Richard Cohen Loves Sexual Harassment

 
 Richard Cohen has heard about all of this Clarence Thomas stuff in his newspaper and is absolutely "mortified." How could they print something a powerless lady said about a powerful Supreme Court justice? "In elementary school, some kid must have plastered a 'kick me!' sign on Clarence Thomas's back -- and it has never been taken off. Every 20 years or so, some woman surfaces to accuse the now-Supreme Court justice of being a male chauvinist pig -- to resurrect an old term from the tie-dyed era -- but falls frustratingly short of making a case for true sexual harassment." Cohen can objectively say that this is not evidence that Clarence Thomas maybe was a sexual harasser -- it's evidence that women are mean and like to tell stories about sexual harassment all the time, all of which are basically always false. Oh, but wait a second, didn't a woman once accuse Cohen of sexual harassment?

I have nothing against McEwen, but I hope her book fails to find a publisher. Some of this is self-protection. I was young and boorish once myself and have turned out to be a veritable saint. I venture to say we all did and said terrible things when we were young, which is why nature protects the elderly with failing memories. I want to forget both Hill and Thomas.

Hmm! Very interesting! We will help you cross the street on this one, kindly old man. From 1998, in The New York Observer:  

In its editorials on the Monica Lewinsky matter, The Washington Post has repeatedly urged President Bill Clinton to explain his relationship with the young White House intern, calling his silence "harmful, not just shifty." Such sentiments have been echoed by Post columnist Richard Cohen, who has suggested that Mr. Clinton should "'fess up and move on." But when Mr. Cohen himself was accused of engaging in "inappropriate behavior" toward Devon Spurgeon, a 23-year-old editorial aide at the paper, Post management went into its own form of crisis mode: Staff members are forbidden to discuss the matter, the participants in the dispute have been frozen out by superiors, and Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. is refusing to comment. The episode has increased tensions between the sexes at the paper, Post staff members have said, and has exposed a rift between a salty old guard and younger colleagues grappling with the complicated issues of interoffice gender politics.

Haha, it is amazing how this man was the "salty old guard" back then and is still employed by this newspaper. When will the guard arrive that finally fires this terrible man? If this is the event Cohen is referring to, he is saying he was "young and boorish" when this sexual harassment happened in the late '90s, when Cohen was in what, hismid fortiesearly sixties? A spry, young fellow indeed.

I long ago despaired of getting to the bottom of this case, and I long ago gave up wanting to. I concluded that Thomas as the product of a very small town -- the aptly- named Pin Point, Ga. -- who was the lone African American in a school full of whites, a racially-isolated kid who lacked the normal interactions and did not learn the requisite social graces. As for Hill, she, too, lacked a certain sophistication or judgment. If she was perplexed by him, he was perplexed by her.

See? Sexual harassment doesn't exist, it's merely two people "perplexed" (because Clarence Thomas was perplexed as to what her bra size was?) by each other, and that excuse covers any skeevy sexual advances. For Cohen, any sort of interaction with the opposite sex is perplexing, so all men should be given lots of leeway in terms of sexual harassment and rapin' and such. And that's why he always defends sexual harassment in the pages of the Washington Post , as he did with Clinton and Bill O'Reilly. Cohen is certain he knows a thing or two about female sexuality. 

Cohen just wants to let men like himself sexually harass young women in their offices without it becoming news and without them getting fired. Is that too much to ask? Certainly not. How very mortifying it is that we would even consider holding men in a position of power -- like Cohen -- responsible for their actions.

But isn't it just adorable how Cohen playfully pretends not to remember sexually harassing that young woman? He's the cute petulant 6-year-old kid next door in the body of a wheezing 90-year-old rapist. [ WP / New York Observer ]