Cohen, Again

Most writers have more than their equal share of vanity, or amour propre as Rousseau called it. How else could they stand the lashings of doubt and criticism and yet, every time, get up again to say, "Look at me!"

But to earn and continue justifying readers’ attention, the better ones do more than simply call attention to themselves. They reason, persuade, advance evidence, and use all their might to squeeze words until the hidden reality of human affairs comes out. Unless they are total hacks, they do.

Richard Cohen, not for the first time, strikes me as being much closer to the latter than the former. (On this subject, again, I must part ways with my respected colleague JVL, whose esteem for Cohen I just can’t explain.)

Exhibit A: Today’s column. "‘Dreamboat’ ISO Electorate" is as cute as its title. Cohen’s argument is that candidates and voters are like single white females trying to bait suitors with self-advertisements.

That is sum total of today’s column—a precious analogy that would really wow the editors at Sweet Valley High Newspaper.

Exhibit B: Thursday’s column. Cohen argues Bush should be impeached for going to war in Iraq. The counts of the impeachment would be the names of the American soldiers who have died in Bush’s mad crusade.

This is not even not-serious. It’s a parody of soapbox politics, in which the preacher barely pretends he would call forth the most massive prosecutorial procedure of American politics to punish George Bush.

And for what? In Cohen’s words: For being a crusader. In the words of people not looking to gild their threadbare partisanship into yet another column: For believing he might accomplish some good.

To call this lame might dignify it with a suggestion of effort and failure. Instead, Thursday’s column was not even meant to succeed, to persuade, to provoke thought, to do anything to justify Cohen’s invincible amour propre.