Controversy over Richard Cohen’s comments on the de Blasio family

Richard Cohen has a knack for making venom-spewing enemies out of people who should be his allies.Like on Tuesday, when The Washington Post columnist wrote about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s chances in the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses and took a detour to consider Bill de Blasio, New York City’s newly elected mayor, and his multiracial family:
“People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.”
The baying for Cohen’s head on the Internet quickly ensued — primarily from liberals who might otherwise consider Cohen, who has been a left-of-center presence on the newspaper’s op-ed page for a generation, one of their own.
The Huffington Post slapped a big photo of Cohen, 72, on its media page and roared, “Dear Washington Post: Please Fire This Man.”
Esquire.com columnist Charles Pierce fumed, “If Newspaper Stupid had a top 40, Richard Cohen would be the Beatles in 1965.”
There was more critical coverage, from, among others, the Atlantic, Salon, Gawker, Slate, MSNBC.com and even The Post’s Wonkblog, which helpfully pointed out that 87 percent of Americans in a Gallup survey this year approved of interracial marriage. As such, Salon.com’s columnist, Alex Pareene, suggested that Cohen’s notion that “conventional” people “gag” at the sight of the de Blasios “reveal a man very much out of touch with this era and deeply discomfited by it. (They also reveal a man who is terrified of black people.)”
Cohen begs to differ. Strongly.
“I don’t understand it,” said the columnist, who lives in New York City. “What I was doing was expressing not my own views but those of extreme right-wing Republican tea party people. I don’t have a problem with interracial marriage or same-sex marriage. In fact, I exult in them. It’s a slander” to suggest otherwise. “This is just below the belt. It’s a purposeful misreading of what I wrote.”
He added, “I think it’s reprehensible to say that because you disagree with something that you should fire me. That’s what totalitarians do.”

Controversy over Richard Cohen’s comments on the de Blasio family - The Washington Post

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j-mac said:

Ain't it rich? When liberals rail against companies, or News outlets they don't like, they take to the phones, and in person to go after the advertisers, and ramp up calls for what ever outlet to fire the outrage de jour....Now one of their own comes under the knee jerks, and for a brief moment reveals who they are....

Totalitarians.

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sangha said:

You mean the same Richard Cohen that supported the invasion of Iraq, said that slaveowners were nice people, that store owners should refuse to let black people into their stores and that the nation of Israel was a mistake? That "liberal" Richard Cohen?

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sangha said:

You mean the same Richard Cohen that supported the invasion of Iraq, said that slaveowners were nice people, that store owners should refuse to let black people into their stores and that the nation of Israel was a mistake? That "liberal" Richard Cohen?

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