Interesting anonymous tip. Could the reason for the extreme modesty of the Harvard professor who provided the Washington Post with data showing the wealthy paying more than their fair share be pretty simple? Could he have been the economist who actually provided the Gore campaign with their demagogic “wealthy one percent” rhetoric last fall? Just asking, as they say.
CRAZY COHEN: Richard Cohen gets in a couple of cracks and decent points in his column today. Looked at alone, the Rich pardon was, in Cohen’s words, an “abomination,” but not evidence of psychological problems. But my point was that when you look at the pardons as a whole, and then the Clinton presidency as a whole, and you add up all the bizarre risk-taking, unnecessary lying, constant sleaze, chronic disorganization, and desperation to be liked, I think you can see something else. I didn’t say Clinton was “crazy” or a “lunatic.” I said he had major psychological problems. I stand by that. (Does Cohen think that everyone who needs a shrink is “crazy”?) The trouble with Cohen is that he was a shill for Clinton for so long, one of the classic anti-anti-Clinton pundits, and he cannot now acknowledge his own responsibility in keeping this reckless guy in power. I definitely plead guilty to liking Clinton at first, and hoping for the best. But I supported Dole in 1996 entirely because of Clinton’s by-then glaring character flaws. Cohen, along with almost every other now-apologetic Clinton supporter, stuck with his guy whenever it really mattered, while covering his posterior along the way. It behooves him to throw us off the scent now by accusing me of intemperance. But the real issue is Cohen’s blindness to the reality of the last eight years – and his refusal to come to terms with it, even now.
OH AND: What’s that weird stuff at the end about Clinton being our first black president and that’s the reason for our disdain? Is that some kind of strange implication that opposing Clinton is the same thing as racism? What piffle. If I were black, I’d be insulted by the comparison. I guess it says something about the level of self-esteem among some leading African-Americans that they are actually thrilled to call a lying, philandering, irresponsible, corrupt and pathologically self-destructive person one of their own. Victimology lives and thrives.
The Dish 