Journalistic Suicide Bombers

The Islamic jihadis in Iraq and elsewhere wrap themselves in explosives and run into the streets yelling "God is great. Death to America" as they blow themselves to kingdom come in an attempt, sometimes successful, sometimes futile, to destroy others. Here on the home front we have our own version of the suicide bomber ensconced in the editorial offices of several of our nation's major newspapers.

The Roberts nomination and the post-Katrina blame game have inspired liberal journalistic jihadis, waving their incendiary scribblings in their hands, to rush into the streets and blow to smithereens, if not themselves, then certainly any reputation for credibility, objectivity and clear thought they may have still possessed. Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Robert Herbert and now Richard Cohen - it seems like a human wave of lefty scribes hurling their columns at the White House hoping to damage it with awesome blasts from their word processors. To their great disappointment, given the lameness of their efforts, they may as well be throwing firecrackers at Godzilla.

The WaPo's Richard Cohen straps on the bomb belt and sashays forth into public view with an unfortunate column in which he confesses up front that as a young man he flunked out of college. He mentions this detail as a prelude to lamenting that John Roberts has a record which is "appallingly free of failure."

Mr. Roberts' record of success means he hasn't had to struggle like common folk and thus probably doesn't understand our problems. He doesn't say why a Supreme Court Justice should be someone who understands the difficulties of the poor. He is not, after all, being nominated for Chief Pastor. Presumably, Mr. Cohen thinks that someone who has consistently demonstrated that they don't make bad decisions is manifestly unsuited for the Supreme Court.

Somehow he manages to extricate himself from the awkwardness of that argument and glides from John Roberts' nomination to the New Orleans debacle:

It took a certain kind of cold arrogance to come up with the evacuation plan that New Orleans devised: Get everyone out of town. But what about those who could not get out of town? What about those with no cars or those already living on the streets? In other words, what about the very poor?

The poor? It's as if the idiots up and down the line never heard of them. It's as if no one at the top of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or at the White House knew they existed. Check that. They knew, but it was theoretical: Oh, they'll manage.

Somebody please send a memo to Mr. Flunked out of College: Evacuation plans and execution are the province of the local municipality, not the feds. If the city chooses not to put its plan, such as it was, into effect, the feds are hardly to be faulted for not doing it for them. This is a simple concept, but perhaps the memo should repeat it so that Mr. Cohen has a better chance of comprehending it.

Our intellectual hero, who does not shrink from labelling people trying to do the right thing in Katrina's stressful aftermath "idiots", next leaps in a single bound to the Intelligent Design controversy trying to touch all the liberal bases and weave together all of Mr. Bush's alleged faux pas into one neat tapestry:

[T]he Supreme Court is no place for a sluggish thinker who thinks -- if that is the word -- that in the schools the non-theory of "intelligent design" ought to be taught along with the theory of evolution. (What next, alchemy and chemistry?).

Alchemy. Ha, ha, Good one. Well, Mr. Flunked out of College, perhaps you, being among the cognoscenti which looks with such scorn upon those dim bulbs, like the president, who think ID should be taught in school and which holds these rubes in derision at your Georgetown cocktail parties - perhaps you would like to publicly debate someone, like, oh, almost anyone in the ID movement, on the issue. How about David Berlinski, an outstanding mathematician, or Bill Dembski who has two or three PhDs? No? Are you backpedalling, sir? Science is not your field, you say? Well, you must be expert enough to feel safe in insulting those who suggest ID be taught in public schools by calling them "sluggish thinkers." Come on, Mr. Quick Thinker who has exactly no degrees, put up or shut up. You demur? You'd rather not employ your finely honed mind to show off your superior grasp of the issue? Too bad. It would've been fun to watch.

Like the columns of his colleagues, Mr. Cohen's article offers no argument. It makes no case. It's a simple screed which he should be embarrassed to publish, but as a devout journalistic jihadi, he's unmoved by his own inadequacies. His column, like those of the aforementioned writers, is an editorial page version of the suicide bomber's shout of Allahu Akbar, Death to the Great Satan Bush, just before he blows himself to bits.

Ed Morrissey at Captains' Quarters finds much else not to like in Cohen's essay.