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Can You Help This Man?

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Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is nearing a crisis.

As Digby remarks offhandedly today, Cohen “writes precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time.” This time, it’s

The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals.

Last week, it was all about how Democrats were wrong to “jump all over” Bill Bennett’s casual association of black folk with criminality:

it is [Harry] 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.

And who can forget Cohen’s eloquent “we must go to war with Saddam because of the anthrax in our nation’s capital” crusade of late 2001?

You see where this is going, folks—it’s not just a matter of writing precisely the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time.  Richard Cohen is running out of ways to be wrong. He has almost used them all up!  Of the twelve kinds of wrongness Aristotle describes in the Nicodeman Ethics (you remember, predictive, retrospective, substantive, distributive, boneheaded, etc.), Cohen has now employed eleven.  He has been wrong about things domestic and foreign, liberal and conservative, major and minor.

It’s not an overstatement to call this a national crisis of wrongness.  Unlike, say, the writers of Clownhall.com or Tech Central Station, Cohen does actual damage to the Republic with his compelling and influential wrongheadedness.  And in order for him to keep doing that damage, he needs to find new issues and events about which to be wrong.

Even the Washington Post Writers Group, in its blurb for Cohen, has acknowledged the problem:

Richard Cohen has a gift for writing in ways that touch people on issues great and small, and yet somehow coming to the wrong conclusion by means of the wrong chain of reasoning. In his twice-weekly column he tackles both complex issues and seemingly simple ones, helping people to understand what is happening around them, paradoxically by getting those issues so confoundingly wrong. From Ground Zero on that horrible September day to wherever his travels take him, his highly personal and graceful writing moves and informs his readers, showing them new and provocative ways to misconstrue and mischaracterize the events that affect us all.

The problem, of course, is with those “new and provocative ways.” Cohen’s Fitzgerald and Bennett columns alone deployed nine ways of being wrong, and the man just can’t keep this up forever.  He needs your help.  In comments, won’t you please suggest (a) new things that Cohen can be wrong about and (b) creative uses of the one remaining form of wrongness upon which he has not yet drawn?  I thank you, the Washington Post thanks you, and the entire Nation of Wrong thanks you.

Posted by on 10/14 at 11:05 AM

  1. The time is ripe for a good “Why we would have been right to go to Iraq in a perfect world even though I seemed to think this was a perfect world at the time” column.  With football metaphors.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  12:58 PM

  2. Ah, young Matt Yglesias has only begun to explore the retrospective, distributive, and just-plain-offensive ways of being wrong.  But it was good of him to nail all three in one fell swoop, wasn’t it?

    Posted by Michael  on  10/14  at  01:16 PM

  3. Late October 2006:
    “Vote Republican. This is a time of fiscal crisis, scandalous political cronyism, a middle east dissolving into civil war, and Americans suffering under crushing energy costs.  The GOP is the party of strong fiscal responsibility, moral rectitude, foreign policy acumen, and a real understanding of the energy industry.  Only they can save us.”

    Posted by John I  on  10/14  at  01:20 PM

  4. The hair, beard and glasses are COMPLETELY wrong.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  10/14  at  01:27 PM

  5. "George Bush has presided over the most corrupt administration of any modern presidency. Worse still, it has been the most incompetent and actively dangerous admniistration in the history of the Republic. Although America has endured profound self-inflicted wounds before, the stakes are too high now to risk failure. Bush and Cheney must be impeached and their co-conspirators jailed.”

    Presumably the only way he has left to be wrong is to tell the truth and get booted from the DC cocktail-and-cocksucking circuit.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  01:28 PM

  6. He’s a “left-leaning” contrarian. He cannot avoid being right all the time.

    “Left-leaning” common sense will err one day and then what will he do? He will have to side awkwardly with the Truth.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  01:31 PM

  7. Thank you, Michael, we are indeed experiencing a national crisis of wrongness.

    I think Cohen could complete his own personal string of wrongness by coming up with a column criticizing the so poor and so black people of New Orleans for the flood crisis.  Maybe he could even write a belated defense of Michael Brown and of cronyism.

    Posted by Bulworth  on  10/14  at  01:34 PM

  8. While the hair, beard, and glasses are certainly examples of wrongness, I find his tie particularly wrong, especially the knot. Who ties a four-in-hand knot anymore? Who, I ask? Wrong-minded people, that’s who.

    The Windsor, sir, the Windsor!

    Posted by paul  on  10/14  at  01:45 PM

  9. How about a spirited defense of cronyism in Federal appointments?

    Rebuilding New Orleans as a theme park?

    Ending secret balloting in voting?

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  01:45 PM

  10. maybe he could write about how it’s all Harry Reid’s fault that the president nominated Harriet Miers and is in such trouble now.

    Posted by Bulworth  on  10/14  at  02:01 PM

  11. paul,

    Maybe he’s a James Bond fan?

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  02:08 PM

  12. Damn, Aristotle didn’t even think of hair, beard and glasses kinds of wrong.  What a guy he was.

    I’m thinking Cohen should simply ask Democrats to stand down in 2006 rather than challenge Republicans for Congress.  Now is not the time for partisanship and divisiveness and elections.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/14  at  02:25 PM

  13. I think it is time for wrongness on a non-partisan issue. 

    “It is too early to commit to a wait-and-see attitude concerning a possible bird flu pandemic.”

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  02:28 PM

  14. Yeah, paul—the Windsor is “fair and balanced” while the four-in-hand skews to the right.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  02:30 PM

  15. Has he written about Intelligent Design yet?

    I suggest the lede “If Man evolved from non-sentient organisms, why do I still exist?”

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  02:44 PM

  16. Or “so why are there still apes?”

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  02:47 PM

  17. Is Richard Cohen a different person from Wolf Blitzer?

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  03:07 PM

  18. Uh, as someone not up on his Aristotle, what is the one wrongness Cohen hasn’t employed? Since he’s been so very wrong in so many ways, it’s hard to believe he missed one.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  03:15 PM

  19. Lefty,
    I believe it is just Michael’s way of saying that Cohen has been wrong often - so often he has nearly exhausted every way of being wrong.

    There are, in fact, 24 ways of being wrong, according to Aristotle.  Each is a deficiency or excess of the 12 virtues.

    Or maybe Cohen hasn’t written anything licentious yet.  That could be it.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  03:22 PM

  20. Cohen writing a fond remembrance of the late Peter Jennings would round out the list for me.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  03:36 PM

  21. But why would an Intelligent Designer limit his creation to only 24 irreducible ways to be wrong? Perhaps Cohen is showing us the way to wrongness of a complexity on the same order of magnitude as a bacterial flagellum.

    Posted by corndog  on  10/14  at  04:07 PM

  22. Has he called for the firing of the waitress who wouldn’t let DeLay smoke that cigar yet?

    Posted by julia  on  10/14  at  04:15 PM

  23. Wrong is the new black.  Evil wears white and walks around in daylight.

    Posted by The Heretik  on  10/14  at  04:56 PM

  24. Among some of his past doozies is this gem from Spring 2001:  In “What Price Service?”, Cohen declared that official..  “Washington is so clean it’s boring. The rogues are gone, and politics has become a sort of priesthood.”

    Unfortunately this isn’t parody, he actually wrote this! 
    He may also however determine that the terrible flooding in the Northeast is due to the number of liberals in so many blue states that are also too heavily populated by vast impoverished people of color? 

    My question of the week is why we have turned the color of national politics into the battle between the Crips and Bloods??

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  05:12 PM

  25. What I want to know is what he looks like when he takes off the hair, beard and glasses disguise?  Is the disguise worn that he can be wrong as often as Thomas Friedman?  He is wrong in ways that Bobo Brooks isn’t or is Cohen really an agent of the GOP?
    Has become the new Guckert/Gannon?  Is that what he looks like under the disguise?

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  05:15 PM

  26. He could get hair extensions, start a reggae band with his peers in the punditocracy, and end every sentence with the word, “mon.”

    Did I guess the last remaining form of wrongness?

    Do I get a pony?

    Posted by John  on  10/14  at  05:29 PM

  27. Richard Cohen says you get a pony.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  05:36 PM

  28. The time is ripe for a good “Why we would have been right to go to Iraq in a perfect world even though I seemed to think this was a perfect world at the time” column.  With football metaphors.

    That’s not what Yglesias says, so your snark misses the mark. 

    The whole point of his article was to explain why it was wrong to invade Iraq, even if everything had gone perfectly.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  05:36 PM

  29. And a pony!  And a pony!  And a pony!

    Hmm, maybe my next band name will be “And a Pony!”

    Posted by John  on  10/14  at  05:43 PM

  30. It’s hard to write when I have tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard.

    Question - what’s that line from which movie where someone says something so wrong, that the other person responds that everyone in the room in now dumber for having heard it? He’s THAT level of wrong. (Help me out here- someone must know which movie/TV show/book that was in).

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  05:52 PM

  31. Not wrong on licentiousness?  Is this a joke or just clueless?  Cohen’s apologetics for sexual harassment are legendary. And, of course, there’s this:

    http://staging.newyorkmag.com/page.cfm?page_id=2601

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  05:52 PM

  32. He could write in rhyming couplets.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  06:43 PM

  33. That would not make him fuck up less.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  06:43 PM

  34. But he’d still be writing wrongly, yes?

    Posted by Paul  on  10/14  at  07:02 PM

  35. There’s no avoiding that, I’d guess.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  07:03 PM

  36. It sure would make his prose a mess.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  07:07 PM

  37. A quatrain plus! But we digress.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  07:31 PM

  38. She’s right, folks. Rhymes dualistic
    form a couplet (or a distich,
    but that’s tangential, off the point.)
    A lit professor runs this joint
    so mind your meter, watch those feet
    don’t females with males complete
    and every two lines change the syllable
    at the end. The rest is fillable.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  07:46 PM

  39. Don’t make me bust out the haiku, Chris. Don’t make me do it.

    Posted by Paul  on  10/14  at  08:06 PM

  40. Sestina Fight!

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  08:27 PM

  41. Has he written yet on the “where are the women bloggers” question?  Or the “why academics shouldn’t blog” topic?  Those are two things people just love to be wrong about.

    Posted by bitchphd  on  10/14  at  08:35 PM

  42. Why academic women shouldn’t blog: because they’re just not cut out for the cut and thrust.

    Which, of course, is absitively necessary in exactly that form, the cut and thrust.

    Why, it’s even a metaphor! If that doesn’t prove something I don’t know what does.

    Posted by julia  on  10/14  at  08:55 PM

  43. One of my favorite Cohen moments was when he devoted an entire October 2000 column ripping Lieberman for a speech he gave.  Turns out, Bush was actually the guy that gave the speech Cohen was so upset about.  Oops.

    And he’s supposed to be the overly “liberal” part of the so-called liberal media.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  09:19 PM

  44. All right, all right, I’ll tell what the twelfth kind of wrong is.  It’s unambitiousness/ undue humility, already.  Just think “Richard Cohen” and “undue humility.” See what I mean?

    Though Njorl’s close miss should not go unappreciated.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/14  at  09:46 PM

  45. And as for you people having a little fun with the comment thread, remember:  In human blogs, tho’ labour’d on with pain, a thousand comments scarce one purpose gain.  Your rhyming couplets aggravate the brain, and from their further use you should refrain.

    Refrain!  Take it to the bridge. . . .

    Posted by Michael  on  10/14  at  09:56 PM

  46. Clever of you to rhyme that with “quatrain,” MB.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/14  at  10:06 PM

  47. I had no options, having failed to shift
    The rhyme scheme after two lines.  Get my drift?

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  10:20 PM

  48. There may be only 12 (or 24) kinds of wrong, but I believe there are 50 ways to leave your putative political ideology. So Cohen has a way to go.

    Posted by  on  10/14  at  10:25 PM

  49. So Kos linked to me and I tried to point them your way for more incisive political commentary than I’m can of providing (my post on Pinter and my disappointed, quasi-retraction to the contrary), but the trackback didn’t track back.  Still, the link worked, so hopefully the masses pound your servers now instead of mine, since Typepad won’t stop sending irrate emails about the amount of traffic I’m currently experiencing.

    Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman  on  10/14  at  10:29 PM

  50. And, as always, I can’t speak English when I type in public: “than I can provide” or “that I’m capable of providing” are what I aimed for there.  That’ll teach me to comment under the influence...of frenzied insomnia.

    Posted by Scott Eric Kaufman  on  10/14  at  10:33 PM

  51. What Roxanne said on comment 4.

    He looks like he belongs on Sesame Street.

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  10/14  at  11:24 PM

  52. Randy Paul - Sesame Street? Only if it’s, “Nightmare on Sesame Street”.

    For god’s sake people...think of the children!

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  12:59 AM

  53. Sorry, but it’s not the “Nicodeman Ethics” of Aristotle, but the “Nicomachean Ethics”.  I’m rather surprised Michael Berube would make such an error.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  08:54 AM

  54. My first time at this site. MB’s analysis was great but you guys are a hoot. Rhyming couplets, quatrains, fashion pointers, I’m hooked. See you soon.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  08:57 AM

  55. My guess for next week’s column:  “Intelligent Design.  Why is it so wrong to want all theories presented to our children.  Evolution is one theory, ID is another.”

    Cohen writes: “A lot of scientists don’t even believe in evolution. I mean Darwin married his first cousin so he must not have believed it much either.”

    This would be a blinded by the right type of wrongness.

    Posted by Paida  on  10/15  at  09:09 AM

  56. I doubt that Aristotle listed it, but conspiracy theories are all the rage with the hep kids of today. How about a passionate plea to end the Evil Godless Liberal conspiracy to make Dubya look like a lazy, ignorant, petulant leader: “Blame it on the Clenis(TM)!”

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:16 AM

  57. He’d do himself and his readers a favor if he emulated Tom Friedman: You can’t be wrong all the time when fully half your columns don’t actually contain an argument. Y’know, “Iraq is entering a watershed period and the next 3 months will determine whether things are going to get much, much better or much, much worse,” that sort of thing.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:19 AM

  58. I think his next piece should be a defense of Neal Boortz and his position that in a disaster “of course the rich should be saved first”...seems like it would be right up Cohen’s alley!

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:42 AM

  59. Evolution. It’s time for Cohen to be Wrong On Evolution.  He can come down on the side of William Jennings Bryan.

    Clarence Darrow was, after all, just a Trial Lawyer and probably a Democrat.

    Would it be irresponsible for Richard Cohen to ignore Evolution? We might say it would be irresposible for him not to.

    heh.

    Posted by Jo Fish  on  10/15  at  09:45 AM

  60. "The only time I’m wrong is when I think I’ve made a mistake.”

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:48 AM

  61. I think it was wrong for Cohen to kill himself just because of some dumb-ass Berube column.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  10:45 AM

  62. That haircut is insanely wrong; so he’s got that covered. He also seems to be having great difficulty (and has ever since the previous WaPo photo of him from 1989) making a decision on the beard thing: Beard? Or no? Fuck it; I’ll go with the extended stubble.

    Actually, there is a highly rich vein of wrongheaded opinions he could mine: Just down the hall in Anne Applebaum’s office. Together, who knows what they might come up with.

    Not to mention Broder. Oy.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  10:52 AM

  63. My favorite boneheaded wrongness example was from campaign 2000. He managed to claim that Joe Lieberman, a Jew don’t you know, overtly expressd belief in the idea that God had a special plan and a special hand in American history and Americas destiny, and that Bush did not.

    While most pols when forced will gladly rub up against the propsitions of American Exceptualism Bush is the all time champion among modern presidents in embracing it. Lieberman sits far to the back of the bus on this issue for reasons too obvious to detail.

    As I recall he put quotes from Bush in Lieberman’s mouth after both appeared at some event with a religious group. Now I suppose that mistake might happen on many issues since Joe, the Senator from Greenwich big time accounting firms and monied class hedge funds isn’t exactly a progressive firebrand, but on this one?

    It takes an exceptional degree of stupidity to think Joe is one to expect Jesus to appear at any moment somewhere near the Texas Oklahoma border,

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  10:54 AM

  64. baikonur—go ahead and click on the hyperlink for “Nicodeman Ethics.”

    (Normally I don’t care if people miss a little thing like that, but hey, I spent half an hour of my day setting up that little gag.  Why?  Juvenal sense of humor, I guess.)

    Posted by Michael  on  10/15  at  11:15 AM

  65. Late October 2006:
    “Vote Republican. This is a time of fiscal crisis, scandalous political cronyism, a middle east dissolving into civil war, and Americans suffering under crushing energy costs.  The GOP is the party of strong fiscal responsibility, moral rectitude, foreign policy acumen, and a real understanding of the energy industry.  Only they can save us.”
    Posted by John I

    The only problem with this satirical ‘wrong’ choice is that too many sheeple, not having any idea which party is even in power, would believe it and vote for the bastards!

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  11:33 AM

  66. Not only is there a Nicomachean Ethics, but there is a Eudemian too. It sounds to me like the two titles have been confounded into Nicodemean. Only the author could tell us whether this is deliberate or an accident. Note that the Nicomachean are by far the more famous and influential work. Since the Eudemian Ethics seem to contain three entire books (i.e. sections or lengthy chapters)that are identical to three in the Nicomachean and are probably derived from the latter, it is perhaps a fortuitous conflation. As for Aristotle’s discussion of error, it is indeed related to an excess or deficiency of virtue, and of these virtues he outlines a number. I am not sure that he ever outlines a canonical number (i.e. twelve). Discussion of virtue can be found in books 2-5 of the Nicomachean Ethics.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  11:45 AM

  67. Just noticed that a post went up from the author about his ‘Nicodemian’ gag. I wrote and submitted my comment before I noticed the author’s final word, so now I must seem somewhat obtuse. I went off in the meantime to check out the text of Aristotle and some authoritative commentaries on the relevant books. One thing that needles me a little is this business about the twelve virtues, as if it is some canonical Aritotelian pronouncement along the lines of the ten commandments. He discusses different virtues, or aspects of virtue, separately, but I don’t think he ever comes up with a grand total. Later scholastics probably added these up to arrive at their canonical number.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  11:55 AM

  68. The 13th wrong:  Color mix-n-mismatch.

    Dick, honey, if you’re going to color-coordinate your entire head, from artfully-touseled white hair to artfully-artless white stubble, those little black glasses have got to go.

    I’m thinking, white harlequins.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  11:56 AM

  69. Sorry, but it’s not the ‘Nicodeman Ethics’ of Aristotle, but the ‘Nicomachean Ethics’.  I’m rather surprised Michael Berube would make such an error.

    “What difference does it make?”

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  12:03 PM

  70. By the time Edmund Spenser got the idea of writing The Faerie Queene in twelve books, each of which would illustrate the “twelve virtues” of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle had indeed been “canonized” in this way.  But the story of how Aristotle got to Spenser after two thousand years, having spent centuries living chiefly in the Middle East while his former teacher was gradually incorporated into the philosophical machinery of the Church in Europe, is probably too complicated for a humble blog.

    Besides, it’s not funny.

    But then, when you think about where The Faerie Queene‘s first mishap occurs, you think, “hey, that Spenser might be relevant to this here Richard Cohen thing after all!”

    And if anyone wants to pick up on the slightly-revised Pope couplet in comment 45, go right ahead.  Literary alludin’ is hard work!  It’s hard!

    Posted by Michael  on  10/15  at  12:14 PM

  71. Don’t make me bust out the haiku, Chris. (Paul)
    And if anyone wants to pick up on the slightly-revised Pope couplet in comment 45, go right ahead. (MB)

    Hope springs eternal
    in the humorist’s breast, man!
    Perfect as he ought.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  10/15  at  12:30 PM

  72. The hair, beard and glasses are COMPLETELY wrong.

    At last, someone gets to the heart of the matter--thank you Roxanne. Normally it’s wrong to attack a person’s views based solely on appearance, but just look at that photograph will you? It’s simply not conceivable that a person could look like this much of a dork in his own--self-selected, after all!--publicity shot.

    I think it’s time to confront the fact head on and stop pretending it will go away. It won’t. Clearly his appearance can only be meant as a deliberate provocation. He’s simply sitting out there, defying people to respond to his inane columns by pointing out that he looks like a class-A dork. Well, I for one have the moral courage not to shrink from what must be done. Maybe because my name really is Bill Bennett.

    Mr Cohen, allow me to point out that not only are your views incoherent, but you look like a class-A dork.

    Thus do I refute thee!

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  12:33 PM

  73. Jo Fish

    Both Clarence Darrow and Wm. Jennings Bryan were Dems, and before Scopes, good friends. Bryan was actually the Dem Presidential nominee 3 times, and is famous for his Cross of Gold speech at the 1896 Convention. He was Wilson’s Sec. of State, until he resigned over the tough stand taken against Germany after the Lusitania sinking. He was considered a progressive at the time, as was Darrow, but went loopy on the evolution issue. The trial, where Darrow really kicked his butt on the stand, probably contributed to his death.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  12:53 PM

  74. Maybe there’s now too many comments for folks to want to read through them all. But with all the people reading this blog, doesn’t anyone have the answer to the question I posed in comment #30? I know it’s out there somewhere.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  01:31 PM

  75. OMG! you left out the most important Richard Cohen “wrong”.

    During the 2000 recount Cohen wrote a column saying he hoped Bush would win because Bush would be a uniter whereas Gore would divide the country.

    And don’t forget Cohen was one of Starr apologists in the media, repeatedly praising him as fair and impartial.

    How many ways can you be wrong. In the case of Richard Cohen endless ways.

    It is important to remember that Cohen is not alone. He is simply a representative of a Washington clique that is always getting things wrong. Cohen is simply repeating the Washington conventional wisdom from the last coctail party he attended at Sally Quinns. You can read the same thing repeated by David Broder and WP editorial page. What you have is an echo chamber of wrongness.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  01:40 PM

  76. So far nobody has raised the interesting question of why the WaPo continues to publish this dope. Everyone, by this point, must have figured out the quality of Cohen’s opinions.  So why does he have such a bully pulpit? Does the editorial page editor think these are interesting, thought provoking, or even correct opinions? Is there a large audience for Cohen (e.g. deluded wingnuts wanting to find a pet “liberal” they can like) that would be upset if he went away? Given the problems alluded to in #31, he even seems to be trouble around the office.

    When a puppy takes a dump on a persian rug, you don’t blame the puppy. You blame whoever let him on the rug.

    So maybe the extra kind of wrong is the decision that the Washington Post makes every time they renew his contract.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  01:41 PM

  77. Good call, Nan.  I was going to include Cohen’s 2000 endorsement of Bush the Uniter, but then I looked at the latest polls and realized that President Katrina has, in fact, pulled off the impressive (and unprecedented!) feat of uniting 98 percent of African-Americans.  So Cohen gets a pass on that one.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/15  at  02:35 PM

  78. I know the reason, Ben. He provides the balance to Colby King’s thoughtful, informed, well-written opinions.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  10/15  at  02:39 PM

  79. Since Cohen seems to be wrong about everything else, maybe he’s wrong about being Richard Cohen.  We gotta wonder who this guy actually is.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  03:51 PM

  80. Oaktown Girl,

    I used to work in a building that also housed Sesame Workshop. Trust me: that picture looks like about 90% of the male employees there.

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  10/15  at  04:34 PM

  81. Well, since I’m not getting any help from The Gallery to my question (in #30), I’m forced to do it myself. According to the Internets, the quote comes from the movie Billy Madison, which is odd, since I’ve never seen that movie. It’s probably a phrase that’s been used in a lot different movies in several variations.

    Anyway Michael, I submit that Mr. Cohen is “Vampire Wrong”: so wrong that he has the ability to suck intelligence points out of all who encounter his twisted views. 

    Principal: Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

    Billy Madison (1995)

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  05:42 PM

  82. How about: “This gun isn’t even loaded!  Here, let me show you!”

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  06:11 PM

  83. Its late. I ‘m on a modem. The text loads and I hit stop. No picture. After I read all the comments about all the ways R.C. is wrong, I am tempted to reload just to get the picture. But I decide I’m not that shallow.

    So how did he get a cola named after him?

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  08:52 PM

  84. King Lear

    ACT I
    SCENE III

    Not licentious.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:08 PM

  85. This thread made me remember a quote from “Heisenbergs War” where on of the sharper tounged physic guys was asked to read and comment on someone’s paper and he said with a sad shake of the head - “He isn’t even wrong”.

    Posted by  on  10/15  at  09:38 PM

  86. Michael,

    PLEASE give us a new post.  I’m tired of seeing Richard Cohen’s muppet-like face leering at me everytime I go to you site.

    Posted by  on  10/16  at  09:31 AM

  87. No can do, Ben.  I’m at the in-laws’ at an extended-family-and-friends event.  I guess I should have thought of that before I posted Cohen’s goofy mug and then hightailed it for the weekend.

    Then again, maybe I’ll just replace Rod Gilbert with Richard Cohen on the masthead and leave him up there all week long.  That would be very hilarious, I think.  (Oh, and NotAsWrong, just click on the hyperlink to “Washington Post Writers Group” if you want the full metal Cohen that you can’t get here.)

    Oaktown Girl, thanks for making all of us that much smarter with the Billy Madison bit.  Film alludin’ is every bit as hard as literary alludin’, you know.

    Posted by Michael  on  10/16  at  11:08 AM

  88. Wow. I’ve read a LOT of Aristotle, but somehow I missed that one, Michael…

    {/snark}

    Posted by  on  10/16  at  01:13 PM

  89. Well Cohen could say Ariel Sharon is a “man of peace.”

    Oops, some other dolt already said that. How about, “Racine’s plays will go out of fashion, like coffee.” Oops, someone said that too.

    BTW, the “not even wrong” citation comes from a nasty review by Walter Kaufmann of a book on Hegel.

    Let us merely say of Cohen what was said of him in Georgetown bars: “he has every quality of a dog but loyalty.”

    Let’s just say

    Posted by  on  10/16  at  02:01 PM

  90. >>What I want to know is what he looks like when he takes off the hair, beard and glasses disguise?  <<

    Richard Cohen is all things to no people.

    Posted by  on  10/16  at  02:57 PM

  91. 1.Fluffing forward instead of a comb-over or actaully admitting you’re losing it.

    2.Having one tooth whiter than the others. What’s up with that?

    3. Sikh style high cheek beard on non-Sikh man.

    4.The guy reminds me of Elliott from thirtysomething after turning 55something. And Elliott blew his own son up with a rocket.

    Posted by  on  10/16  at  07:12 PM

  92. "So how did he get a cola named after him?”

    Have you TASTED that cola?

    Posted by  on  10/17  at  02:27 AM

  93. If he was from Atlanta, he’d a have a too blonde peroxide job or a bad toupee. DC is full of dorks, it’s just they have more stylish glasses and don’t do ugly combovers.

    Posted by  on  10/17  at  09:25 AM

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