Wednesday, November 24, 2010

And The Winner Of The Hack Race Is...



Richard Cohen, the Salon says. I'm pretty sure I could find many worse hacks but perhaps there are extra rules I don't know about it. Cohen is certainly of interest in his opinions on women. Some snippets from Pareene's piece:

That's how we get work like "leave Roman Polanski alone!" and sending me mean e-mails is "digital lynching" and affirmative action punishes all white people and you stupid snot-nosed bloggers don't get that Cheney was probably right to torture people and Barack Obama should read a newspaper instead of a BlackBerry because a BlackBerry is full of lies.

...

I sometimes ask myself, who is the intended audience of a Richard Cohen column? Who reads a Richard Cohen column and thinks to himself, "Yes, I agree with this"? I don't write "thinks to herself" because I cannot fathom the existence of a woman who'd respond approvingly to this defense of Clarence Thomas' vocal appreciation of large breasts. I think Ginni herself would say it does Justice Thomas no favors to have the support of this guy. And what does Cohen leave out of his defense of Thomas? That he was accused of creating a hostile work environment himself, for making inappropriate comments to a 23-year-old editorial aide in the late-1990s.
Mmm. What irks me about Cohen is the odd quasi-calm aspect of his writing. He says the most insulting things while pretending that he is simply stating widely known facts, and that he is doing this from the Throne of Impartiality.

I must admit that I rarely read his columns unless I'm forced to. Some things a goddess must get paid for, such as being continuously insulted.