Why Oh Why Can't We Have a Better Press Corps? (Yet Another Washington Post/Richard Cohen Edition)

Richard Cohen is upset that he is being pursued by a digital lynch mob. "Why are people using the internet to say nasty things about me?" he asks. "Why don't they like me? Why do they think I should be fired?"

Let's see if we can make it clear. Here we have Swopa explaining why he doesn't like Richard Cohen:

From the Department of Moral Relativism | Needlenose: Richard Cohen, writing last week on Stephen Colbert, who dared to lampoon Dubya in the presence of the Shrub-in-Chief himself:

The sort of stuff that would get you punched in a bar.... Colbert was more than rude. He was a bully.

And here's Richard Cohen today, milking a column out of readers' reaction to his pan of Colbert's monologue:

The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. . . . I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations....

None of that "sticks and stones" nonsense for this perceptive, sensitive observer of the political scene! Don't Colbert et al. know that people have feelings, and how wrong it is to hurt them? But wait... here's Richard Cohen last October, on the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA officer, in retaliation for her husband's criticism of the Corleone Bush administration:

Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out. . . . it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet....

If you're King Dubya, or Prince Karl, or even a hanger-on like Sir Richard, anything that discomfits you is worthy of condemnation. But if you're outside that charmed circle -- or, even worse, suffer a "ricochet" because of the actions of someone within it -- then Cohen's message is, "Suck it up, bitch, this is a tough town."

And here's Greg Mitchell explaining why he doesn't like Richard Cohen:

While America Slept: Richard Cohen... said he had long been skeptical of [the] idea [that Bush wanted war with Iraq], but now had come to accept it. That's all well and good, but where was Cohen a little more than three years ago, when this fact was as plain as the smirk on the president's face, and the columnist agitated for war anyway? If there was an "I'm sorry for being so stupid" embedded in Cohen's column, I didn't spot it.

This is the man who, on Feb. 6, 2003, after Secretary of State Colin Powell's deeply-flawed testimony in New York, wrote: "The evidence he presented to the United Nations -- some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail -- had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool -- or possibly a Frenchman -- could conclude otherwise."

Yet Cohen has the nerve to write today: "Colin Powell, you may recall, soiled his stellar reputation with a United Nations speech that is now just plain sad to read. Almost none of it is true."

What about Cohen's reputation?

Now Cohen observes that "Paul Wolfowitz was obsessed with Iraq, and that seems to have been true of the White House as well." Of course, this was well-known in 2003... but it didn't stop Cohen from cheerleading for the war. Today Cohen notes there is "plenty of evidence [Bush] had Saddam on his mind and in his sights from the very moment he got the news of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.... Whatever Bush's specific reason or reasons, the one thing that's so far missing from the record is proof of him looking for a genuine way out of war instead of looking for a way to get it started. Bush wanted war. He just didn't want the war he got."... [T]he same can be said of Cohen.... It would be nice if Cohen would admit that, like Bush, he chose poorly, with disastrous consequences.

Writing as a man who doesn't think Stephen Colbert is all that funny... Is there anybody, anybody at all who doesn't dislike Richard Cohen?