Richard Cohen sounds like a bad romance novel

[wryter2000]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

I write romance novels, and I love them. But occasionally, an author will fill a book with bad purple prose. How about this passage from Richard Cohen?

"The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred.....The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations."

My version, "The letter pulsed in Lord Whittleby's hand, emanating raw sensuality...the passion was back. He knew it was only words appearing on the luxurious vellum, but the words were so pregnant with possibility, so roiled with poignancy, that they were the functional equivalent of bricks once so threateningly cast at the Summer Palace during the French revolution."

[ComerPerro]

1. And his words are like the stones once thrown

at outcasts who didn't fit his ideal theocratic society's mold.

[Synnical]

2. That's funny

Thanks for this!

[reality based]

3. Give me Leonard Cohen any day over poor Richard

He makes more sense.

[long_green]

4. Wow. You really turned me on.

Cohen not so much. Florence King once described Cohen as "the man every woman would least like to have with her if she met a mugger."

[Gabi Hayes]

29. who's Florence King? I love her, and I sure hope Cohen

has heard that gem. believe me, that really hits a man where he lives. talk about emasculating! 2d on that list? Karl Rove? third? Bush?

everybody who hasn't emailed him yet should, and include that hy lare ee ous quote

[deutsey]

5. He missed his calling...

[mikeytherat]

6. Cohen's words are like feces, flung with great ire, toward a silent brick

wall.

mikey_the_rat

[wryter2000]

15. LOL

That's how it's done.

[Canuckistanian]

28. Hey, that's good

Expand on that.

I want 2,000 words on my desk tomorrow. Do that and we'll talk about a corner office.

[Jacobin]

7. His version of "They hate us for our freedoms"

Mr. Clueless simply cannot understand why anyone would not just love wars of oil conquest......oh wait, he's criticizing the war now, oh wait, he was all in favor of the war back then...oh wait...he's just writing stream of consciousness claptrap. Whew. Finally got it.

[deutsey]

8. I re-sent my letter to him

I don't think I'm "hateful"

Mr. Cohen,

You say you are a funny person. While I have seen no evidence of that in what I have read of your writing, I'll take you at your word. "Being funny," after all, is something of a subjective thing. The same people who find Richard Pryor or George Carlin hilarious probably fail to see the humor in Larry the Cable Guy or Adam Sandler, and vice versa.

As an independent Mark Twain scholar, though, I think I know a little something about American satire; enough to know, anyway, that it isn't always intended to be "funny" in the same way other kinds of humor are meant to be.

If you read Twain's essay "To a Person Sitting in Darkness," for example, you will probably conclude it isn't very funny at all. Twain's invective against US imperialism contradicts the avuncular image of the old man in a white suite spouting folksy aphorisms that we associate with Twain. This essay (and many others he wrote throughout his life) isn't funny but it is damn good satire, the kind of satire that is meant to afflict the comfortable.

However, in 1901 The New York Times in poo-poo'ed the essay much in the same manner you critique Colbert's speech. Scolding a reader who wrote in support of "To a Person Sitting in Darkness," the NYT pontificated:

"A man who makes it his vocation to be funny is not called upon late in life to develop a historical conscience."

Knowing what I know of Twain, he didn't make such a distinction between being funny and developing a historical conscience. Based on what I heard in Colbert's speech, I don't think he does either.

It's a pity that critics like yourself do.

[wryter2000]

13. That is an awesome letter

It probably went over his head.

[marylanddem]

9. He identifies himself so much with the Establishment it makes me peuk.

what a lame excuse for a journalist.

[stanwyck]

10. He said he could do comedy, now he's

showing us he can play the victim, the innocent, the wrongly attacked defender of all that is proper.
So. The "rude" adherents of Colbert are "rudely" attacking Cohen.
I have no sympathy.
The Bushies have murdered thousands of innocent Iraqis. They've lied us into war. They've mismanaged their misbegotten war. They've driven the deficit into unheard of billions. Meanwhile, decimating the environment, attacking civil rights, science, the poor, and blurring the lines between church and state.
Plus, much, much more.
And Cohen is worried about equiquette?

[chaumont58]

11. This guy will continue to be employed by Fred Hiatt's WaPo

And he will continue to be identified as a liberal.
Both conditions are jokes, as is he.
It will be a cold day in hell before I read his shit again.

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Another example

When I guilelessly clicked on the name, I would get a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face.

How would Lord Lytton put it?

[wryter2000]

14. Oh, man

If I wrote that, people would throw it back in my face. Or maybe, they'd growlingly throw it back into my reddened visage.

[Cleita]

17. Or they would throw it into the aforementioned sewage.

LOL

[Cleita]

16. A little off topic but my favorite romance novel purple prose

sentence is, "Her eyes fluttered like wild violets".

[wryter2000]

22. Oy!

As I said, I love romance, but I won't stand up for every book written in the genre. BTW, my world's worst line in a novel (not romance) was, "The tire exploded like an O. J. Simpson alibi."

[Cleita]

23. LOL!

Oh my tender eyes!

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

24. There's some gems here:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,137341...
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/...

[wryter2000]

26. LOL

I wish I could be that bad (on purpose, anyway).

[blm]

18. Does Olbermann HAVE a WORST WRITER IN THE WORLD segment?

Every now and then, Cohen can write gems - but, not much lately. His crap is piling up.

[norml]

19. Time to enter Richard Cohen in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest.

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com /

Richard Cohen is a dark and stormy knight of turgid typings, as well as (according to him) having been a class clown of great renown.

[wryter2000]

21. Well done

[Notoverit]

20. Outstanding! K&R!

[ShortnFiery]

25. .... In the Field! K&R too.

[wryter2000]

27. Hey!

I made the greatest page. I hope everyone contributes their parodies.