Richard Cohen (journalist)
Encyclopedia
Richard Cohen, is a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post.

Background

Cohen is a graduate of Far Rockaway High School
Far Rockaway High School
Far Rockaway High School, a public high school in the public school system of New York City, was located on Bay 25 Street in Far Rockaway in the borough of Queens, as part of the New York City Department of Education. The school was founded in 1897, with Sanford J. Ellsworth as principal for over...

 and attended Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...

, New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

, and Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

. He is a four-time Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...

 finalist in the "Commentary" category.

Opinions

Some of Cohen's social views are ones attributed to American liberalism, but his political views are often hawkish. For example, he is pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....

 and pro-gay rights.
However, he was originally a supporter of the Iraq War, and publicly supported the Bush administration in several other high profile instances.

In a 2003 Washington Post column, Cohen wrote "the evidence Colin Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...

 presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise." Cohen also wrote that he believed "the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic" after the events of 9/11. Cohen has since expounded upon his former views of support for the Iraq War, and his later stance against it.

In August 2006, he wrote a column declaring that "Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 itself is a mistake" in which he stated: "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now." For this statement Cohen was criticized in an essay released by the American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...

 entitled 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism
"Progressive" Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism is a 2006 essay released by the American Jewish Committee, authored by Alvin H. Rosenfeld , with an introduction by the AJC's executive director, David A. Harris...

. He later clarified his statements in his next week's column, saying, "Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exalt and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world—and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples, and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that—oh, what irony! -- the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?" Elsewhere in the column, he defended Israel's military campaign in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America
Media Matters for America is a politically progressive media watchdog group which says it is "dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media." Set up as a 501 non-profit organization, MMfA was founded in 2004 by journalist and...

 has chided Cohen for some columns lacking necessary context and thus exhibiting a double standard
Double standard
A double standard is the unjust application of different sets of principles for similar situations. The concept implies that a single set of principles encompassing all situations is the desirable ideal. The term has been used in print since at least 1895...

 in favor of the George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

 administration. Cohen criticized Stephen Colbert's speech at the 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner
Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner
On April 29, 2006, American comedian Stephen Colbert appeared as the featured entertainer at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, which was held in Washington, D.C., at the Hilton Washington hotel...

 for being "rude" toward the President.
However, he did not criticize Bush when the President mocked his own administration for failing to find weapons of mass destruction. Cohen similarly overlooked that a British memo proved that Bush did not go to war with Iraq as a last resort and that Patrick Fitzgerald
Patrick Fitzgerald
Patrick J. Fitzgerald is the current United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and a member of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Special Counsel...

 had more authority to investigate the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame
Valerie Plame
Valerie Elise Plame Wilson , known as Valerie Plame, Valerie E. Wilson, and Valerie Plame Wilson, is a former United States CIA Operations Officer and the author of a memoir detailing her career and the events leading up to her resignation from the CIA.-Early life :Valerie Elise Plame was born on...

 than Cohen suggested.

In 2007 he criticized the prosecution of Scooter Libby (in the Plame affair criminal investigation
Plame affair criminal investigation
The CIA leak scandal is a dispute stemming from allegations that one or more White House officials revealed Central Intelligence Agency agent Valerie Plame Wilson’s under cover status. An investigation is underway concerning the possibility that one or more crimes may have been committed...

) as politically motivated, saying "This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off." Cohen was in turn criticized by Media Matters for America for factual errors in his presentation, including his contentions that Plame had not been a covert agent, and that "outing" Plame "turns out not to be a crime."

In 2010 he wrote that people who cling to the Constitution, specifically those rights not granted to the federal government but reserved to the people and the states, are wackos. "This fatuous infatuation with the Constitution, particularly the 10th Amendment, is clearly the work of witches, wiccans and wackos."

Accusations of inappropriate behavior

He received unflattering public attention in 1987 when it became public knowledge that he was having an affair with Kati Marton
Kati Marton
Kati Marton is a Hungarian-American author and journalist. Her career has included reporting for ABC News as a foreign correspondent and National Public Radio, where she started as a production assistant 1971 in her 20s, as well as print journalism and writing a number of books.She is the former...

, the wife of ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

 anchorman Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings
Peter Charles Archibald Ewart Jennings, CM was a Canadian American journalist and news anchor. He was the sole anchor of ABC's World News Tonight from 1983 until his death in 2005 of complications from lung cancer...

.

In 1998, Cohen was involved in a dispute with editorial aide Devon Spurgeon that was ultimately mediated by Washington Post management. Cohen reportedly asked Ms. Sturgeon questions about "casual sex", told her to "stand up and turn around", and gave her the "silent treatment" for three weeks. Cohen contended that "It was a personality dispute at an office, but it had nothing to do with sexual harassment as the term applies today." Post management concluded that Ms. Spurgeon had been subjected to a "hostile working environment" but not to "sexual harassment" and that Cohen was guilty of "inappropriate behavior."

Criticism of his writing

In 2009, Cohen was recognized as the "World's Worst Writer" by Wonkette
Wonkette
Wonkette is a left-leaning American online magazine of topical satire and political gossip, established in 2004 by Gawker Media and founding editor Ana Marie Cox, and edited by Ken Layne from 2006 to 2011...

. Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

named him the #1 "Hack
Hack writer
Hack writer is a colloquial and usually pejorative term used to refer to a writer who is paid to write low-quality, rushed articles or books "to order", often with a short deadline. In a fiction-writing context, the term is used to describe writers who are paid to churn out sensational,...

" in 2010. Alex Pareene wrote for Salon, "He's not so much an old liberal who grew conservative as he is a simplistic old hack who believes his common prejudices to be politically incorrect truths and his Beltway conventional wisdom to be bracing political insight."

External links

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