{"id":10260,"date":"2007-03-20T13:10:54","date_gmt":"2007-03-20T17:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10260.html"},"modified":"2007-03-20T13:10:54","modified_gmt":"2007-03-20T17:10:54","slug":"richard-cohens-poor-memory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/richard-cohens-poor-memory\/","title":{"rendered":"Richard Cohen’s poor memory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WaPo’s Richard Cohen addressed<\/a> the controversy today over whether the lives of troops killed in Iraq have been “wasted,” a word used in this context by both John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (D). In analyzing recent events, however, Cohen’s memory of the last five weeks is faulty.<\/p>\n

McCain used the “W” word when he announced on the David Letterman show that he would run for president. “Americans are very frustrated, and they have every right to be,” he said. “We’ve wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives.” Precisely so.<\/p>\n

The Democratic National Committee, ever poised for the cheap shot, accused McCain of “insulting our brave troops” and demanded an apology. Others joined in, and McCain obliged, saying he should have used the word “sacrificed.” Among the sacrifices being made, of course, is McCain’s integrity.<\/p>\n

Earlier, Obama had also been caught uttering the truth. Soon after he announced for the presidency, the senator concluded a criticism of the war with the “W” word — “over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted.” Obama quickly apologized, confessing to a “slip of the tongue.” He then reformulated his statement using the word “sacrifices.” For some reason, the Democratic National Committee held its tongue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Cohen is leaving out a few key details to the story. OK, more than a few.<\/p>\n

Specifically, Cohen seems to have completely forgotten about the Republicans’ attacks on Obama and the fact that the Republican National Committee held its tongue when it suited its purposes.
\n
\nWhen Obama used what Cohen calls the “W” word, it was the Republican National Committee that led the attack<\/a>, issuing a statement headlined “Obama Dismissed The Sacrifice Of America’s Military.”<\/p>\n

By Cohen’s logic, doesn’t this mean that the RNC is “ever poised for the cheap shot”? For that matter, after McCain used identical language, the RNC said nothing. Following Cohen’s logic, doesn’t the RNC deserve a sarcastic comment about holding its tongue?<\/p>\n

What’s more, Cohen seems to have missed the context. Obama made a comment, and the RNC pounced. McCain made the same comment, and the DNC pounced. Why, then, single out one side for denunciation? Why accuse one of a “cheap shot” without even telling the reader which party used it first?<\/p>\n

It’s worth noting, as Greg Sargent does<\/a>, that Cohen’s column is otherwise correct.<\/p>\n

What makes Cohen’s omission all the more puzzling is that the rest of the column is pretty unobjectionable, even decent. It’s devoted to a discussion mostly of the various things Republicans<\/i> are doing to use the troops as political props — things which, unlike the skirmish over the word “wasted,” have actual consequences<\/i> for them, such as, you know, leaving them in a war. <\/p>\n

It’s almost as if Cohen felt the need to toss in his whopping distortion of the “wasted” battle in order to achieve “balance” — as in, don’t worry, Democrats are bad, too!<\/i> If so, Cohen’s quest for “balance” led him to do to a pretty glaring disservice to the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s exactly the sense I got. Cohen wanted to trash the GOP’s exploitation of the troops, but he just couldn’t bring himself to go after one side without offering a misleading slap at the other.<\/p>\n

Note to the media: sometimes, a pox on only one house will do just fine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WaPo’s Richard Cohen addressed the controversy today over whether the lives of troops killed in Iraq have been “wasted,” a word used in this context by both John McCain (R) and Barack Obama (D). In analyzing recent events, however, Cohen’s memory of the last five weeks is faulty. McCain used the “W” word when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}