Before Richard Cohen’s latest column sparked widespread outrage, the publisher of the Washington Post praised the piece.
Katharine Weymouth tweeted a link to Cohen’s column on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) relationship with the tea party, which she hailed as “brilliant.”
Brilliant: richard Cohen on why Cruz beats Christie in iowa: http://t.co/Ofl85i5lf1
— katharine weymouth (@weymouthk) November 12, 2013
Although Cohen’s piece focuses on Christie’s 2016 prospects, it’s a passage in the column centered around newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s biracial family that’s raise eyebrows.
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde. 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?) 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.
