Richard Cohen is evidently the culture columnist at the Washington Post. A year ago he endorsed Mitt Romney’s view that Jews are culturally superior to Arabs. And two days ago he wrote that NY mayor-elect Bill de Blasio’s marriage to a black woman makes good folks want to vomit:
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. 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.
Cohen is now on the defensive for these comments, justly. Alex Pareene at Salon hints that Jeff Bezos should fire Cohen, and says his racism isn’t just offensive, it’s anachronistic; Americans overwhelmingly say they have no issue with interracial romance.
Here’s what Cohen said about “Arab culture” and Jewish culture a year ago:
I do know, though, that if you eliminate what would certainly be condemned as a racist explanation — Jews as inherently smarter than non-Jews — then you are left with culture: There was something in the Jewish experience — 1,000 or so years of persecution and being shunted into dishonorable occupations such as money lending — that prepared Europe’s Jews for the onset of capitalism…
The cultural difference between Israel and its Arab neighbors is so striking that you would think it beyond question. But when Mitt Romney attributed the gap between Israel’s economic performance and the Palestinians’ — “Culture makes all the difference,” he said in Israel — the roof came down on him. PC police the world over raised a red card, giving him demerits for having the temerity to notice the obvious. Predictably, Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, denounced the statement as “racist.” It was, of course, just the opposite.
This is a complicated matter. It’s true that the West Bank is under Israeli occupation and parts of Gaza have been pounded into rubble. It is also true that for years the Palestinians benefited from jobs in Israel. …
Still, for all the caveats, Arabs themselves recognize that they have a cultural problem.
I don’t question that Jews have had a remarkable culture, historically, in this stage of capitalism. But it’s over. Power destroyed it. The great Jewish IQ advantage is collapsing before our eyes and Cohen’s entitled Zionist stupidity is Exhibit A.
A for AIPAC
B for Brutality
C for Contempt
D for Plan Dalet
E for Ego
G for Grandeur (delusions of)
H for Home Demolitions
I for Indoctrination
J for (nominally) Jewish
K for Klanlike
L for Lobby
M for Mammon
N for Nakba
O for Odious
P for Pathological Narcissism
Q for Quds
R for Revenge
S for Sadism
T for Torture
U for Undivided eternal
V for Violence
W for Washington DC
Y for YESHA
Z for Zionism
F for fucked
These awful things I write are not my thoughts
They are the thoughts of other people
Not people I know or have spoken to
Not people I can quote or attribute
They just appear in my head
I take no responsibility for them
I just write them down.
Richard Cohen is 72 years old, and grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens. He represents a mentality that is on the way out.
” To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.” Well, perhaops that’s true.
But, then, the first question: Why does he care? Why is he writing to “cultural conservatives”? And, second, does he share their values?
And the third question: why does he put ANY of this in a newspaper?
I’m not sure the columnist should be fired. Maybe it’s the editor or the owner of the paper.
We’ll see how the paper owns up or hides on this one.
Phil,
Well, I do have a problem with this assertion. The accurate statement would be that Jews have been great producers of the cultures they have lived in.
There’s little Jewish, if anything at all, in the cultural output of Ashkenazi Jews. It’s not like they developed the concerto for piano and orchestra, the modern short story or oil-on-canvas painting. It’s not like they founded a physics school that eventually led to the Relativity Theory. They are all European creations that were taken up by Jews on an individual basis. Of course there’s a Jewish tradition of providing their offspring with an education, but that alone does not constitute a culture, nor can it be construed as the source of Jewish achievement, which would have been nonexistent outside of a European cultural context (no Einstein from Morocco).
The ultimate reason for the Ashekanzi Jews’ (and Israel’s) success is that Europe made them the gift of Enlightment, freeing them from the yoke of religion. Left to their own forces, they would have probably ended up like the Haredi community in Israel, whose culture is uniquely Jewish.