Richard Martin Cohen (born February 6, 1941) is an American writer best known for his syndicated column in The Washington Post, which he wrote from 1976 to 2019.
Early life and education
Cohen was born to a Jewish family and is a graduate of Far Rockaway High School and attended Hunter College, New York University, and Columbia University. He served for two years in the U.S. Army, during the early 1960s.
Career
Cohen worked for United Press International in New York.
He joined The Washington Post as a reporter in 1968 and later became the paper's chief Maryland correspondent. He covered the investigation of former vice president Spiro Agnew and wrote a book called A Heartbeat Away: The Investigation and Resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew with fellow reporter Jules Witcover. In 1976, he began writing a column for the paper's Metro section, which became nationally syndicated in 1981.
In 1998, Cohen was involved in a dispute with editorial aide Devon Spurgeon that was ultimately mediated by Washington Post management. Cohen reportedly asked Spurgeon questions about "casual sex", told her to "stand up and turn around", and gave her the "silent treatment" for three weeks. Cohen contended that "it was a personality dispute at an office, but it had nothing to do with sexual harassment as the term applies today". Washington Post management concluded that Spurgeon had been subjected to a "hostile working environment" but not to "sexual harassment" and that Cohen was guilty of "inappropriate behavior".
He is a four-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in the "Commentary" category.
In his farewell column in The Washington Post, Cohen recalled: "Flying into Cairo for the first time, I looked out the window. A sandstorm obscured the pyramids, but I envisioned them anyway and could not get over the fact that I was being paid to see them." Jim Naureckas commented: "That sums up Cohen's career pretty well: It was his job to witness monumental matters; he didn’t actually see them, but wrote about them anyway—and got paid to do it."
Opinions
Foreign policy
Cohen was originally a supporter of the Iraq War, and publicly supported the Bush administration in several other high-profile instances. In a 2003 Washington Post column, Cohen wrote, "The evidence Colin Powell presented to the United Nations – some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail – had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool – or possibly a Frenchman – could conclude otherwise." Cohen also wrote that he believed "the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic" after the events of 9/11. Cohen has since expounded upon his former views of support for the Iraq War, and his later stance against it.
In his July 18, 2006, column he stated: "The greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake. It is an honest mistake, a well-intentioned mistake, a mistake for which no one is culpable, but the idea of creating a nation of European Jews in an area of Arab Muslims (and some Christians) has produced a century of warfare and terrorism of the sort we are seeing now".
For this statement, Cohen was criticized in an essay released by the American Jewish Committee entitled 'Progressive' Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism. He clarified his statements in the next week's column, saying, "Readers of my recent column on the Middle East can accuse me of many things, but not a lack of realism. I know Israel's imperfections, but I also exalt and admire its achievements. Lacking religious conviction, I fear for its future and note the ominous spread of European-style anti-Semitism throughout the Muslim world—and its boomerang return to Europe as a mindless form of anti-Zionism. Israel is, as I have often said, unfortunately located, gentrifying a pretty bad neighborhood. But the world is full of dislocated peoples, and we ourselves live in a country where the Indians were pushed out of the way so that—oh, what irony! – the owners of slaves could spread liberty and democracy from sea to shining sea. As for Europe, who today cries for the Greeks of Anatolia or the Germans of Bohemia?" In the same column, he defended Israel's military campaign in its 2006 war with Hezbollah in Lebanon along with its simultaneous fight against Hamas in Gaza.
Cohen states in his that "[Israel] sins. It is sometimes wrong. It accumulated land and space in vile yet ordinary ways. Israel is not evil. It is merely human.", while arguing that Israel has done nothing that other nations have not done.