OMG, it's been a bit of a dry spell lately over at Cohenland. He's been dumb, he's been boring, but he hasn't been as dazzlingly stupid as we've come to expect. Pony Pals™, the wait is over, because his latest is unbelievably, jarringly, sensationally idiotic. Seriously, it's so asinine that I had to check to make sure it wasn't a brilliant parody masquerading as the real thing.
OK, so here's the conceit: Richard Cohen announces that he's won a special Pulitzer Prize for not having conducted an "exclusive" interview with Obama on health care. That's the joke, the single joke, that he's somehow stretched, excruciatingly, into eight horrible, unfunny paragraphs. Here's a sample of the hilarity:
For a person of my age, this was a sea change, or maybe a watershed or even a tsunami -- something big and aquatic. There was a time when I would have jumped at the chance for an exclusive interview with the president of the United States and would have watched with immense interest or great anxiety if his visage appeared on the screen. It meant war or price controls or maybe a refusal to seek another term. Presidents once were awesome figures, and just to interview one of them was enough to win a Pulitzer Prize.
Notice anything? That's right: it makes no sense whatsoever, and is not humorous!
What entertains me, however, is how easy it is to sense Cohen's seething jealousy towards people who 1. have interviewed Obama, and 2. have won Pulitzers.
Look, Richard, maybe you would be invited to interview Obama if you hadn't wasted all those columns whipping up fear of a black president last year. You remember, right? Those times you kept bringing up Louis Farrakhan, saying Obama should disavow his ideas after he already had?
As far as winning a Pulitzer Prize, well Richard, try this: become a good writer. Wait, scratch that: become a mediocre writer. Hey, it worked for your pal Steven Hunter!
And finally, am I supposed to be impressed that you read "six newspapers a day" but don't understand the health care debate? I can explain that: you just aren't very bright.
UPDATE: Obsessive WaPo commenter "WhatHeSaid" points out the following:
Starting with "My" Big Exclusive, Cohen went on to self-reference himself 37 times through the use of "I", "Me," "My."
There is a point where self-absorption becomes narcissism.
Cohen seems to have breezed past that point many, many years ago.
UPDATE: OMG, you have to read Jim Newell's take on this over at Wonkette. He reaches pretty much the exact same conclusions as above, but really runs with it. So good.
8 comments:
When will this guy get canned? Or retire? Or die? Or something?
"And finally, am I supposed to be impressed that you read "six newspapers a day" but don't understand the health care debate?"
Pssht, whatever, Richard. Call me back when you read all of them, and still fail to comprehend anything that you read, a la Sarah Palin.
I believe Richard has opened up whole new career possibilities with this strategy of not writing columns in order to win the Pulitzer.
Imagine, he could start with a column about the economic crisis, follow that up with a 5-part series on global warming, and for the biggie, solve the Israeli/Palestinian stalemate in a "special Sunday edition" of his column.
He could retire with literally dozens of Pulitzers for NOT writing anything. Only one problem..I fear Cohen probably knows next to nothing about any of his potentially Pulitzer prize winning columns and therefore would have nothing to not write about.
Shit. Well, he could always retire, anyway.
I wonder how much this intellectual fraud is getting paid by the Washington Pest.
He and "Dr" Rice would make an ideal couple. They could lie together while reading their immortal words to each other.
Anon paints the kind of picture that would make me hate art.
Does anyone else read this and suffer the image of Cohen seated on his knees at a long dining room table with paper plates, paper hats, a jolly colored streamer that reads "Happy Birthday," and a store-bought cake in front of him...
...and completely vacant chairs all around the table?
He looks at his candles burning, deciding what kind of a wish to make (A Pulitzer? Friends? Imminent Death?), and blows a soft, sad note into his party favor. But there's no singing.
There's never any singing.
Actually, despite Cohen himself being an ossified worthless village dipshit, I do sorta see him going for a satire on media here, its vapidity and love of itself. Of course, for obvious reasons he's not quite up to the task of quality parody. Nor even quality.
damn, does he get paid by the WORD?
he uses filler even in his hot air!
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