Letters to the Editor
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Links to the Richard Cohen Columns
I should have provided links to the two Richard Cohen columns from 2004 that directly addressed the Swift Boat slander. Here they are:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47890-2004Aug30.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60596-2004Sep3.html
The first column is from Aug. 31, 2004. The second is from Sept. 4, 2004. In both columns, Cohen criticizes the Swift Boat slander. In both columns, he acknowledges - BUT DOES NOT CRITICIZE - Bush's failure to denounce the Swift Boat ads.
This is yet another remarkable illustration of how the rightwing attack machine can count on not only Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter to amplify their message, but on avowed non-partisans like Cohen and Broder.
Cohen's hypocrisy is manifest. The Swift Boat slander was the most despicable (and arguably the most successful) campaign of political slander in recent American history. It was funded by longtime supporters of Bush. It had close ties with associates of Rove. And yet Cohen could not bring himself to demand that Bush repudiate these scurrilous ads. And yet he devotes a full column this morning to accusing Sen. Clinton of "hackdom."
In the battle of the Noise Machines and Echo Chambers, we are getting outflanked and massacred. People like Cohen and Broder can take marching orders from the rightwing slime machine and still purport to be serious, non-partisan and even vaguely left. From this stance they can effectively dictate the parameters of acceptable discourse, and marginalize MoveOn.Org while tacitly admitting the Swift Boaters into the national discourse.