Fun! I wasn't expecting a second chance after my dismal failure to predict the content of yesterday's Richard Cohen column, but here it is, Wednesday, and we've got a bonus, a second round! Yay! And this one is really great, because it features what we love, a glimpse at Li'l Dickie's sad high school years. Truly we are blessed.
It turns out that Cohen went to high school with Bernard and Ruth Madoff (and Dr. Joyce Brothers and Richard Feynman), and one gets the distinct impression that they were the cool kids who didn't really want to be friends with him:
I remember her only as really cute, an object of desire across a classroom or another. But in the yearbook she wrote a long inscription. It seems I teased her. It seems I kidded her. She forgave me all that and ended by writing that I would "meet Bernie at the prom -- and I guarantee he will say hello."
Are you getting the subtext? Li'l Dickie had a big crush on Ruth and so he pestered her and, I don't know, stuck her pigtails in the inkwell or whatever. Bernie was one of the cool kids he longed to be friends with. There's something so pathetic about "I guarantee he will say hello" that it almost makes me feel sorry for him. But who's saying hello now, huh, Bernie? Richard Cohen is! And goodbye, too! Ow! At last, the snub is reversed.
So now, what, eighty years later, Richard can finally take out that sad yearbook and show it to anybody who will look and finally, finally feel superior to older, cooler Bernie:
When I tell people about my relationship with Bernie and Ruth, they sometimes gasp. When I show them the yearbook, they hold it as if it's a poisonous snake. My yearbook is the closest most people will ever come to evil. Bernie is evil, which is what the judge said Monday in sentencing him to 150 years in jail. The yearbook has become like a Nazi artifact. It is compelling. It is repulsive. It is about evil.
Are you picturing Richard running around, frantically trying to push his yearbook into people's hands as they nervously back away?
Once a pest, always a pest.
12 comments:
The Omen XII - starring Richard Cohen's Yearbook!
Jesus on a waffe. This post and that picture have fueled a perfect day ahead for me... If I start to feel low I will think of the sound of holy water hissing as it hits the pages of the book of satan and I will think of Richard in his pretty crinoline!
So, eventually, popular morphs into evil. And unpopular morphs into Richard Cohen.
Wait a second... morphing means changing. Scratch that second sentence in the first graf.
Sure, Bernie's in jail, but Richard is still Richard. You be the judge--who's worse off?
P.S. I can totally see Ruth being the popular girl in high school.
Heh, Richard's still Richard, and he's still at the Washington Post. Now that Dan's gone, the WaPo is all nonsense all the time.
Did the WaPo also fire it's editors? Why print this insignificant little twerp's pathetic and transparent attempt to link himself to things that DO matter--that's what blogs are for! (One of the things.)
Richard has probably been stamping his little foot since Dec 11th. "But I can do a column on this. Let me. Let meeeeeee! I KNOW THESE PEOPLE. Oh, please. Please."
I threw out my high school yearbooks decades ago. Richard Cohen still has his? Pathetic.
Richard reminds me of Condi in that he -- an insignificant scribbler, just as the former Secretary of State is an insignificant "doctor" -- somehow manages to inspire a person of genius, PSP (I hope the Pony will forgive this flattery) to provide us with aperçus that go far beyond the limited horizons of its subjects and that indeed are, with their wit & humor, trenchant observations about our dire times ...
PS -- No, I did not write this in PSP's high school yearbook.
Never go back to high school. Ever.
I threw out my high school yearbooks decades ago. Richard Cohen still has his? Pathetic.
And FWIW, Bernie probably wasn't evil in High School, although maybe what made him evil later was what happened to him in high school.
G: "maybe what made him evil later was what happened to him in high school."
Well, according to Richard, Richard happened to Bernie in high school. Wouldn't you at least secretly dream about becoming evil to get rid of that annoying twerp who was pestering your girl and trying to be friends with you constantly? Richard Cohen made that man, don't you see people? It's all about Richard!!!
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