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Does anyone actually edit the Washington Post?

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Though I understand that Richard Cohen remains one of the most insufferable pseudo-intellectuals in contemporary American media — and, to that degree, there’s no percentage in arguing with him on specific “ideas” — would it be too much to ask his editors to restrict him to one Bulwer-Lytton Award entry per quarter? Behold:

Call him Ishmael.

Call him a terrorist or a suicide bomber or anything else you want, but understand that he is willing — no, anxious — to give his life for his cause. Call him also a captive, and know that he works with others as part of a team, like the Sept. 11 hijackers, all of whom died, willingly. Ishmael is someone I invented, but he is not a far-fetched creation. You and I know he exists, has existed and will exist again. He is the enemy.

Any decent university writing instructor would automatically dock a student for so ham-fistedly invoking the only line from Melville that people who haven’t read any Melville actually know. Was he simply unable to figure out how to riff on Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy? Wasn’t there an unused cliche from Dickens lying around?

And though I wouldn’t expect a functioning idiot like Cohen to know or remember that Ishmael happens to be an Islamic prophet — the fellow who, among other things, sanctified Mecca by building the Ka’bah with his father, Abraham — it would be nice if someone at the Post would actually monitor the sluice box that runs between Cohen’s brain and the printed page.

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