Tag: Richard Cohen

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Opinion Viewpoint

No Job For Old Men: Sanders and Biden Shouldn’t Run

CREDIT: JB

The joke among people my age is that every dinner party starts with an organ recital: Who’s lost a gall bladder, got a new kidney, or maybe just replaced a knee? What’s the pain of the day, and who sleeps through the night? Charles de Gaulle said old age is a shipwreck, so the question for the United States is whether it should consider the age of likely presidential candidates who, statistics and experience tell us, stand a pretty good chance of foundering on the rocks of old age.

JB

Bernie Sanders talking to Minnesota, Michigan, and Tennessee delegations on convention’s final day

I’m talking Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. Sanders and Biden are about the same age. Sanders is 77, and Biden 76, and because the next president will be inaugurated in 2021, I can say without fear of persnickety fact-checkers that both men will be almost two years older by then. It is not unlikely, therefore, that the next president of the United States will be well into his 80s before his first term is up. That’s a shocking figure.

Both men are now at about the age when the indomitable Winston Churchill started to hit the wall. He was a mere 77 when King George VI thought of approaching him to suggest he step down. Churchill did not — until a stroke forced him to. The argument here, of course, is that neither Biden nor Sanders lives a Churchillian life — no cigars, no whiskey for breakfast. On the other hand, they are not nearly as articulate.

Government statistics tell us that a man Biden’s age will live an average of 11 more years. He won’t, however, outlive Sanders, who is scheduled to kick five months later. These, though, are statistical averages, and neither Sanders nor Biden is anything of the sort. They are both white, middle-class by birth, and not likely to overdose on drugs, drive drunk, or get into a bar fight with someone wearing a MAGA hat, the dunce cap of our times. I am not sure if Sanders works out, but Biden sure does. I have been to the gym with him.

Vice President Joe Biden

But while looking good may be the best revenge, it isn’t the whole story. The brain ages. It slows down. It forgets. I know men in their 90s — Henry Kissinger comes to mind — who seem as sharp as they’ve ever been, but they are not the rule. It is not necessary to have great mental energy to get elected — President Trump is an intellectual sloth — but it helps. Old age can turn the delight in doing certain tasks into a plodding burden.

The old seek their own comfort zones. I wouldn’t be surprised if Biden thought Snapchat was a breakfast cereal. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sanders thought Drake was the English pirate who defeated the Spanish Armada. (How’s that for being an influencer?) It’s fine not to know about these things, but it suggests an unfamiliarity with a world that is ever-changing. The zeitgeist is forever on the move. When you’re over 70, it may well have passed you by.

Of course, a president need not be intimately familiar with youth culture. But he ought to feel at home in the world and feel that the culture is his, that he need not have to pause to translate a thought into politically acceptable language. I don’t know if either Biden or Sanders feels that way, but if they don’t occasionally hanker for a Beatles tune, they already lack all memory.

Most presidents were in their 50s when elected — mere youths by today’s standards. Most lived many years after leaving office. (Jimmy Carter, at 94, has been out of office for 38 years, a record.) John F. Kennedy was the youngest ever elected at 43, and Trump the oldest to be elected to a first term at 70. The rule here is that there is no rule.

Still, “September Song” has to precede “Hail to the Chief.” It is the lament of an old man for a young woman. It is about the passage of time, about how “the days dwindle down to a precious few.” It is about lost opportunities, about summer turning to autumn, and “one hasn’t got time for the waiting game.”

Biden and Sanders have waited too long. A pledge to serve only a single term would not reverse the clock. It would only hobble the president, making him a lame duck before his time. Of course, the ultimate decision is their own, but they have to know they will probably decline. If they don’t think so, they have gotten old without getting wise.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Call Out the Pences

I have a question for those Republicans who, along with Democrats, demand the resignation of Virginia Governor Ralph Northam for the abhorrent photo that appeared on his page in his medical school yearbook: If bigotry is repugnant, why not demand the resignation of Vice President Pence for his ugly views on homosexuality? And while they’re at it, why not insist that Pence’s wife Karen resign her position at a school that discriminates against gays and lesbians?

I can guess their answer: The Pences are deeply religious, and their views on homosexuality are based on their religious convictions. To this, I say, so what? The Bible was used to justify slavery, and in my own time, racists cited this or that biblical passage to assert that racial segregation was precisely what God intended — the “curse of Ham” or the “mark of Cain,” both used to add biblical authority to the rantings of bigots. The mark or the curse is now on the Pences, who share views that in our nation’s history have caused much suffering, including violence.

The other thing Republicans would be sure to say is that racism is different than “mere” anti-gay bias. Yes, indeed. Richmond was the capital of the Confederacy. Virginia is the state that once led the nation in number of slaves. The inhumanity of slavery is difficult to fathom. It’s more difficult still to comprehend that great men — Washington, Jefferson, Madison … you know the names — not only condoned it, but benefited from it.

Later came slavery’s progeny — the Jim Crow era. I am talking of everything from the absurdity of segregated state parks to the barbarity of lynchings. In Atlanta in 1899, a black man was mutilated and then burned, with portions of his body distributed among the crowd. The man’s name was Sam Hose. He was probably innocent of murder but not, of course, of being black.

The destructive power of blackface and Ku Klux Klan robes in that yearbook picture cannot be underestimated. But let’s ponder, too, the harm of hateful homophobia. It has taken countless lives over the years, caused huge suffering and, like racism, persists to this day.

Homophobia is a staple of the racist right — Nazis, white nationalists, and other adherents of mindless goonery — and, at times, results in the murder of gay and transgender people. In 2017, 20 gay, bisexual, or queer men were murdered in hate crimes, an increase of 400 percent from the previous year. The problem is hardly going away. And, infamously, in 1998, Matthew Shepard, was beaten, tortured, and left to die because he was gay. Last year, his ashes were interred at Washington National Cathedral in a ceremony presided over by a gay Episcopal bishop, with music provided by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington.

And when racial hatred and homophobia are combined, the results can be particularly disturbing. Last week, singer and actor Jussie Smollett was attacked in Chicago by two men who allegedly yelled anti-gay and anti-black epithets.

Pence has long been criticized as being hostile toward LGBTQ issues. He has linked same-sex couples to a “societal collapse” and even once seemed to support conversion therapy, which is a form of torture. A vice president who has expressed such intolerance is a dangerous model.

In certain corners of the right-wing media, criticism of Karen Pence for recently taking a job at the Immanuel Christian School in Springfield was denounced as nothing less than religious bigotry. After all, the argument went, the school is a Christian school, ultraconservative and ultratraditional, and is entitled to teach according to its deeply held beliefs. No doubt. But while the United States has traditionally given religion wide berth — and still does — lines have been drawn. Utah was not admitted as a state until the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy.

No one is advocating a law requiring Immanuel Christian to practice tolerance, either in its pedagogy or its hiring practices. But the First Amendment that guarantees the school’s rights also gives us the right to criticize. It is simply wrong to foster a belief that homosexuality and same-sex marriage are immoral.

I have been torn about Northam — about whether a single yearbook photo negates a lifetime of tolerance. But I am not torn about Mike and Karen Pence. They are figures of consequence, and their bigotry — regardless of their religious justification — has to be confronted.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion The Last Word

We Are Not Great Again

CREDIT: Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

Okay, America, are we great again yet? Are we respected throughout the world? Are the Chinese quaking in their boots as we hike tariffs? Has Saudi Arabia come clean about murdering a Washington Post columnist after covering up the atrocity so clumsily that you could almost see blood dripping from the hands of the crown prince?

If America is great again, how come we grovel before a nation that needs us more than we need it? Tweet me an answer, Mr. President. But keep it short.

Has America reversed global warming by simply denying it? Are factory jobs up? How about iron and steel? The same. And coal mining — “beautiful, clean coal” in the hallucinatory words of the president? Not what it once was.

Gints Ivuskans | Dreamstime.com

President Trump

Is NATO stronger? Does America enjoy moral leadership? Would our allies rush to our aid, as they did after September 11, 2001? President George W. Bush’s grand “coalition of the willing” might be impossible to reassemble. President Trump has managed to unite Western Europe in one respect. All its leaders loathe him.

The president, like Gulliver, is being tied down by numerous investigations. The explanation is apparent even to Republicans. Trump is an immoral man, a chiseler and a liar and a deadbeat and a damned fool. His eccentric collection of aides are tiptoeing off the stage one by one, some to jail, some to ignominy, none to glory. And then, when they are gone, comes verbal abuse, sometimes in retaliation for a tardy admission of truth. Rex Tillerson said Trump does not read up to grade. For that, he got spitballed. “Dumb as a rock,” the president opined.

The mess is getting messier. Trump lies himself into one corner after another. Is there anyone in all of America who does not believe that Trump paid off two women for their silence? Whether these alleged payments were campaign finance violations or not is almost beside the point. We know the story. Trump is dirty and uses cash as a disinfectant. He thinks it can make any manner of sin go away. Maybe not this time, Mr. President. As with your former Atlantic City casino, you overpaid.

But blaming Donald Trump for behaving like Donald Trump is like blaming a scorpion for acting like a scorpion. The lie is his sting. He cannot help himself. He thinks only of himself because narcissism, like a sixth toe, is a condition of birth. There is no changing it. In the Trump White House, the president’s intense love of himself is about the only consistent policy.

But what about you, Chris Christie? I am talking of course of the former New Jersey governor who jumped from presidential candidate to Trump acolyte. Are you proud of what you did? Didn’t you see any of this coming? Didn’t you talk to any bankers or real estate people from just across the Hudson River? They wouldn’t do business with Trump. They don’t trust him. You knew all this but wanted a cabinet position anyway. What is the word for what you’ve done? It’s something like moral treason.

And you, Mike Pence. You won’t eat alone with any woman other than your wife, but you’d sup at Trump’s table, the womanizer, instead of the woman. Were you the only adult in Washington who had not heard the stories about him? What were you willing to do to advance your career? Is there a principle you hold dear?

I get it. Christie, Pence, and other Republican politicians — as well as financial figures such as Carl Icahn — had other considerations. Some wanted a conservative, anti-abortion judiciary; still others wanted lower taxes and fewer regulations. Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire head of the Blackstone Group, even said in 2016 that he preferred Trump because America needed a “cohesive, healing presidency.”

Trump, these savants thought, would grant all their wishes, and so they tossed the dice on a maniac, comforting us (or themselves) with the hope that once in office Trump’s inner Madison would emerge. Don’t worry, they said, he ran a business and, anyway, the solemnity of the Oval Office would sober him up. Didn’t Augustine of Hippo go from a libertine to a saint of the Catholic Church?

John F. Kelly’s leaving. Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster are gone. Michael Flynn sings, and Paul Manafort lies. The stock market is tanking for the usual reasons, but this one as well: Investors know that no one’s home at the White House. Trump’s a human pinball, ricocheting off events and emitting tweets like a rundown smoke alarm. We’re not great again. We’re drifting toward disaster.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Addicted to Trump

CREDIT: Bommpark | Dreamstime.com

Paris — I awake to brilliant sunshine. It is a glorious day here on the Left Bank, a short walk from the storied cafe Les Deux Magots, where I’m told Hemingway has preceded me.

What shall I do today? There is a wonderful exhibition of Picasso sculptures at the Picasso Museum and one of contemporary Chinese art at the Louis Vuitton Foundation and, right downstairs, a beckoning breakfast of succulent croissants and butter and coffee made just as I like it.

Oui, oui, so Parisian, but all that must wait. I fire up my laptop. I wonder what Donald Trump has been up to? Ah, he has questioned Hillary Clinton’s mental health. This is a perfect example of the pot calling the kettle black — n’est-ce pas? — but it is precisely what I need in the morning, my Trump fix.

Bommpark | Dreamstime.com

With a sinking feeling, I have come to a horrible conclusion: I am addicted to Donald Trump. Wherever I am in the world, I awake to news about Trump. What has he said while I was asleep? What will he say as the day goes on? I travel with a laptop, an iPad, a smartphone. I am constantly checking on Trump, running up huge bills for data or whatever, consuming gigabytes (whatever they are) that will bust me in the long run. I will squander my fortune, leave nothing for my son and some worthy charities, all because of this addiction. I need a 10-step program, maybe even 12 steps.

I stop. I walk a bit to the cafe and then stop and check my phone: What has he done now? You have to admit that Trump is endlessly creative. He has insulted the disabled, the dead, the parents of the dead, women, Mexicans, Muslims, Asians, African Americans, former POWs, the media, and, to get just a bit more specific, my employer, The Washington Post.

And then he says he did not say what you just heard him say. This is a version of the old Chico Marx line: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Or he says he was just joking. Or being sarcastic. He is an immense word flow, a human mudslide that comes at you, engulfs you, moves on, and then insists it didn’t happen. When cornered, he commits intellectual bankruptcy: Wipe the slate clean.

What’s next? Now that it seems that Trump will lose and Clinton, as a result, will win, I have come to appreciate him for his entertainment value. To tell you the truth, I was not looking forward to yet another presidential campaign in which nothing extemporaneous ever happened.

Imagine Jeb Bush vs. Hillary Clinton! Where’s the remote?

I long ago tired of politicians who never say anything, adhere to their talking points, and avoid all controversy. They employ the word “frankly,” which is a “tell” that a lie is coming. “Frankly, I don’t look at the polls. The only poll that matters, frankly, is the one they hold on Election Day.” They frequently avoid answering a question by invoking “the American people” — as in, “I don’t think the American people care that I lied about going to college.”

Frankly, they do. But never mind. It has become commonplace to call Trump a reality TV star. That is said as an aspersion, the way Ronald Reagan was called an actor. But Reagan’s acting experience, his ability to talk to the camera and not yell to the hall, is what helped make him such a good politician.

It is the same with Trump. Just as every installment of a reality television show must have conflict, so does almost every one of his campaign days produce a shocking moment. His genius is being able to keep them coming. So I obsessively pay attention. I know that I can turn my back on Clinton and not miss anything much. She will stick to the script, talk the talking points, and maybe make a misstep or two, but they are nothing compared with what Trump is likely to say on even a slow day. I am hooked.

It is a lovely day in Paris. I am with the woman I love, and we are sitting in our favorite cafe for breakfast. I have a croissant and coffee, but the tension is building. Suddenly, my phone twitches with news. Did Trump really just call Clinton “Hillary Rotten Clinton”?

Yes. I am at peace.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion Viewpoint

John McCain: A Hero’s Fall

My heroes are not necessarily people of great ability but ones who did what I think I could not.

Senator John McCain

Two contemporary men fall into that category. The first is the late Muhammad Ali, maybe the greatest fighter of all time, and the second is John McCain. Now, from the grave, Ali reprimands McCain.

Both Ali and McCain chose to make sacrifices on matters of great principle. Because Ali was a conscientious objector and opposed the Vietnam War, he refused induction into the Army and was banned from boxing. For three and a half years, at the prime of his career, he could not fight professionally. He lost millions of dollars. He lost time. He lost what he could never replace.

McCain, too, took a stand on a matter of principle. As a prisoner of war in Vietnam, he was offered an early release because his father was an admiral and commander of U.S. forces. The North Vietnamese wanted the propaganda coup, and McCain, although tortured, would not give it to them. “First in, first out” was the Navy rule. For McCain, the torture resumed.

Most men, I think, wonder about their courage. How would they act in combat? Under torture? Would they do what McCain did: risk death for a principle and a matter of honor? Would I do that? God, I hope never to find out.

It was similar with Ali. A fighter is on a short clock. He has only so many fights in him. Even the odd punch, the slip on some wet spot in the ring, could end a career. A fighter’s entire inventory, his back and front office, is what he wakes up with every morning. Ali took all that and put it aside. He would not kill North Vietnamese. He would not kill Viet Cong. He famously said that they were not his enemy.

Ali was respected not just for his fighting abilities but for his indomitable strength of character. McCain, in contrast, has proved that he would rather win an election than be right. His choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008 was not just odd, it was irresponsible — the decision of a man who wanted so much to win he risked all on his continued good health and splendid good luck. None of that mattered anyway. He lost.

McCain’s decision to back Donald Trump is similar. Clear principles are involved, not the least of them being decent respect for the experiences of prisoners of war, which Trump has denigrated. But there are others, and they are by now the familiar ones that can be encapsulated in single words: racism, sexism, misogyny, ignorance, inexperience, lying, bigotry. As a presidential candidate, Trump seems heaven-sent just to make fools out of Republicans. He has succeeded splendidly with McCain.

I do not belittle McCain’s dilemma. On the contrary, I find it poignant. He is in a tough reelection fight, and he needs the support of Trump voters. He is almost 80 years old. I know too many men his age — and it is nearly always men — who peer into the abyss of retirement and see it as a sort of pre-death. No second career can follow, just a white, arctic silence — no phone ringing, no one stopping by, emails diminishing until spam itself is welcomed. Click. Take a chance. Maybe someone still cares.

Trump has given Republicans a choice. They can, as Mitt Romney has, denounce the presumptive nominee for the one-man gong show he is and work for his defeat — or they can put their own careers over what’s good for the country and lay low. (Those who have embraced Trump, such as Chris Christie, have raised the bar on opportunism.)

McCain appears disoriented by what he has done. His recent statement — quickly retracted — that President Obama was somehow “directly responsible” for the massacre in Orlando, is evidence of a man who has lost his political balance. He doesn’t know anymore who he is or what he stands for — or what, aside from winning, he wants.

Heroism is a matter of choice. Muhammad Ali made his choices. He chose to be true to his beliefs at the cost of his irreplaceable youth. As for John McCain, he risked not just his career but his very life. I don’t know if I could have done what he did then. I do know, though, I could not do what he’s doing now.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Time for Hillary to Get Real

Hillary Clinton is the Great Underestimator. Eight years ago, she underestimated Barack Obama, and now she has underestimated Bernie Sanders. We know this not only from what happened in 2008 and what is happening now, but from the pitiful confessions of her campaign staff who admit they never saw Sanders coming.

That’s understandable. It’s not so much that Sanders was underestimated; it’s that Clinton is overestimated. I come at this column as a Clinton supporter. I like her personally and have enormous respect for her intelligence. Mostly, though, she’s the classic one-eyed person in the land of the blind.

Who else is there? Pray, not Bernie Sanders. If he played Captain Renault in Casablanca, he would have said, “Break up the big banks” instead of “Round up the usual suspects.” To him, it’s the same thing.

Clinton has her own tic. She has plans. She has a one-point plan and a two-point plan and, most often, a three-point plan. A three-pointer is always best, since it suggests a beginning, a middle, and an end. It mimics the three-act structure of movies and plays that, for some reason, we find so satisfying.

Clinton has a three-act plan regarding the Islamic State that, as I understand it, is about what is already being done. This is the Obama approach in Power Point.

At Sunday night’s debate, Clinton was somewhat less than candid about her foreign policy differences with her former boss. (As secretary of state, she favored a more muscular policy.) But what matters more to her political chances is this business of hiding behind plans. She talks like a chief of staff, which in a sense she was to her husband, and not as the policymaker herself.

The word “plan” pedantically distances her from her audience. It’s a buffer. Frankly, I don’t give a damn about her plans. I sort of already know what they are, anyway. After being first lady, senator from New York, secretary of state, and, going all the way back, the 1969 commencement speaker at Wellesley College, she can’t possibly have any surprises up her sleeve. When it comes to policies and plans, she is a known commodity. The rest of her is encased in an emotional burka.

At the end of the debate, she had a chance to hit one out of the park. She, Sanders, and Martin O’Malley were asked by one of the moderators, NBC’s Lester Holt, whether there was “anything that you really wanted to say tonight that you haven’t gotten a chance to say.” With that, Clinton … bunted.

“Well, Lester, I spent a lot of time last week being outraged by what’s happening in Flint, Michigan, and I think every single American should be outraged. We’ve had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways and majority African American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn’t really care.”

She could have gone further. She could have mentioned how some children are already beyond hope. Their IQs have dropped. They are lethargic. They have lead poisoning. An ugly piece of the Third World was brought to Michigan under a governor who had hitherto boasted how his business experience made him better than your ordinary politician.

She should have talked about the kids — the poor kids whose lives have been ruined so that taxes did not have to be raised. But Clinton did not mention the kids. She did not even go to Flint. “So I sent my top campaign aide down there to talk to the mayor of Flint to see what I could do to help,” she said. “I issued a statement about what we needed to do, and then I went on a TV show and I said it was outrageous that the governor hadn’t acted. And within two hours, he had.”

Let’s see: 1) Sent an aide. 2) Issued a statement. 3) Went on TV. Sanders at that point chimed in, adding that he had called on Michigan Governor Rick Snyder to resign.

Clinton’s shortcomings as a candidate amount to a national crisis. As things now stand, the Republican nominee could be either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. If she can’t handle Sanders, she probably can’t handle either of them. She needs to get a different three-point plan: 1) Say what’s on your mind. 2) Get angry. 3) Never say the word “plan” again.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Richard Cohen and Rape Culture

Miley Cyrus doesn’t cause rape. Rapists cause rape.

A couple weeks back, the Flyer published a Viewpoint by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen in which the author essentially blamed rape culture on women expressing their sexuality, à la Miley Cyrus’ twerking performance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Richard Cohen

Writes Cohen, “But let me also suggest that acts such as hers not only objectify women but debase them. They encourage a teenage culture that has set the women’s movement back on its heels. What is being celebrated is not sexuality but sexual exploitation, a mean casualness that deprives intimacy of all intimacy.”

And this excerpt came after he wasted at least 500 words blaming the Steubenville rape case on “a teenage culture that was stupid, dirty, and so incredibly and obliviously misogynistic.” In Cohen’s mind, it was apparently a teen culture influenced by pop artists who proudly (albeit somewhat clumsily) twerk.

The infamous rape case involved football players from a high school in Steubenville, Ohio, who, after drinking all night at a party, inserted their fingers into the vagina of a drunk, passed-out girl, all the while bragging on Twitter, slut-shaming her on YouTube, and Instagramming disturbing pictures of her being carried by the wrists and ankles, her head hanging loosely and her hair dragging on the floor. The girl has no memory of what happened to her.

A recent piece in The New Yorker, which Cohen cites in his piece, made the case that media and blog reports of the incident, some of which claimed the girl was gang-raped, may have been overblown. The investigation revealed the football players did not have full-on intercourse with the girl. But to hear Cohen tell it, the girl was simply “manhandled.” And somehow, that incident happened because teenage culture debases women.

Penetrating the girl in any way is more than manhandling. It is a sexual assault. It had nothing to do with pop stars and everything to do with young men who felt entitled to use and abuse a young woman for their own pleasure.

Why those young men made the decisions to violate that girl, I can’t say. But rape or any sort of unwanted sexual advance is never, ever something a woman (or her teenage culture) asks for, as Cohen’s column would suggest.

I’ll admit that Miley’s decision to wear a flesh-colored bikini and rub her business all over Robin Thicke at the VMAs was embarrassing but not because, as Cohen writes, it “set the women’s movement back on its heels.” The performance was awkward and poorly executed (had Lady Gaga done the same thing, it likely would have gone over more smoothly), but it did nothing to undo the hard work of feminists past.

And it certainly did nothing to encourage or make light of rape among teenage fans. How one can look at Miley’s tongue-wagging, butt-shaking performance and think “rape” is beyond me. Women displaying their sexuality, no matter how crudely, is not a cry for rape, and the fact that Cohen would go there just shows how much of a misogynist he really is.

A woman should never be blamed for inviting rape, or in Miley’s case, blamed for setting the women’s lib movement back so far as to make it okay for a man to have his way with an innocent, drunk girl.

If a teenage culture that makes light of rape even exists, and I don’t believe it does, it’s not the fault of a style of dancing. It’s the fault of young men who think it’s okay to fondle and photograph an unconscious woman who has no idea what’s being done to her. The football players involved in the Steubenville case came from a small town where the high school football team was glorified and aggrandized to the point where its stars were celebrities who felt they could do no wrong.

The problem likely lies in a culture (not just a teen culture, mind you, but one perpetuated by adults) that focuses more on high school athletics than academics and, in turn, teaches men from a very young age that so long as you’re popular and athletic, you can get away with anything.

Cohen blaming the degeneration of teen culture on Miley Cyrus is no different from his parents’ generation blaming the collapse of morality on Elvis’ iconic hip swiveling. But wait, Elvis was a man. So I’m sure Cohen wouldn’t agree with that.

Bianca Phillips is a Flyer associate editor.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Gay Marriage

I was confused by Tommy Volinchak’s response (Letters, September 5th issue) to Bianca Phillips’ wonderful and thoughtful article on gay marriage (“Nice Day for a Gay Wedding,” August 29th issue).

Volinchak sees the Flyer as a “beacon of moral decay”? So why is he reading it? Then he rambles on to say he has “plenty of friends who are gay” and is “not offended in any way by the gay lifestyle.”

So why did he waste his time writing and sending a letter bubbling with such venom and small-mindedness? He needs more gay friends, I believe, for there are many things about life and love he must learn about.

The only “off-the-scale goofy” concept I noticed was his lame attempts at justifying his juvenile attitude. I hope that it, too, wasn’t “pre-engineered by God.”

Philip Scott

Memphis

Twerked

I was absolutely appalled that the Flyer ran that disgusting, slut-shaming, victim-blaming, rape apologist “Twerk It” viewpoint from Richard Cohen (September 5th issue). Beyond the fact that it was terribly written, it was also dangerously factually inaccurate regarding the details of the Steubenville rape case. The victim was not just “manhandled” and videotaped naked. She was digitally and orally penetrated while unconscious and without her consent, not that the specific method by which she was raped should even matter in how heinous a crime it was. If you want to send a message to teenagers about how their culture has “run amok,” don’t further blur the lines on what is criminally considered sexual assault by implying it’s just bad manners or blaming it on Miley Cyrus and pop culture.

Furthermore, Cohen, who was himself guilty of creating a “hostile work environment” for a young female co-worker at The Washington Post, is about as qualified to comment on the women’s movement as Rick Perry or Todd Akin or any other crotchety old white guy who opens his mouth and lets rape culture commentary like this come out of it.

If you were looking for well-written opinion pieces about rape culture or the women’s movement, perhaps you should consider following the lead of other news sources, which are publishing local and national female writers such as Zerlina Maxwell or Shelby County Schools new chief communications officer Emily Yellin.

I have lost all respect for the Flyer for publishing this crap, and you have lost a loyal reader.

Chloe O’Hearn

Memphis

Yeehaw!

Yeehaw! The good ol’ boys and girls of the U.S. military are about to unleash a fresh wave of shock, awe, destruction, murder, and mayhem against another Arab state, with the same old excuse as last time: They used “weapons of mass destruction.”

The U.S. is the world’s largest producer of weapons of mass destruction. And there are dozens of recalcitrant countries that need a hail of our missiles flung at them, keeping our munitions factories and supply lines churning.

I say let’s throw our weight around a little more, and after enough bombs and missiles have been fired, we can leave Syria like we did Iraq — in a state of constant civil war. While we’re at it, we should go ahead and bomb the crap out of Iran. They’re next, anyway.

Edward Norman

Memphis

Yeehaw!!

Yeehaw, the government has finally done something really cool. The Justice Department has decided not to go after the states that legalize pot.

This doesn’t go far enough. I think Congress needs to pass the bong prior to all voting procedures. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, everybody I knew, except my parents and people at my church, smoked pot. If you had negative feelings for someone or just didn’t like them, you could smoke pot with said unpleasant person and before long, you’d be fast friends. I do not know why this worked, but I promise it did.

I bet that if all the Republicans and Democrats could adjust their attitudes before voting on bills, this would be a much more congenial country.

Dagmar Bergan

Helena, Arkansas