Dick Conehead Roolz!

Or so he claims. In reality he's a spoiled little whining putz who thinks his shit smells like rosewater in springtime. Howzzat for a pie of vilification right in your face, Dickie boy?

As for making a great communist, I don't think they'd ever let me in even if I wanted to join. In the first place, I think "The Internationale" sucks - both the tune and the lyrics are doggerel, no matter what language you sing it in. In the second place, Siberia is way too cold for my taste (I would undoubtedly be sent to some Gulag - opiate of the people and all that). Also I don't think they like free speech and individual rights and shit. No, Dickie, I think I'll pass.

But what about you? What would Dorothy Thompson have to say about you, Mr. Cohen? You seem to have a soft spot in your heart for brutality and authoritarianism... Would you go Nazi? It would be irresponsible not to speculate.

Matthew Yglesias » I’m a Brilliant, Original, and Idiosyncratic Thinker But Don’t Ever Disagree With Me

Cohen, though, doesn’t see it that way:

“I used to get a lot more on the right,” said columnist Richard Cohen, who broke with liberals when he supported the Iraq war. More recently, the left has picked apart columns that are perceived as being favorable to John McCain.

“If you’re a little bit critical of Barack Obama, you get really a pie of vilification right in the face,” Cohen said, adding that his liberal critics “were born too late, because they would have been great communists.”

It’s extraordinary how commonplace these kind of sentiments are among prominent media figures. Cohen clearly relishes his self-conception as an independent thinker. And presumably the whole reason he’s glad to be a Washington Post columnist in part because that gives him a large audience of people who care about politics. Given all that, of course people will sometimes disagree with him! But that’s now how he sees it, and certainly he sees no need to engage with his critics on the merits — instead, they’re just like Communists!

The whole mindset is bizarre but also bizarrely widespread. You’d think that people who write for a living about public affairs wouldn’t be so thin-skinned.

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