I felt a bit more like you did (though I've consistently enjoyed some of the writers, and Cockburn poking at Hitchens is always fun in a catfighty sorta way) before I heard Cockburn talking about Jill Johnston back in their Village Voice days.  Johnston -- if you haven't read her -- is this over the top stream of conciousness feminist (of the most doctrinare and yet clinically bipolar sort), who is occassionally grandly truthful and occassionally hateful.  But his attitude, while taking all that into account, had a certain real affection for her work, for the whole wild variety of the place at that time.  It gave me a little more of that cynical affection toward his own work; Counterpunch publishes people all across the spectrum out on the edge, who are trying to critique events.  It's more than a passing attempt at truthfulness, it's an earnest attempt at it -- but it's not trying to be the NYT, either.  All of them -- and Cockburn himself -- misfire, and sometimes badly.