<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title>washingtonpost.com - Richard Cohen</title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/opinion/columns/cohenrichard?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><description>Richard Cohen</description><language>en-us</language><ttl>15</ttl><image><title>washingtonpost.com</title><width>140</width><height>20</height><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com</link><url>http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/hp/image/wp_web.gif</url></image><item><title><![CDATA[A Pope for Better or Perhaps Worse]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6178-2005Apr20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6178-2005Apr20.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Being a non-Catholic nowadays is a bit like being a non-American most of the time. Important, maybe even historic, decisions are being made and you are totally locked out. America chooses a president who gets a bee in his bonnet about Iraq, and a hunk of the world goes to war. The cardinals of the church choose a pope and maybe an even bigger hunk of the world is affected  --  everything from population control to AIDS. The import is clear: We  --  that's all of us  --  have a new pope.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Faith-Based Pandering]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64467-2005Apr18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64467-2005Apr18.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Totally by mistake, I was summoned to meet Sen. Bill Frist shortly after he first arrived in Washington. This happened because someone in Frist's office confused me with the congressional affairs correspondent of the National Journal, Richard E. Cohen, but I stayed to meet Frist anyway and found him impressive. Time and tide have changed my view. He is now the Senate majority leader and an undeclared but neon-lit presidential candidate who is getting into shape for the long run to the White House by shedding anything that weighs him down. In his case it's principles.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Disaster, Not Diplomacy]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51669-2005Apr13.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  It is my impression  --  gleaned from reviews  --  that Malcolm Gladwell's book "Blink" posits that first impressions often are right on the nose. Nonetheless, for reasons having to do with caution, prudence and a debilitating sense of fair play, I have until now withheld my first  --  and only  --  impression of John Bolton, probably destined to be the next U.S.  ambassador to the United Nations: He's nuts.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Backward Evolution]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45303-2005Apr11.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45303-2005Apr11.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Behold the giant Galapagos tortoise! It weighs several hundred pounds, lives God-only-knows how long and on the day a couple of weeks ago when I was on the Galapagos Islands, could not be beholden at all. The tortoise we wanted to see, Lonesome George, so-called because he is apparently the last of his subspecies, was in hiding. In a sense, that's appropriate, because almost half of the United States cannot see any of the Galapagos for what they are: the home office of evolution. This is where Charles Darwin got his bright idea.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Failure of More Than Intelligence]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32733-2005Apr6.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32733-2005Apr6.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Shortly before the United States went to war in Iraq, I was in contact with a former member of the American intelligence community. This is what he told me: Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program, no chemical or biological weapons program to speak of, and no link to al Qaeda. He said that if America invaded, it would cost us "perhaps 1,000 casualties" and would lead to prolonged "terrorism and harassment." I thanked him very much for his views  --  and urged the United States to attack anyway. Along with Don Quixote, I sometimes feel that facts are the enemy of truth.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Whole Picture on John Paul II]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26525-2005Apr4.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26525-2005Apr4.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Television is a silly medium. Just pay close attention next time the government announces that housing starts are down. TV news programs will show houses being built because, obviously, you cannot film what is not happening. This explains the disproportionate way Pope John Paul II's death was reported on television. There's nothing but good film on the man. The human consequences of his policies are largely missing. They are always off-camera.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Where Are the Democrats?]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61694-2005Mar23.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61694-2005Mar23.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Rep. Tom DeLay is called "The Hammer." He is a man of fierce beliefs who has long confused politics with war  --  religious war at that. At one time he would have been labeled an "extremist," the sort of politician  whom reporters seek out for colorful, wacko quotes. But now he is in the GOP mainstream where, among other things, he has bludgeoned the Democratic Party into pathetic meekness. On the Terri Schiavo debate, the party went AWOL.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA['A Great  Political Issue']]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55427-2005Mar21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55427-2005Mar21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Sen. Bill Frist watched a videotape last week of Terri Schiavo made by her parents in 2001. He did this in his capacity as Senate majority leader and as a renowned physician. In both roles he performed miserably. As a senator, he showed himself to be an unscrupulous opportunist. As a physician, he was guilty of practicing medicine without a brain.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Secretary of Spin?]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42187-2005Mar16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42187-2005Mar16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[I have only a glancing acquaintance with George Bush's good friend Karen Hughes. I met her on the first Bush presidential campaign and was awed by her uncanny ability to answer a question over and over again, each time with the same inflection, volume and, of course, words. This left me suspecting she had a computer chip implanted somewhere in her body or that she was naturally one of those people who, no matter how forceful your complaint, respond with the wholesome but empty phrase "Have a nice day." When she comes before the Senate for confirmation in her new job  --  undersecretary of state  --  Hughes should not have a nice day.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[C-SPAN's Balance of the Absurd]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35346-2005Mar14.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35346-2005Mar14.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   You will not be seeing Deborah Lipstadt on C-SPAN. The Holocaust scholar at Emory University has a new book out ("History on Trial"), and an upcoming lecture of hers at Harvard was scheduled to be televised on the public affairs cable outlet. The book is about a libel case brought against her in Britain by David Irving, a Holocaust denier, trivializer and prevaricator who is, by solemn ruling of the very court that heard his lawsuit, "anti-Semitic and racist." No matter. C-SPAN wanted Irving to "balance" Lipstadt.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cupid Strikes, and Boeing Goes Into a Tailspin]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22107-2005Mar9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22107-2005Mar9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Hello, this is Richard Cohen from the flight deck. Look around you. If your plane was built by Boeing, get off immediately. It's possible the toilets won't flush and the seats won't recline and you could get your eardrums ruptured by the headphones. All this is possible because we now know that the plane was built by idiots. They can't tell the difference between a love affair and an illegal bribe.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Supreme Zealotry]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15520-2005Mar7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15520-2005Mar7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Justice Antonin Scalia, who believes in miracles, is one himself. Coming up on 20 years on the Supreme Court and many more in Washington, he nonetheless has retained the ability to write and speak in plain English. So it was no surprise that Scalia insisted last week that the Ten Commandments were not, as some argued, a mostly secular statement of only incidental religious meaning but rather a mostly religious statement of only incidental secular meaning. In the spirit of the Commandments, he told the truth.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Silent Cal's Lesson]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2709-2005Mar2.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2709-2005Mar2.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  Under some unwritten rule, all modern presidents must pay homage to a like-minded predecessor. A picture is hung in the Oval Office. A bust is placed on the presidential desk. Bill Clinton, you will remember,  made his pilgrimage up the Hudson to the Hyde Park estate of Franklin D. Roosevelt. George W. Bush, in the estimation of others (if not himself), is another William McKinley, the president who transformed the GOP and made it dominant until the New Deal almost made it obsolete. Nobody, though, mentions Calvin Coolidge.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Middle East Side Story]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61633-2005Feb28.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61633-2005Feb28.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  At the moment it seems the semi-official composer for the Middle East is, of all people, Leonard Bernstein. The song I have in mind is his "Something's Coming" from "West Side Story," which, with Stephen Sondheim's lyrics conveying a sense of anxious anticipation -- "Could it be? Yes, it could/Something's coming, something good" -- announces that something momentous is stirring: democracy, freedom, independence. Something. Or, as an Arab acquaintance just e-mailed me from the region, "I can smell the winds of change in the air wherever I go." Alas, because he is a businessman, he does words, not music.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Rage in Riyadh]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51779-2005Feb24.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51779-2005Feb24.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Yoo-hoo, President Bush.<br>Watching the president woo Europe, I wanted to go to the top of my hotel and wave him down into the Middle East. The sweet sounds of rapprochement coming from the president's trip are not what I'm hearing in Saudi Arabia. Here, the United...]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Plenty of Soccer, but No Soccer Moms]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42607-2005Feb21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42607-2005Feb21.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[  JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Even for a panel discussion here at the Jeddah Economic Forum on the role of women in Saudi Arabia, the sexes were separated by a high barrier and women had to enter the room through what was called the "Female Entrance." The women -- most of them highly educated and generally affluent -- wore black abayas and, when they asked a question from the floor, they were not shown on the meeting hall's closed-circuit TV. At moments like this, I heard Dorothy's words to Toto in "The Wizard of Oz": "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[A Warning, From Gays to Gays]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30956-2005Feb16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A30956-2005Feb16.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   Much of life's wisdom is contained in a single piece of dialogue in George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan": the exchange between the Inquisitor and the Chaplain during the trial of Joan of Arc. The Inquisitor orders the Chaplain to sit down. When the Chaplain indignantly refuses, the Inquisitor says, "If you will not sit, you must stand." To that, the Chaplain says, "I will not stand," and flings himself into his seat. Often, as Shaw knew, the best reason to do something is that someone else doesn't want you to do it.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[Fame and Fortune in the Flesh]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27626-2005Feb15.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27626-2005Feb15.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   NEW YORK -- Following the screening here last week of "Inside Deep Throat," the documentary about the making of the 1972 porn classic, some people were asked to stand, and the audience applauded them. One of them was Harry Reems, the male lead of the movie, who became a pitiful alcoholic, destitute and homeless, but who later embraced Christianity and now sells real estate in Utah. The audience applauded and so did I until it occurred to me that I had no idea what I was applauding. Was it his performance in the film or his conversion to Christianity or his success in real estate or his triumph over alcoholism, or merely that he was present and that we, like some studio audience, had been cued to clap like trained seals? Someone, please, throw us a fish.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Reader  In the Oval Office]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12486-2005Feb9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12486-2005Feb9.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   The line -- the semiofficial one, that is -- has changed on George Bush. Where once he was supposedly the sort of guy who eschewed books and even thinking and favored instead a decision-making process that was almost entirely the product of instinct, we are now told that the president reads books -- really and truly. Among those cited, and famously so, is Natan Sharansky's "The Case for Democracy," which supposedly enthralled Bush because up to then, we may deduce, the case for democracy was not obvious to the man who heads the world's most powerful . . . er, democracy. Better late than never, I suppose.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item><item><title><![CDATA[My Avaricious Hero]]></title><link>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6386-2005Feb7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</link><guid isPermaLink="true">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6386-2005Feb7.html?nav=rss_opinion/columns/cohenrichard</guid><pubDate>Sat, 23 Apr 2005 12:27:15 GMT</pubDate><description><![CDATA[   After it was revealed that Richard A. Grasso, once the chairman of the august New York Stock Exchange, had made an unseemly amount of money -- in other words, almost as much as his bosses -- a lawyer was hired and an investigation was launched, which proved, to my immense satisfaction, that his greed knew no bounds. His willingness to spend other people's money extended even to his secretary, paid $240,000 a year, and to his two drivers, each paid $130,000, and probably, for such is the custom, entitled to take the car home with them at night. Grasso is the face of corporate America. Put it on the $100 bill.]]></description><author> Richard Cohen</author></item></channel></rss>
