Startling Ignorance (and Bigotry)

This column is an object example of why so many normal Americans distrust the press.

Richard Cohen takes a nasty little roll in the schadenfreude mud (which, in fairness, we all enjoy from time to time) -- but in doing so, he inadvertantly displays an appalling ignorance of social conservatives and/or people of faith that's exceeded only by his bigotry toward them.

In a relatively incoherent column about the Mark Foley matter, Cohen writes the following:

That this [the Foley scandal] happened to the GOP is too, too much. It is no longer the party of Lincoln but the party of gay-bashing. Its base, its vaunted base, is among those who embrace ignorance of homosexuality and, while they are at it, ignorance of sexual matters in general.

Later, he writes:

It was the GOP that cozied up to churches and preachers who likened homosexuals to the vilest people of all time and called on them to cease their wicked ways, go from homosexual to heterosexual, which everyone knows they can do but will not because, apparently, it is easier to be gay and reviled than it is to be straight and comfy about it.

It's apparent that Mr. Cohen knows very few conservatives and/or people of faith. No doubt he genuinely believes that the base of the party "embrace[s] . . . ignorance of sexual matters in general" and thinks that there are preachers all over the Red States who are calling gays "the vilest people of all time." And no doubt there are some cruel and intolerant voices in some pulpits, just as there are cruel and intolerant voices on some newspaper op/ed pages. That's human nature . . . but (as the comments on the Huffington Post site reveal), hatred and intolerance aren't the exclusive purview of conservatives.

Perhaps what's most amazing is the fever pitch of hostility Cohen's worked himself into at a cherished left-wing stereotype with no solid foundation in reality. It's likewise remarkable that he feels comfortable spewing this kind of bigoted vitriol onto the pages of one of the nation's foremost papers. One doubts he'd engage in this kind of stereotyping of women or any other racial or religious group, for example.

What Mr. Cohen and others like him need to understand is that opposing gay marriage -- a fundamental restructuring of the family, on little more than today's cultural whim -- doesn't mean that one "hates" gays. (No doubt Cohen would be offended if one suggested that being pro-choice means one "hates" babies, but the reasoning is the same).

And he needs to get out a bit more. Perhaps if he visited the occasional Red State with an open mind -- or even (gasp!) dropped in on some of the churches there -- he might realize that all the GOP and its base have tried to do is maintain sexual standards in an era when "anything goes." He might discover that the people worshipping in those churches are hardly the bunch of one-eyed, straw-chewing, unshod morons of his imagination -- many, in fact, are quite as smart and even as sophisticated as Mr. Cohen himself.

Columns like Cohen's -- representing the worldview of someone who never breaks free of the DC-New York-LA axis -- are an object example of why newspapers have become so peripheral to the lives of so many Americans.