Richard Cohen: Still an immense wanker

The fact that Richard Cohen lost “some of his (extremely) hard-earned retirement funds in AIG stock” would not, in itself, be enough to cause a soul-less, mean-spirited person such as myself to bellow with glee. But when Cohen manages to work a defense of the corporate media’s gullible cheerleading of the Iraq War into a defense of CNBC’s gullible cheerleading of the late asset bubble — the “sins are blown out of proportion,” he reminds us — then I can’t help but take mild satisfaction in the news. Cohen, who recently described the idea that “torture never works” as being “so counterintuitive as to be an absurdity,” evidently believes that it was equally counterintuitive to assume that financial reporters should do anything more to reassure their readers and viewers than inform them that company chairs and CEO’s haven’t yet dumped their stock. No, seriously.

If these people kept their money in these companies — financial and insurance giants they had built and knew from the inside — how was even Jim Cramer to know these firms were essentially hollow?

Heavens to Betsy! How could anyone have known?

Sadly, the fact that Richard Cohen has lost vast sums of retirement funds means that we’ll be subjected for quite some time to come by the simulacrum of thought that the Post so generously and undeservedly subsidizes.