Richard Cohen's demand that Barack Obama disavow a man he has no relation to other than being black and knowing the same minister should be offensive to most reasonable people on many levels, but let's get into his specious claim that "the rap on Obama is that he is a fog of a man." At the end of the column, Cohen attempts to affirm his ridiculous allegations that Obama somehow condones Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitism by linking them with the senator's "present" votes in the Illinois legislature, and uses those votes to validate his specious claim that there's too much we don't know about Obama. We've debunked the hubbub over the "present" votes here, here, and here, and the suggestion that these votes are somehow evidence of why the candidate can't be trusted is an intellectually dishonest, transparent attempt to cover the column's overall, not-so-thinly veiled racist allegations. Mind you, these are the only two pieces of evidence Cohen presents for this "fog."
The idea that we don't know enough about Obama is also absurd because it's been his very openness about his life that others have been exploiting to a racist end. So what does Cohen mean by "fog" then? Clearly it's intended to cast the candidate as "dark," "scary," or "deceitful" -- like low-hanging clouds, and all the worst fears white Americans might harbor about black men.
--Kate Sheppard
