Richard Cohen's column in today's WaPost should become a classic journalism school staple of journalistic malfeasance. It is what academics call mnemonic slander. (Mnemonic slander would be to say in a business or academic circle "Did somebody say he is sleeping with . . . ?" He probably in not and there is no specific slander, but the poison has been injected and the thought is associated from then on as a shadow which attaches itself to the person.)
Cohen in this column says that some leader in Obama's church honored Louis Farrakhan and then goes on to compare Farrakhan to Hitler and somehow Obama thus compares as well (because Obama is a subset of his church and its leader which of course he is not). It is a classic case of journalistic mnemonic slander because after Cohen has fully associated Obama with Farrakhan and Hitler and fired this condition to the reader's brain, he says:
"It's important to state right off that nothing in Obama's record suggests he harbors anti-Semitic views . . . ."
Of course, the deal is done. It is a sleazy lawyer trick and a sleazy journalist trick.
It is like saying that because I am a Catholic I am therefore an anti-Semite because an earlier Pope may have held sympathies with fascism. Or that my wife is a racist because she is a Virginia Episcopalian as was Robert E. Lee. Shame.
Update: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...