| Hillary Clinton has Chris Matthews, and now Barack Obama has Richard Cohen.
Last time, Cohen accused Obama of lying when he said that more young black men are in prison than in college. Only Obama wasn't lying.
This time, Cohen - officially a "liberal" -- is playing the conservative game of "hysterical outrage and demand denunciations." You know the game. Find something essentially meaningless, blow it out of proportion, attach values to it, then demand everybody pay homage to it by denouncing whatever it is they've cooked up. Like, oh, I don't know, a newspaper ad or something.
Basically Cohen wants Obama to denounce Louis Farrakhan.
Steve Benen:
Obama belongs to a Christian church. The church has a pastor. The pastor has a daughter. The daughter helps run the church magazine. The magazine featured some praise for Louis Farrakhan last year.
Cohen sees this and insists, in his nationally-syndicated column, that Obama has a personal "obligation to speak out" - not because Obama has been connected with Farrakhan or anti-Semitism in any way, but because his church's pastor's daughter's magazine said something complementary about Farrakhan.
This is utterly ridiculous and Cohen ought to be embarrassed for putting his name on such nonsense. Cohen's been around long enough to know that he and his paper are above these kinds of attacks. Or, they're supposed to be.
The shorter Henry Farrell on Cohen's "logic": Louis Farrakhan is black. Barack Obama is black. Therefore, before I can trust Obama, he must denounce Farrakhan.
Yes, I was wondering how a presidential campaign involving an African-Amerian and a women as the two front-runners would play in 21st century America. I have to admit, I've been surprised. The voters don't appear to care: it's the media that's tangling itself in racist and sexist knots. |
