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The Conniption Over Richard Cohen

Bloggers were mean to Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, so Cohen got his revenge the way journalists have done for generations: by the barrel of ink.

Now bloggers are having another conniption over Cohen's words and proving that folks who get their bits and bytes on the cheap are at least as dangerous as publishers of old.

Such is life in a new media world where professional and citizen journalists are in almost constant conflict. Click to the extended entry for links and commentary on the latest brouhaha.

Cohen: "[I]t marks the end of a silly pretense about interactive media: We give you our e-mail addresses and then, in theory, we have this nice chat. Forget about it. Not only is e-mail too often a kind of epistolary spitball, but there's no way I can even read the 3,506 e-mails now backed up in my queue -- seven more since I started writing this column."

Daily Kos: "The nature of the modern medium ensures that any critique by Internet users -- conservative and liberal alike -- will be massive, unfiltered, and instantaneous. And it will always be effortless to cherry-pick intense or inappropriate comments or e-mails and use them to dismiss an entire dissenting view as nothing more than the angry rants of a disillusioned group. Yet the true measure of character comes in rejecting the temptation to take the easy way out, and instead to embrace an honest and genuine dialogue about the issues."

Eschaton: "My stars, he got some angry, obsenity-laced e-mails whose content he divined due to his telepathic connection with his computer, or something, because he didn't bother to read them. Really, a columnist who has access to about the most valuable real estate in journalism and decides to write about e=mails he didn't even read really needs to retire."

MyDD: "There's a hatred of democracy and popular participation that has crept into our punditocracy, political class, and political bloodstream. I feel myself tempted that way on occasion, but it's deeply wrong."

Balloon Juice: "[T]here is a certain segment of the online left (and right, for that matter) who think that the key to electoral victory is to keep a certain segment of the population in a frothing rage. Any perceived slight must immediately be met with an e=mail campaign and a 'Wanker of the Day' post that can be linked by the entire 'spittle-flecked monitor' wing of the Democratic Party."

Austin Bay: "The American left is where the American far right was in the 1950s -- besotted with anger, boiling in conspiracy theories. There is a difference, however. 'Opinion leaders' like Cohen have let the hard left take a large bite out of their own liberal 'mainstream.' Cohen has just now discovered it because his e-mail box got jammed with garbage. It is a step toward enlightenment, however hesitant a step."

Captain's Quarters: "Many on the left have well-written and provocative arguments, sometimes overheated but usually not irrational. However, a large segment rely on nothing but schoolyard namecalling ... and a deep, unrelenting anger colors all of their discourse. It's not just the blogs, either. Not a day goes by when I don't receive some meandering and hyperbolic rant from anonymous individuals with fake e-mail domains."

Hugh Hewitt: "That's the 'netroots,' Mr. Cohen, and if the Dems seize either house of Congress in 2006, or the presidency in 2008, they are coming to town."

Posted by Danny | 07:04 AM