Cohen column

Richard Cohen goes off about Ed Klein's book The Truth About Hillary -- and the people who buy it.

Klein has gone so far over the top that I, an acquaintance of lo these many years, am astonished. He is, after all, a former editor of the New York Times Magazine and, by credential, a member of the august establishment press. He was also an editor at Newsweek, which is owned by the aforementioned Washington Post, so the magazine is next door to Pravda in the fantasy neighborhood where good right-wingers live. All this leads me to conclude -- Ed, you sly devil, you -- that Klein set out to expose the right wing for the gullible nincompoops they are. He has succeeded, and vast riches await him.

His book is flying off the shelves -- more than 350,000 shipped. The other day it was No. 4 on Amazon's bestseller list and was sold out at my sedate neighborhood bookstore when I checked. It has become a Rorschach of conservative madness -- proof that they will buy anything, no matter how badly done, that attacks the Clintons or liberalism. Klein's book is just the most recent example. He looked at conservatives the way P.T. Barnum looked over his audience: "There's a sucker born every minute," Barnum said. Ed is nodding all the way to the bank.

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...Right-wingers are the useful idiots of our times and while they have their occasional left-wing counterparts, the lefties will not buy essentially the same book over and over again -- if only because they lack the funds.

Exactly how clueless is Cohen? Does he not realize that the exact same thing could be said about the left? Heading over to amazon.com, here are just some of the books I found that have been released since 2001 critical of either conservatives or the Bush family:

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Bushwhacked : Life in George W. Bush's America (Molly Ivins, 2003)

Dude, Where's My Country? (Michael Moore, 2003)

Stupid White Men: And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! (Michael Moore, 2002)

Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right (Al Franken, 2003)

The Family : The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty (Kitty Kelley, 2004)

Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (Maureen Dowd, 2004)

Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq (Robert Parry, 2004)

The Twilight of Democracy : The Bush Plan for America (Jennifer Van Bergen, 2004)

American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (Kevin Phillips, 2004)

The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (David Corn, 2003)

Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (John W. Dean, 2004)

Warrior King: The Case for Impeaching George Bush (John Bonifaz, 2003)

Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order (Mark Crispin Miller, 2004)

Fraud: The Strategy Behind the Bush Lies and Why the Media Didn't Tell You (Paul Waldman, 2004)

Losing America: Confronting a Reckless and Arrogant Presidency (Robert C. Byrd, 2004)

Big Bush Lies: The 20 Most Telling Lies of President George W. Bush (Jerry Barrett, 2004)

The Bush - Haters Handbook: A Guide to the Most Appalling Presidency of the Past 100 Years (Jack Huberman, 2003)

The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America (Alterman, Green, 2004)

You're Not Stupid! Get the Truth: A Brief on the Bush Presidency (William John Cox, 2004)

George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography (Tarpley, Chaitkin, 2004)

The I Hate Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice. . . Reader: Behind the Bush Cabal's War on America (Clint Willis, 2004)

Generalissimo El Busho: Essays & Cartoons on the Bush Years (Ted Rall, 2004)

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Anyway, it's time for lunch, so I will stop here. But you'll notice that almost all of the above are aimed at Bush -- I didn't even mention most of the books that address conservatives in general. And how many people after reading these books then went out to see Fahrenheit 9/11? It's almost as if they'd perish without a steady diet of anti-Bush sentiment.

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Update: Sent the following email:

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Mr. Cohen,
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I have to say that I laughed out when I read your last column. This part was particularly amusing:
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"Right-wingers are the useful idiots of our times and while they have their occasional left-wing counterparts, the lefties will not buy essentially the same book over and over again -- if only because they lack the funds."
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You obviously don't get out much. To help you out, here are a list of the books taking aim at President Bush and his family that have come out in the past few years:

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(same list as above minus Michael Moore's books)

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This is far from a complete list, and doesn't include any of Michael Moore or Noam Chomsky's work, or anything targeted at at conservatives in general. These are books targeted solely at George W. Bush.
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Of course, after reading these books one can only speculate how many people, in apparent dire need of further confirmation of their views, paid money to see Fahrenheit 9/11. And while I am only an occasional reader of your column I can assume that a fair number of liberal readers regularly peruse your work to help justify their beliefs.
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Your inability to see that so many liberals behave in the exact same manner for which you criticize conservatives is truly stunning.
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Sincerely,
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Colin