Richard Martin Cohen (born February 6, 1941) is an American writer best known for his syndicated column in ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', which he wrote from 1976 to 2019.
Early life and education
Cohen was born to a
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
family
[Variety Magazine: "Richard Plepler, CHAIRMAN / CEO HBO"]
retrieved October 28, 2017 and is a graduate of
Far Rockaway High School and attended
Hunter College
Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...
,
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...
, and
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
. He served for two years in the U.S. Army, during the early 1960s.
Career
Cohen worked for
United Press International
United Press International (UPI) is an American international news agency whose newswires, photo, news film, and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations for most of the 20th ce ...
in New York.
He joined ''
The Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' as a reporter in 1968 and later became the paper's chief Maryland correspondent. He covered the investigation of former vice president
Spiro Agnew
Spiro Theodore Agnew (; November 9, 1918 – September 17, 1996) was the 39th vice president of the United States, serving from 1969 until his resignation in 1973. He is the second of two vice presidents to resign, the first being John C. ...
and wrote a book called ''A Heartbeat Away: The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew'' with fellow reporter
Jules Witcover. In 1976, he began writing a column for the paper's Metro section, which became nationally syndicated in 1981.
In 1998, Cohen was involved in a dispute with editorial aide Devon Spurgeon that was ultimately mediated by ''Washington Post'' management.
[New York Observer]
Washington Post'' Scolds Richard Cohen for Crude Talk With Female Aide''
May 11, 1998. Retrieved December 13, 2012. Cohen reportedly asked Spurgeon questions about "casual sex", told her to "stand up and turn around", and gave her the "
silent treatment" for three weeks.
Cohen contended that "it was a personality dispute at an office, but it had nothing to do with
sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, wit ...
as the term applies today".
''Washington Post'' management concluded that Spurgeon had been subjected to a "hostile working environment" but not to "sexual harassment" and that Cohen was guilty of "inappropriate behavior".
He is a four-time
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prizes () are 23 annual awards given by Columbia University in New York City for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters". They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fo ...
finalist in the "Commentary" category.
In his farewell column in ''The Washington Post'', Cohen recalled: "Flying into
Cairo
Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...
for the first time, I looked out the window. A sandstorm obscured the pyramids, but I envisioned them anyway and could not get over the fact that I was being paid to see them."
Jim Naureckas commented: "That sums up Cohen's career pretty well: It was his job to witness monumental matters; he didn’t actually see them, but wrote about them anyway—and got paid to do it."
Opinions
Foreign policy
Cohen was originally a supporter of the
Iraq War
The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...
, and publicly supported the Bush administration in several other high-profile instances. In a 2003 ''Washington Post'' column, Cohen wrote, "The evidence
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell ( ; – ) was an Americans, American diplomat, and army officer who was the 65th United States secretary of state from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African-American to hold the office. He was the 15th National Security ...
presented to the United Nations – some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail – had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool – or possibly a
Frenchman – could conclude otherwise." Cohen also wrote that he believed "the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic" after the events of 9/11.
Cohen has since expounded upon his former views of support for the Iraq War, and his later stance against it.
In his July 18, 2006, column he stated: "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now".
For this statement, Cohen was criticized in an essay released by the
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a civil rights group and Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the wi ...
entitled ''
'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism''. He clarified his statements in the next week's column, saying, "Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exalt and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world—and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples, and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that—oh, what irony! – the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?" In the same column, he defended Israel's military campaign in its 2006 war with
Hezbollah
Hezbollah ( ; , , ) is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and paramilitary group. Hezbollah's paramilitary wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament. I ...
in Lebanon along with its simultaneous fight against
Hamas
The Islamic Resistance Movement, abbreviated Hamas (the Arabic acronym from ), is a Palestinian nationalist Sunni Islam, Sunni Islamism, Islamist political organisation with a military wing, the Qassam Brigades. It has Gaza Strip under Hama ...
in Gaza.
Cohen states in his that "
sraelsins. It is sometimes wrong. It accumulated land and space in vile yet ordinary ways. Israel is not evil. It is merely human.", while arguing that Israel has done nothing that other nations have not done.
CIA leak scandal
In 2007, he criticized the prosecution of
Scooter Libby (in the
Plame affair criminal investigation) as politically motivated, saying, "This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off". Cohen was in turn criticized by
Media Matters for America and within the ''
Columbia Journalism Review
The ''Columbia Journalism Review'' (''CJR'') is a biannual magazine for professional journalists that has been published by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism since 1961. Its original purpose was "to assess the performance ...
'' for factual errors in his presentation, including his contentions that
Valerie Plame had not been a covert agent, and that "outing" Plame "turns out not to be a crime".
Racial issues
Cohen wrote a column in 1986 which argued owners of jewelry stores were right to refuse to allow entry to young Black men because of a fear of crime. This column led to ''The Washington Post'' having to apologize.
Following the
acquittal
In common law jurisdictions, an acquittal means that the criminal prosecution has failed to prove that the accused is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the charge presented. It certifies that the accused is free from the charge of an of ...
of
George Zimmerman for the
killing of Trayvon Martin in July 2013, Cohen wrote "a controversial column in which he defends George Zimmerman's suspicion of Trayvon Martin and calls on politicians to acknowledge that a disproportionate amount of crimes are committed by black males".
[ The column went on to say that Cohen "can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize;" in any case, he also points out that "What I'm trying to deal with is, I'm trying to remove this fear from racism. I don't think it's racism to say, 'this person looks like a menace,'" he explained. "Now, a menace in another part of the country could be a white guy wearing a wife-beater under-shirt. Or, if you're a black guy in the South and you come around the corner and you see a member of the ]Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to KKK or Klan, is an American Protestant-led Christian terrorism, Christian extremist, white supremacist, Right-wing terrorism, far-right hate group. It was founded in 1865 during Reconstruction era, ...
".[ Towards the end of the column, Cohen calls Trayvon Martin "a young man understandably suspected because he was black".
On November 11, 2013, in the course of a column about ]New Jersey
New Jersey is a U.S. state, state located in both the Mid-Atlantic States, Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States, Northeastern regions of the United States. Located at the geographic hub of the urban area, heavily urbanized Northeas ...
Governor Chris Christie, Cohen referred to the recent victory of Bill de Blasio
Bill de Blasio (; born Warren Wilhelm Jr., May 8, 1961; later Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm) is an American politician who was the List of mayors of New York City, 109th mayor of New York City, mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of t ...
as Mayor of New York City and de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray writing:
People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio's wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian
A lesbian is a homosexual woman or girl. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate nouns with female homosexu ...
?) This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts but not all of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn't look like their country at all.
Several political commentators condemned Cohen's remark. Ta-Nehisi Coates, for example, wrote:
The problem is that Richard Cohen thinks being repulsed isn't actually racist, but "conventional" or "culturally conservative." Obstructing the right of black humans and white humans to form families is a central feature of American racism. If retching at the thought of that right being exercised isn't racism, then there is no racism.
In 2019, after Linda Fairstein faced backlash for her role in the prosecution of the Central Park 5, Cohen argued that the boys were involved in the attack and that Fairstein was being slandered.
Bibliography
*''A Heartbeat Away: The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew'' (with Jules Witcover), New York: Viking Press, 1974,
*''The Seduction of Joe Tynan'' (based on the screenplay by Alan Alda
Alan Alda (; born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo; January 28, 1936) is an American actor. A six-time Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award winner and a three-time Tony Award nominee, he is best known for playing Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pier ...
), New York: Dell Books, 1979.
** Cohen was a technical advisor on the film.
*''Strong at Broken Places: voices of illness, a chorus of hope'', HarperCollins: New York, 2008
*''Israel: Is It Good for the Jews?'', New York: Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...
, 2014.
*''She Made Me Laugh: My Friend Nora Ephron
Nora Ephron ( ; May 19, 1941 – June 26, 2012) was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing romantic comedy films and received numerous accolades including a British Academy Film Award as ...
'', New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016,
References
External links
The Washington Post
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cohen, Richard
Journalists from New York City
Living people
American columnists
Jewish American journalists
Columbia University alumni
Far Rockaway High School alumni
Hunter College alumni
The Washington Post columnists
1941 births
21st-century American Jews
Jews from New York (state)