Richard Cohen

In today's WaPo, they have permitted Richard Cohen to renew his claim to being the most ineffably clueless mo-fo ever to be granted free use of the pages of a putatively major newspaper. Seems like Cohen went to high school with Bernie Madoff's future bride, Ruth; Bernie himself was a couple of years ahead of them. Cohen again makes complete and total ass of himself, as he does with ridiculous, predictable regularity.

Jon Schwarz's take on this intelligence, as always, repays attention:

Richard Cohen on going to high school with Bernie Madoff:

Others in my class did not say goodbye to Bernie until it was too late. Through Ruth, they invested with him -- modest amounts, a share of profits from a humble summer resort, the savings of a schoolteacher...

Now their money, their life's savings, is all gone. Oddly enough, they are still better off than some of Bernie's richest investors. My friend Ted has his New York City teacher's pension, while the very rich, who put all their retirement funds with Bernie, have been utterly wiped out. I feel sorry for them. I identify with them. They were not, as is sometimes written, greedy. The stock market was a mystery. It seemed to defy logic. They let Bernie deal with it. I would have done the same.

It's crucial that Washington Post columnists be credulous idiots who know that understanding financial basics is beyond their mental capability, and hence they should trust whoever has lots of money. Thank god Katherine Graham found someone who fits the profile so perfectly. Otherwise readers of the Post might learn something about how the world works, and that must be prevented at all costs.

Previously in Richard Cohen's flickering consciousness:

You will never need to know algebra. I have never once used it and never once even rued that I could not use it. You will never need to know -- never mind want to know -- how many boys it will take to mow a lawn if one of them quits halfway and two more show up later -- or something like that. Most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator.

It is quite certain that if Cohen "never used algebra" in his life, he never made a substantial contribution to the world. That is because algebra is the grammar of calculus, and calculus is the language of the modern complexity.