TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2006 POOR RICHARD, NOVELIST:

evidence never effects their novels. Case in point? Here’s the first paragraph from Richard Cohen’s column in today’s Post: COHEN (12/19/06): Earlier this year a close friend of John McCain gave me fair warning: McCain was about to become much more conservative, and I would not like what was coming. He was right. I did not like McCain’s speech at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, and I think his support of intelligent design is—sorry, John—just plain brainless. But it is not the supposedly new McCain that bothers me, it’s the old one: His incessant sword-rattling has gotten just plain rattling. Grisly! According to Cohen, McCain deliberately “became much more conservative” this year, forging a “supposedly new McCain.” And not only that—in order to reinvent himself, the New McCain has adopted positions which are “just plain brainless!” Ah yes, a New McCain! We well remember the days when Cohen punished Big Dems for imagined reinventions; in those days, Cohen was even prepared to invent absurd “evidence” to support the vile charges he was making. But nothing can be permitted to change the novel he’s typing about John McCain. Case in point? Here’s the sixth paragraph from Cohen’s column—yes, from his column today: COHEN: Anyone who knows McCain appreciates that his call for more troops in Iraq is not, at bottom, part of any political strategy. McCain is a thoroughly admirable man. Like any other politician, he will punt when he has to, but he is fundamentally honest, with sound political values. For a long time those values—a belief in public service, a visceral hostility toward the ways of Washington’s K Street lobbying crowd and a sense of honor that his Vietnamese captors came to appreciate—obscured the always present, but muffled, sound of drums and bugles. We now have a New McCain, complete with “just plain brainless” positions. But so what? The novel was blocked out long ago. McCain remains “a thoroughly admirable man.” It’s the law—he’s “fundamentally honest.”

powered by performancing firefox