Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the clearly syphilitic Richard Cohen:
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.
This bit of cultural wisdom was offered, mind you, as part of an explanation for why New Jersey Governor Chris Christie will have difficulty attracting the support of Iowan conservatives should he seek to compete in their presidential nominating caucuses. It’s not immediately obvious why Chris Christie will be punished for the New York mayor’s miscegenation, nor is it clear why Iowa was singled-out as the home of the neo-Dixiecrats. But this is what happens during the Tertiary Stage of syphilis. People stop making sense, and they may even begin blurting out racially insensitive remarks that have no logical or temporal connection to anything.
I recommend that Cohen pursue a prolonged treatment of intravenous penicillin, followed by a comfortable retirement. Watching the cap on his career is more painful than prolonged exposure to Charlie Sheen.
The Washington Post‘s habit of providing lifetime sinecures assures that even once-decent columnists will eventually sully their names and destroy the paper’s reputation, because public dementia and writing opinion columns are two things that do not go together.
And Richard Cohen has not been a decent columnist for at least thirty years. Somewhere, there is a pasture calling his name.
