is inherently squicky.[/li][/ul]

I suspect the “reasoning” involved was something like:

Being racist is bad.
Conservatives cannot be bad.
I’m a conservative.
Interracial marriage squicks me and lots of other conservatives out.
*
Therefore,* opposing interracial marriage can’t be racism.

@XT

(Seriously, people still have issues with interracial marriage? Today? WTF?)

Poll: 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans want interracial marriage ban

Mississppi Church Refuses to Marry Black Couple (We had a Pit thread on that one as I recall)

So yeah, they still do some places. I’ve no idea how they feel about it in Iowa though.

[obfusciatrist]

@Der_Trihs

I suspect the “reasoning” involved was something like:

Being racist is bad.
Conservatives cannot be bad.
I’m a conservative.
Interracial marriage squicks me and lots of other conservatives out.
*
Therefore,* opposing interracial marriage can’t be racism.

Richard Cohen is generally considered a liberal columnist. This was an attempt by a not-conservative to explain to liberal and moderate conservatives why their approval of Christie would likely be dashed against the shoals of small minded Iowa cultural conservatives.

Similar to what I said above, this Slate article pretty well mirrors my reaction to this column (I also have no great liking of the man’s body of work and would happily see him retired).

[elucidator]

Speaking of LUGs, did you see the size of that sumbitch! Day-um! He could take Liam Neeson’s lunch money!

[Der_Trihs]

@obfusciatrist

Richard Cohen is generally considered a liberal columnist.

:dubious:

Not all that much of one on race issues apparently. Look at his reaction to 12 Years a Slave mentioned up-thread. Not realizing that “slavery was not a benign institution in which mostly benevolent whites owned innocent and grateful blacks” until a Hollywood movie disillusions you does not bespeak a very liberal view on race issues.

[Steve_MB]

Cohen’s defense is that he meant to say that some Tea Party people are freaked out by interracial marriage. How this squares with his direct assertion that the GOP (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tea Party) is not racist, and his dismissal of Harry Belafonte’s statement that the Tea Party in particular is racist, is left as an exercise for the student.

[RTFirefly]

Charles Pierce nails it:

Richard Cohen, who plays the role of The Responsible Liberal in Fred Hiatt’s daily Carnival Of The Unexplained, has now passed into the realm of performance art. Hard on the heels of his blockbuster entitled, “Holy Crap, Who Knew Slavery Was Such A Bummer!”, he has topped that with an exploration of the political impact of modern marriage that makes Sarah Palin sound like Margaret Mead. If Newspaper Stupid had a top 40, Richard Cohen would be the Beatles in 1965.

[John_Mace]

@Der_Trihs

Poll: 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans want interracial marriage ban

That’s not what that poll says. Only “Republican Primary Voters” were polled. And there was no control group, so I’m not too impressed that those results tell us much.

[madmonk28]

@bup

Earl Warren wasn’t a bigot!

Now who’s being naive?

[Tom_Tildrum]

@bup

Earl Warren wasn’t a bigot!

Earl Warren rounded up the Japanese-Americans into the internment camps.

[The_Second_Stone]

Wasn’t it just last week (or in the last month) that he saw 12 Years A Slave and decided that slavery was really bad and before that he had no idea it was so bad?

This guy is stupid and a racist. Just like Miller Lite Taste Great and is Less Filling. He can form a sentence and develop a thought quite adroitly, but those sentences and thoughts test my gag reflex. I think he’s finally decided that the new owner is going to can him so he wants to get enough attention to get hired by one of the crypto-racist media employers.

I think he and George Will are interchangeable, except that Will is subtler with his constant racism.

[madmonk28]

Richard Cohen has a long history of being a bigot. Off the top of my head, there was his column arguing that jewlrey stores should be allowed not to let young black men in their shops, there was the whole “I just found out slavery was bad” thing and then this article.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@obfusciatrist

Richard Cohen is generally considered a liberal columnist. This was an attempt by a not-conservative to explain to liberal and moderate conservatives why their approval of Christie would likely be dashed against the shoals of small minded Iowa cultural conservatives.

This. I don’t know anything about Cohen, but this clearly reads to me like a description of the views of Iowa Republicans, rather than his own feelings.

[Shodan]

I concur. I don’t know if Cohen is racist, but he seems to be saying that cultural conservatives are.

It sort of reminds me of all the warnings about how conservatives could never accept a Mormon as their candidate for President.

Regards,
Shodan

[madmonk28]

Some previous Richard Cohen gems:

The Swiss got it right. Their refusal to extradite film director Roman Polanski to the United States on a 33-year-old sex charge is the proper dénouement for this mess of a case. There is no doubt that Polanski did what he did, which is have sex with a 13-year-old after plying her with booze. There is no doubt also that after all these years there is something stale about the case, not to mention a “victim,” Samantha Geimer, who has long ago forgiven her assailant and dearly wishes the whole thing would go away. So do I. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/07/thank_you_switzerland_for_free.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Nearby is a men’s clothing shop – upscale, but not really expensive. When young black males enter this store, the sales help are instructed to leave their customers and, in the manner of defensive backs in football, “collapse” on the blacks. Politely, but firmly, they are sort of shooed out of the store. The owner’s explanation for this? Young blacks are his shoplifters…

A nation with our history is entitled to be sensitive to race and racism – and we are all wary of behavior that would bring a charge of racism. But the mere recognition of race as a factor – especially if those of the same race recognize the same factor – is not in itself racism. This may apply as much to some opponents of busing or public housing in their own neighborhood as it does to who gets admitted to jewelry stores. Let he who would open the door throw the first stone. Eschaton: From the Richard Cohen's Greatest Hits File

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…The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason. Richard Cohen’s 10 Worst Moments, Counted Down – Mother Jones

[Icarus]

I’m going to go with “just plain stupid”, but probably for a different reason than most.

Shodan, and others in this thread have provided straight-forward interpretations of what Mr. Cohen intended to communicate. OK, I’ll buy the interpretations, they sound like reasonable translations.

But here’s the thing, this just shows that in order to understand what Mr. Cohen was communicating, we need someone else to interpret his writing. This is where Mr. Cohen fails - at communicating. That’s his job, that’s what he is being paid to do - communicate. He is failing at his primary function - therefore, “just plain stupid”.

[Marley23]

@Icarus

I’m going to go with “just plain stupid”, but probably for a different reason than most.

There’s no wrong reason to call this guy an idiot. He’s sort of the Reese’s peanut butter cups of morons.

[Steve_MB]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

This. I don’t know anything about Cohen, but this clearly reads to me like a description of the views of Iowa Republicans, rather than his own feelings.

Except that he specifically rules out that interpretation in the sentence immediately before the foot-in-mouth flareup:

Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party

[bup]

@Der_Trihs

Being racist is bad.
Conservatives cannot be bad.
I’m a conservative.
Interracial marriage squicks me and lots of other conservatives out.
*
Therefore,* opposing interracial marriage can’t be racism.

My guess is that it was closer to:

[ul]
[li]I’m a liberal.[/li][li]Liberals aren’t racist.[/li][li]Therefore, being squicked out by inter-racial marriage isn’t racist.[/li][li]Everybody’s like me![/li][/ul]

Similarly, he reasoned:

[ul]
[li]Rural states tip toward Republicans.[/li][li]Iowa’s one of those rural states that I’ve never been to, don’t know much about, and don’t care.[/li][li]Iowa’s full of evil Republicans.[/li][li]Everybody thinks like me![/li][/ul]

I think his implicit dismissal of Iowans bothers me more than his unconscious admission of racism.

[Steve_MB]

@Icarus

I’m going to go with “just plain stupid”, but probably for a different reason than most.

Shodan, and others in this thread have provided straight-forward interpretations of what Mr. Cohen intended to communicate. OK, I’ll buy the interpretations, they sound like reasonable translations.

But here’s the thing, this just shows that in order to understand what Mr. Cohen was communicating, we need someone else to interpret his writing. This is where Mr. Cohen fails - at communicating. That’s his job, that’s what he is being paid to do - communicate. He is failing at his primary function - therefore, “just plain stupid”.

The most charitable interpretation is that Cohen intended to describe the Tea Party wing as irreconcilable to modern reality – but he wimped out (the “not racist” disclaimer, the failure to identify the Tea Party by name in the “gag reflex” passage).

Perhaps catching hell for the result will convince him that searching his trousers for a pair of balls is actually the path of least resistance.