There's been a lot writen recently about Richard Cohen's recent Washington Post column, in which he opines that Patrick Fitzgerald should pull up stakes and beat the retreat back to Chicago. Why? He offers two reasons, one fake and one real. His fake reason is that a conspiracy rap for Rove or Libby would be somehow unfair. His real reason is only implied, hidden beneath his argument about "control of information." The real reason Cohen has his underoos in a bunch over this investigation is that it threatens his own inflated image of himself and his profession. Like Novak and Miller, Cohen believes that a byline and a press card unburden him from such petty concerns as objective fact, ethical standards, and rule of law. Granted, there is a certain amount of arrogance inherent in the job description of an op-ed columnist.
By publishing a pundit, a publication is implying that said pundit offers an insight into current affairs so unique as to be worth two to five minutes of a reader's life. Needless to say, few in the chattering class live up to this standard.
Some, like David Broder, are monotonous puke funnels who do nothing but regurgitate beltway "conventional wisdom."
Others, such as Tom Freidman, specialize in endless masturbatory variations on a single theme.
Then there are the serial fabricators, of whom Maureen "Who among us does not love NASCAR?" Dowd is the most prominent example. Perhaps frustrated by unrealized literary ambitions, these types are all too eager to sublimate fact and truth to a smooth narrative.
Perhaps most insulting, though, are op-ed blights like Cohen, who seem to simply jot down their first impressions on any given subject and present them to the reading public as expert analysis. For all I know, Cohen is so dogged in his pursuit of objective journalistic truth that he often forgets to eat or sleep. His columns, though, read as if they were cranked out in the fifteen minutes between eating his Cracklin' Oat Bran and taking his morning Maxwell House-induced dump. Cohen offers nothing more to public discourse than a loudmouthed sot on a barstool, although at least the lush's use of the English language might be creative, unlike Cohen's stiff prose.
I neither know nor care how a mediocrite like Cohen came to inherit so loud a bullhorn and so prominent a soapbox, but I think it's time someone told this self-styled avatar of wisdom the hard truth that he's really just a schmuck with a keyboard.