Roger Cohen Watch

Here is an email I sent to Jack Shafer of Slate. One of his pet peeves is how Roger Cohen continues to be a New York Times columnist.

Subject: Cohen Watch

Today he waxes eloquent. Free association? Gibberish? Who knows?
Here are a few howlers, but really the entire thing has to be read to be (dis-)believed!
The column's title: "Beyond Conspiracy, Progress" (Say what?)
"Yet all this happened. Just as it happened that the Soviets were once our allies and Communists from Central Asia raised the hammer-and-sickle on the Reichstag as Hitler's Germany burned in 1945." (Is he talking Communist Muslims here?)
"And then, the Soviets became our enemies while the Japanese, despite Pearl Harbor, became our friends." (What about Hiroshima?) "And, at last, the Soviets became Russians who were no longer enemies but rivals." (What about all those Central Asians?)
"What we all want is pretty simple. Home about sums it up. The place they have to take you in." (Where, or in what?)
"European peace is a miracle; we forget too many miracles." (about?)

I can't go on. This guy's musings are not even amusing or bemusing. The real "miracle" is that they appear in the New York Times.

Greg Bachelis
(retired mathematician and would-be political blogger)

I've been Time-d out

I sent a letter to Time about Michael Kinsley's column in the December 17th edition, "Kidding Ourselves About Immigration". Several letters about that column appear in the December 31st edition, not including mine. For the record, here it is.

Michael Kinsley fails to distinguish between two kinds of illegal immigrants: Those who entered the country legally but overstayed their visa, hence becoming illegal, and those who entered without papers and hence were illegal from the moment they set foot inside the country. The former group is no doubt heterogeneous and no doubt deserving of some consideration. As for the latter group, why should proximity to the U.S. border be a valid reason, in and of itself, for allowing such people to "jump the line", no matter how much "gumption" they show, to use Kinsley's term.