Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Willful Ignorance: Bug or Feature?

Tom Maguire takes exception to Richard Cohen's column praising Obama for not wearing a flag pin. It's a stupid and trivial column, all right...but that's not what Maguire sees as the problem. What he objects to is that it's insufficiently anti-Obama. His closing:

I am trying to imagine Cohen delivering this column with "McCain" substituted for "Obama" throughout. E.g., the conclusion:
Still, it is bracing to see a presidential candidate recoil, for the most part, from the orthodoxies of pandering. In this regard, the lack of a flag pin has become an important sign of [McCain's] desire to think for himself. For all it says about [McCain], I salute it.
Yes, it's hard to imagine Richard Cohen go on and on about how John McCain is a saint...oh, never mind.

And of course that's just one of many big wet sloppy kisses Richard Cohen has planted on St. McCain. Anybody who has been paying attention at all knows that Cohen, along with the rest of the Washington press corps, loves McCain to pieces. They perceive McCain's virtues as integral to his character, and dismiss his vices as momentary aberrations. Everyone knows this.

Everyone, that is, except people who don't want to know it.

Which apparently includes Tom Maguire. Because if he took the thirty seconds to Google it he'd find out his whole premise is completely wrong...and we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?