On Richard Cohen's gag reflex

Yesterday, Washington Post sinecurist Richard Cohen wrote that "conventional" Americans "gag" at interracial marriages. His editor, Fred Hiatt, offered a squirmy apology, but Cohen himself is 'hurt' by accusations of racism. To those who see Cohen's critics as suffering from a 'reading comprehension' problem–Cohen's a Tea Party critic, don't 'cha know!–The Atlantic senior editor Ta-Nehisi Coates has a powerful explanation of why this is not so. Think Progress gathers the columnist's long history of racist, sexist and homophobic commentary into one convenient location. Alex Pareene, meanwhile, assails Cohen's post-facto clarifications: "He thinks he is defending himself, but he is actually directly contradicting the thing he wrote."