Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen.
Via YouTube
The latest column by contentious Washington Post writer Richard Cohen sparked immediate outrage after he opined in Tuesday’s paper that conventional Americans are forced to “repress a gag reflex” when encountering interracial marriage.
The column, which started out as an analysis of why New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might not be conservative enough to win over Republican Iowans ahead of the 2016 presidential election, unraveled into a controversial look at “today’s GOP” — through the eyes of Richard Cohen. He used New York City’s new Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio and his family to illustrate his point.
“People with conventional views must repress a gag reflex when considering the mayor-elect of New York — a white man married to a black woman and with two biracial children. (Should I mention that Bill de Blasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, used to be a lesbian?),” Cohen wrote. “This family represents the cultural changes that have enveloped parts — but not all — of America. To cultural conservatives, this doesn’t look like their country at all.”
It didn’t take long for a firestorm to erupt on Twitter as readers angrily demanded that Cohen, who has come under criticism for his writings about Trayvon Martin and the Steubenville rape case, be fired once and for all. Dozens of readers, who called the column racist, insisted Cohen had gone too far and that his continued relationship with the Washington Post suggests the paper, recently sold to Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, is going downhill.
