Richard Cohen: Why Did All These Black Criminals Shoot And Murder Trayvon Martin?

You gotta admit that it takes a special kind of stupid to be as consistently awful as Richard Cohen has been over the years. We'd link to the many times we've had to write a "WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN" post but we don't have that kind of time, so here is our Wonkette Richard Cohen archive in all its WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN. Today, Cohen is dropping knowledge about the Zimmerman trial. Whom would you think is to blame for the death of an unarmed black boy? Would you guess "black criminals"? Then you are probably right.

Where to begin. Cohen starts out by going full Geraldo. Doesn't he know you never go full Geraldo?

But I’m tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin and who essentially suggest that, for recognizing the reality of urban crime in the United States, I am a racist. The hoodie blinds them as much as it did Zimmerman.

Hoodie-blaming has got to be both the dumbest and the fucking worst form of victim blaming, especially since there is no one under the age of 65 who has not, at some time, worn a hoodie outside the house. Apparently hoodies are to the Zimmermans of the world as the color red is to bulls, so who can blame them when they charge and kill? Check out our logic we did there! Give us a cushy column gig, Washington Post!

You know it gets dumber, right? We've got a long way to go before we hit bottom with this column. Actually, this column might plunge through the floor and shoot towards the center of the earth, as it is just that dense and dumb. 

...the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news...

Those statistics represent the justification for New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk. Still, common sense and common decency, not to mention the law, insist on other variables such as suspicious behavior. Even still, race is a factor, without a doubt. It would be senseless for the police to be stopping Danish tourists in Times Square just to make the statistics look good.

You guys, Richard Cohen watches teevee news! That's almost the same as doing actual research into the actual factual statistics and sociological underpinnings and institutional racism that might just be teeny-weeny factors in the amount of black men accused of a crime. We thought about doing some of that research but then we remembered that we didn't want to and there are one million other people on the internet who have done that for us. We'll just take a moment to point out that even if one loves NYC's stop-and-frisk policy and wants to cuddle it and gay marry it, that isn't actually even remotely the same thing as random cop wannabe dude profiling a kid on the street AND SHOOTING HIM DEAD.

Are we still going? Hell yeah we're still going! If we're gonna go down, you're gonna come with us. We know that Cohen thinks that Trayvon Martin was fair game 'cause of the blackity-black-blackness and the hoodie, but what's Zimmerman's story? 

There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman profiled Martin and, braced by a gun, set off in quest of heroism. The result was a quintessentially American tragedy — the death of a young man understandably suspected because he was black and tragically dead for the same reason.

Heroism? HEROISM? All together now: WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN. Even if you grant that Zimmerman started out as just one of those weird prepper dudes that carries like 10 knives and a bunch of paracord so that he can go all urban jungle if need be, WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN is at all heroic about deciding to police your neighborhood with a gun when you are NOT POLICE? WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN is heroic about deciding you will stop random black kids in your neighborhood because they maybe might rob a place because that's how those people do? WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN.

Luckily, the Post has already apologized for Cohen being an insensitive racist fuckwad:

The executive editor of The Washington Post apologized today to anyone offended by the first issue of the newspaper's new Sunday magazine, which contained two articles that some black leaders called racist...

Also in that issue was a piece by a Post columnist, Richard Cohen, who sided with city jewelry store owners who refuse to allow young black men to enter their shops because of a fear of crime.

See? WaPo is ON IT. Wait, what? That apology is from 1986? Guess old Richard just figured that was a blanket apology that would remain effective in perpetuity.

Thus concludes your most recent episode of WHAT THE FUCK RICHARD COHEN. Tune in next time the man puts pen to paper so you can have company when you put head to desk.

[ WaPo ]