Let’s play a fun game and decide which of these three statements is a lie: at a recent address to a group of high school students, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas: 1) wondered why we did not have a “Bill of Responsibilities” to go along with the Bill of Rights; 2) admitted that he thinks the dishwasher is “a miracle” that performs actual magic; 3) announced that he would be compiling these revelations and other bits of folk wisdom into a Page-a-Day calendar called One Man’s Opinion, to be published by Reader’s Digest, cross-branded with a book of daily affirmations by Richard Cohen, and marketed at thousands of Cracker Barrel restaurants along I-95. [New York Times]

When Richard Cohen was a child — back in the good old days when people stoically died of everything, and our best days (The Beatles/Civil Rights) were still ahead, and there were bookstores filled not with these Blackberries, but real books, the kind a person could read without a telephone, or a pager, or such things — his psychotic father would push him outside in the middle of the night, on a primitive bicycle (no Prius for him!), its basket loaded with the printed, rubber-banded stacks of wood-pulp produced by our nation’s best newspaper publishers, a torrent of cold rain pounding upon the child’s prematurely white hair, a deadly pothole concealed by a puddle of dirty street water, and then BLAM!, the morning’s papers sinking to the bottom of the asphalt crater, the wood pulp thirstily soaking up the rain juice, the work of America’s better journalists blurring into inky clouds of failure. The elder Cohen, snarling with rage, grabs little Richard and begins lashing him with whatever’s at hand — a garden hose, a dog leash, and finally, savagely, the bicycle chain. This is why GM should fail. MORE »

Spastic curmudgeonly warmonger Richard Cohen, political columnist for the Washington Post, has noticed a number of things in the news over the course of the last week, and he simply does not care for many of these things. He lists these things, one after another, just like that. You young journalists… you go on and get excited now. Here is the master of writing. Richard Cohen. So let’s read a number of things that Richard Cohen wrote today for the local newspaper. MORE »

WHAT DOES ORGANIC MEAN, ANYWAY? “In the decades before my generation, America was all about hard work and being tough. We — or they, I should say — did not plant marijuana in the White House garden. First of all, only the Roosevelts lived at the White House. The rest lived in other places, mostly hovels and ‘hobo jungles.’ But we, or they, had great dignity. You did not hear about them going to see Jay Leno, not at all.” [AOL Political Machine]

Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen is maybe the worst writer on Earth, yes? He has never made a valuable point in his life, and the only reason he still has a job is because, uhh, maybe the Post wants him to sexually harass more of their employees? MORE »

Back in the day when people printed out the Internet every morning and handed the “House & Garden” section to their wives while they perused the latest news from Cuba, life was fine. Then the BlackBerry Machine came slithering out of Hell’s bowels and ruined everything, the end. This is the premise from which every Richard Cohen column proceeds. But hark, what about the days before the Internet, when Europe was riven by two World Wars and Jews had to flee horrible genocide and American citizens could expect to live out their “golden years” (age 35 onward) in abject poverty? Those times were truly great, because people were self-reliant. MORE »

Hey, America: This is what you’ll lose, once the last bloated newspapers close forever: People like this, whining about the Most Important Thing Ever, a soggy newsprint version of yesterday’s wire copy and weeks-old syndicate features about “winter vegetables,” wrapped around a Big Lots! circular and six or seven pages of foreclosure notices in the back, along with a few “I HEREBY REFUSE TO PAY MY DEBT” classifieds, where the jobs/real estate ads used to be. Oh god. MORE »

Richard Cohen hearkens back to the old days, before the despicable Blackened Berries and loathsome Amazonian Kindle Stick ruined America, back when that woman (wife? who can remember!) silently delivered the victuals of his Daily Break Fast, a duty for which he oft rewarded her with the “women’s page” of the Morning Herald-Federalist. But there’s one modern moment he loves, and that is the Wicked Day the Black-Haired Jackals did Massacre many Innocents in the Towers of Newe Amsterdam, because it gave the Bush Administration all the cover it needed to be 100% Evil. MORE »

RICHARD COHEN DOES NOT CARE FOR GEORGE W. BUSH’S ‘QUANTITY OVER QUALITY’ APPROACH TOWARDS BOOK-READING AND FINDS THIS ATTITUDE INDICATIVE OF HIS GOVERNING QUALITIES OR LACK THEREOF: Remember a few years ago when word leaked that George W. Bush had been reading Camus’ The Stranger, and this was a modest gossip topic for about 12 minutes before it went away forever? Turns out it didn’t go away — Richard Cohen’s working a hot new lead! Huh? “As Dwight Eisenhower once told me (I’m not making this up), he had more time as president to dabble in painting than he did in retirement.” Whoa, dudes, seriously? Literally? Can you believe that Dwight Eisenhower once said the coolest possible thing ever to Richard Cohen? No joke? [WP]

• RICHARD COHEN’S SISTER DOES NOT CARE FOR THIS BARACK OBAMA: “[Rick] Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not.” We don’t get it. “She’s gay.” Oh okay. [Washington Post]

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in on the musings of Washington Post in-house coot Richard Cohen, who’s hated every single development in American culture since 1958. Earlier this year he spent a whole column ranting about the kids and their tattoos (”I simply do not care for tattoos”), another about Amazon’s Kindle (”I simply do not care for the Kindle”), and, of course, another about Barack Obama’s age (”I simply do not care for the age of Barack Obama”). Basically, all Richard Cohen wants in life is a few twigs to rub together and some of grandma’s licorice stick. All a man really needs. In today’s column he tackles a new devil, that con sarn BlackBerry telephone machine. He simply does not care for Obama’s BlackBerry telephone, especially when there are perfectly good print newspapers out there that perform the exact same functions, and women are also awful. MORE »