Digital wet noodling

Richard Cohen is all panty-knotted over some mean, nasty emails he received over his hacktacular pontification on Stephen Colbert's "so not funny" appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. I have to wonder at his conclusions, though. Does he really think he's the only person getting hate mail? Can he really think such trolls are a problem isolated to the left?

Then there's the whole issue of "lynch mob." Okay, 3,000 or so people send some nastyness to Cohen, out of a total daily readership of what? About 700,000 for the Post? Thousands more on teh internets? Hardly what I'd call a tide of left-wing anger (unless Cohen thinks there's only 3000 of us, I guess). And of what meaning is an email? I could send the sort of incoherent babble he received in maybe 30 seconds; that's not much commitment required, and so the receipt of such can't really be conflated into any kind of real energy to take down a presidential campaign. Ask anyone who works in a congressional office, by the way - emails are the least regarded form of constituent communication because they take so little effort, and represent little in the way of dedication.

The biggest joke of it all is his effort to portray himself as unbiased, of course. "I liked Al Gore's movie" isn't exactly what I'd call stinging criticism of the administration. And anyway, the real target of Colbert's speech, by the way, wasn't Bush. It was complacent crap journalists like Richard Cohen.

For a funny guy, he doesn't seem to get it.