Roger Cohen writes a clunker defending Murdoch

Roger Cohen is probably, after Paul Krugman, my favorite NY Times columnist. He's usually understated and sensible, especially on foreign affairs issues.

But, then, he wrote this paean to Rupert Murdoch saving newspapers.

If you add everything up, he’s been good for newspapers over the past several decades, keeping them alive and vigorous and noisy and relevant. Without him, the British newspaper industry might have disappeared entirely.

Bullshit.

First, Murdoch doesn't really publish "newspapers." If he does occasionally have legitimate news, even then, he overhypes it beyond reality.

Cohen admits that the hacking is illegal, and that Murdoch promotes an anti-science agenda on global warming, though he refuses to call a spade a spade. But, he then says:

So why do I still admire the guy? The first reason is his evident loathing for elites, for cozy establishments, for cartels, for what he’s called “strangulated English accents.”

Uhh, Roger, maybe you too have spent too much time inside MSM circles? Plenty of legitimate news outlets, especially on the left, have "loathing for elites, for cozy establishments, for cartels" while still having journalistic integrity.

Second, his attempt to take over BSkyB shows that he actually LOVES "cozy establishments and cartels."

Cohen goes on:

The second thing I admire is the visionary, risk-taking determination that has placed him ahead of the game as the media business has been transformed through globalization and digitization

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Again, wrong. It's not risk-taking when you have politicians in your pocket. Good fucking doorknob, the column gets worse.

And worse:

Overall, the British media scene without Murdoch would be pretty impoverished. His breaking of the unions at Wapping in 1986 was decisive for the vitality of newspapering.

Up to this point, I had thought Roger Cohen was a liberal. Boy, I'm going to have to rethink anything he writes on economic policy, etc.

Libya - the 'rough beast'

Former Lt. Gen. Robert Dubik has both advice and hindsight on Libya for President Obama. Among the best hindsight, that Juan Cole and other liberal interventionists need to heed, comes from Bosnia, per Dubik, but could also come from Afghanistan or even, to some degree, Iraq, and that is — air power doesn't "win" anything. Libya once again shows that, if not boots, tanks and Bradleys on the ground are necessary.

The advice? If we're not going to pull out or just "avoid losing," then we have to do more, he says:

To give (rebels) a fighting chance, NATO must put military advisers and combat air controllers on the ground — not just British, French and Italian, but also a small number of American ones.

Try selling that to Congress and the American public, Mr. Nobel Peace Prize. Actually, no, let war hawks Lindsey Graham and John McCain go on the sales line first.

Then, let's see the Juan Coles of the world are still so gung-ho about interventionism.

The "rough beast"? Riffing on W.B. Yeats, Libya is part of the Arab gyre of Roger Cohen's focus. And, Bethlehems in the Middle East as birthplaces for world-transforming events are few and far between. The actual site is the birthplace, if anything, to riff on the Arab world, of Israeli perfidy, Palestinian Authority ineptness, corruption and weakness and ... a Hamas threatening to be born with more virulence than ever.

With that in mind, Preznit Kumbaya had better be damned sure he gets different rebels in Libya straightened out before further intervening.

Obama "has failed the authenticity test"

That's no teabagger saying that. It's from the NYT op-eds page.

And, no, it's not Brooks or Douthat.

It's a straightforward, insightful, garden-variety liberal, Ed Cohen, who thusly opines.

He makes that comment in comparison to the newly-elected David Cameron in the UK as well as the just-departing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, in noting both those leaders also have/had a "narrative" that Obama doesn't.

And, it's not just on domestic policy, Cohen says:
Obama is confronting an international conviction that he’s hesitant. The agonizing review that led to the Afghan surge left an impression of uncertainty. In the end we got what some have called the Groucho Marx Hello, I Must be Going! plan, a brief reinforcement to be reversed in time for the 2012 campaign.
So, whenever I get frustrated at the MSM, I sometimes get some hope restored with a column like this. It's a good insight.