Roger Cohen - Your ideas don't matter to society.

Ezra Klein has read NY Times OpEd columnist Roger Cohen's complaint that he gets no credit with Liberals for being merely a liberal hawk. Instead he is lumped in with and accused of being that most despicable of American political labels now, a "NeoCon."

His complaint? Anyone today who supports American military intervention is derided as a NeoCon. He claims that he is not. His is a nuanced pro-military intervention position in which he merely supports intervention in Serbia, but does not go along with the NeoCons.

Ezra takes that whine apart beautifully.

...the liberal hawks should pay attention to a scolding Tom Wilkinson (in the movie The Last Kiss) gives to the solipsistic Zach Braff. "What you feel only matters to you," he spits. "It's what you do, to the people around you, that matters. That's all that matters." [Snip]

American politics isn't about you. It's not about your ideas, or your personal vision of the world, or your purity. Contemporary politics is not a landscape awaiting your morality plays and exhibitions of ethical decisiveness. It is not yours.

It is the impact of your ideas, and your commentary, that matters. That's all that matters. Yet years after their sustained dance of personal regard and self involvement helped blind the liberal hawks to the reality of George W. Bush's war, one of them, Roger Cohen, is retreading the same ground, wondering why his continued advocacy for war, (or at least continual attacks on its opponents) is folded into the critiques of the neocons.

Here's why: Roger Cohen is not president. George W. Bush is. And until Roger Cohen's foreign policy vision integrates itself with an understanding of American power, and how ideas interact with the current administration, he is, effectively, a neoconservative, or, worse, an enabler of the neoconservatives who's able to advocate for their policy agenda without needing to answer for their failures.

Cohen may not, personally, think like Bill Kristol. But he certainly writes like him. "Neocon, for many, has become shorthand for neocon-Zionist conspiracy," he says, naming no names, and instead offering a simple, generalized accusation of anti-semitism against all those who question the neoconservatives. "Baghdad is closer to Sarajevo than the left has allowed," he writes, obliterating the difference between a bombing campaign undertaken to end an ongoing genocide and a ground invasion undertaken to unearth weapons that didn't exist, overturn a regime we couldn't replace, and forcibly impose a system of governance that lacked foundations. "MoveOn.org is the Petraeus-insulting face of never-set-foot-in-a-war-zone liberalism," he scoffs, having never, himself, fought in a war, but nevertheless adopting the authority of those who have.

These are not arguments. They are smears. [Snip]

Cohen would no doubt respond that he is not a neoconservative, but a liberal interventionist. "Distinction matters," he protests. "The neocon taste for American empire is not the liberal hawk’s belief in the bond between American power and freedom’s progress." But this war, and any that occur until January 2009, will not be conducted by Roger Cohen. They will be conducted by neoconservatives animated by a taste for American empire. And so the distinction does not matter, because any hawkish actions will be undertaken and overseen by those on the wrong side of it. Roger Cohen may feel like he is a liberal hawk, and thus distinct. But what Roger Cohen feels does not matter, because Roger Cohen does not control any branch of the American military. Who he empowers, and which actors in American politics find their ideas legitimized by his columns, is all that matters. And in that, he is worse than a neoconservative. He's a liberal hawk who knows better, but whose interest in writing about his own virtue overwhelms his judgments concerning the actual actions of those who wield power. He is not a neoconservative. He is a narcissist.

In short - the NeoCons and Bushies have thoroughly screwed up America and the world with their militaristic nationalist fantasies. They clearly have not learned how they screwed up. Instead, they are trying to find out who prevented their success and want to kill whoever that is, not accepting the clear reality that they are themselves their own worst enemy and the source of their defeats.

It is not the liberals, the anti-war Democrats, the al Qaeda members or the Sunni Wahabbi terrorists who are causing their grand plans to collapse into dust. It is their own blindness, ignorance and stupidity that is defeating the Bush people. And as long as the Republicans retain control of the White House, this situation will continue.

There is no "nuanced liberal war hawk position" that can get around the fact that the NeoCons and incompetent Bushies control any possible military action at this time and that will remain the case until February 2009. Any "liberal war hawk" who suggests using military options to the current incompetent crew is one of them.

No amount of whining from Cohen that he didn't mean to support the incompetence of the current leaders will detract from the fact that support of Cheney/Bush/NeoCons means their failures are those of their supporters also.

Thanks, Ezra. Extremely clear and most accurate. "What you feel only matters to you," ... "It's what you do, to the people around you, that matters. That's all that matters."

D.C. Pundit Corps motto: "Keep them in the dark and feed them B.S."

Glenn Greenwald states it very nicely:

One could write media criticisms for the next several years and not come close to capturing the essence of our Beltway media the way [Richard] Cohen [Washington Post] did in this single paragraph:

With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, "it is often best to keep the lights off." If that isn't the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.

That is the motto that should be inscribed at the top of Fred Hiatt's Editorial Page in pretty calligraphy. And let us acknowledge what a truly superb job they have been doing in keeping the lights off.

A better example of what the old statement "Keep them in the Dark and Feed them Bullshit" means could not be written.

The "them" in that statement is, of course, the American public. You. Me. Ambiance is "Dark." Menu is "Bullshit." In the past this was the only restaurant in town, and we were expected to pay for what we could get and leave quietly. The pundits even got to where they expected a Tip for their service.

What has happened is that the politicians - the denizens of Washington, D.C. on who the pundits started their careers as reporters describing and reporting on, are also the people who the reporters and pundits talk to. Those "denizens" operate in the murky realms of politics where much of what is done really is, to say the least, highly unsavory. Those "denizens" operate based on the idea that their murky doings are best not revealed.

The reporters and pundits are, in theory, in the business of revealing and reporting those murky dealings to us - to the American public. But here is the problem. While they are supposedly being paid to report to us, they don't listen to us! Never have, and that is the way they like it. They listen instead to the politicians on whom they are supposed to report, and those politicians really, really don't like being investigated and reported on. They want someone supposedly reporting on them to actually be speaking for them.

That's what Richard Cohen is doing. He is speaking for the politicians, not reporting on the politicians. Want examples? Go read Eric Boehlert at (the blog, natch) Huffington Post (via .)

Gee. It should not come as a surprise that the politician spokespersons who call themselves reporters and who have spent their full career speaking for politicians feel put upon when some of their mere audience stand up on their hind legs and tell them You are failing to do your jobs as reporters!

That is the basis of the "reporter/pundit" put-downs of bloggers. Many Bloggers are telling the most experienced old hands in the D.C. pundit corps that they have spent their professional lives as so-called reporters living a lie.

Uh, oh. Some of the bullshit is being exposed to the light, and the professional bullshit artists (pundits - Cohen, Hiatt, Klein, etc.) are reacting like spiders who have lived their lives in the dark do when a spot light is shined on them. We are watching them react with high anxiety as the D.C. pundit/reporters scramble to find their comfortable, dark niches so that they can again be comfortable.

There are still things that the "Spiderhole Restaurant" have on the menu that can't be found in any of the newer, alternative restaurants. But I'm damned sure not going to Tip for what I now find is and has been really rotten service. I don't care how anxious it makes the pundits. Their anxiety and refusal to face the new environment is not MY problem. They will just have to adapt.

I have always enjoyed shining lights on spiders in the dark and watching them scramble. As a blogger, I have a new flashlight. The D.C. pundit spiders will just have to learn that they are now a part of my entertainment.

Bwahahahaha. Run, spiders, run! And thanks, Glenn.