Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Richard Cohen and the Washington Post's Embarrassing Columnists

It can be hard to tell which major newspaper has more worthless columnists. The Times has Friedman and Dowd and Brooks. The Los Angeles Times actually pays Jonah Goldberg hard cash for his garbage. But it's really hard to beat the Washington Post for sheer worthlessness. This is the newspaper that employs Charles Krauthammer, Michael Gerson, and any other right-wing hack who wants a job. It is so bad that you almost forget just how terrible Richard Cohen is.

Lemieux reminds us of Cohen's badness today. Cohen, who has been disciplined by the Post before for sexual harassment, actually goes out of his way to defend Clarence Thomas' well-documented history of sexual inappropriateness, saying basically that, hey, Thomas is a guy, and guys like to tell women how much they would enjoy giving them blow jobs. So what are you going to do? Ladies, stop taking these things so seriously.

Well, that's just great. Not only does such a column completely lack value, but it's completely inappropriate for Cohen to write such a thing given his personal history.

How could the Post's editorial section get worse? I hesitate to say it couldn't. After all, I'm sure Christine O'Donnell would love to write for them. And that they'd love to hire her. But it's really, really atrocious.