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"Tom Wolfe on Roy Cohn"

25 Comments -

1 – 25 of 25
Anonymous Piper said...

Cohn was also famous for defying the IRS like nobody else had before or since.

1/29/09, 12:46 AM

Blogger Jim O'Sullivan said...

I met Cohn when I was in law school. Our Legal Ethics Professor invited him to speak to us as an example of what not to do after graduation. His famous line: "My ethics are to win."
If only they had developed that anti-HIV cocktail a few years earlier. Cohn was nothing if not uninteresting, and I wonder what he'd be saying today. Would he come out?

BTW Steve: What calls to mind a 21-year-old review of two biographies all of a sudden?

1/29/09, 7:41 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a repulsive character this Cohn seems to have been. Poor Joe McCarthy.

Did Cohn regret his role in have sent Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair? Or was that something that Tony Kushner made up?

Great review by Wolfe.

1/29/09, 7:46 AM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

It says something about where we've come as a country that in Eisenhower's America the preferred career path for a rich, blonde, hard-partying dimwitted offspring of a hotel chain owning family was anticommunist crusader, while in W's America, it's making a sex tape and appearing as yourself in a lame reality show.

1/29/09, 8:19 AM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

McCarthy was too early in his Army investigation. Military security standards were appalling but the military still had high public approval (the afterglow of WW II). By the time the military had lost its sacred cow status, public concern about internal security had waned. Eisenhower was reflecting the elite concensus of the time: McCarthy had peed in the punchbowl and they had had enough.

1/29/09, 8:52 AM

Anonymous George said...

"G. David Schine married the Swedish Miss Universe and they had six children."

All's well that ends well...

1/29/09, 9:55 AM

Anonymous josh said...

This is a man who truly loved his mother! And of how many of our leaders today can that be said?? (Surely not the current Prez!)

1/29/09, 10:08 AM

Anonymous Henry Canaday said...

I always sort of liked Roy Cohn, due to the enemies he made. It was a more extreme version of my attitude toward Richard Nixon. And was there anyone in New York City so far Left that they did not want Cohn to be their lawyer? I mean, with Conan The Litigator on your side, the trial and verdict were the least worries of your adversary. It was all the other stuff Cohn/Conan could pull that they were scared to death of.

1/29/09, 11:18 AM

Anonymous josh said...

Re Henry Canady:I seem to recall in reading the bio of Cohn that he could be a sloppy and negligent lawyer,and many of his worshipful clients wound up getting screwed,one famous woman in particular,whose name I dont recall. I remember seeing him on Nightline once and he kept licking his lips in a weird,forceful way. His mouth seemed to be some sort of non-human machine in need of constant lubrication. I thought it was so strange that he owned nothing. That was a new one on me. How could he be a big shot if he doesnt even own his car!? :)

1/29/09, 11:34 AM

Blogger mnuez said...

Jim -

It's a mistake to assume that the current popular consensus with regards to homosexuality accurately reflects either the biological facts of the matter or the manner in which people who engage in such acts view themselves. Cohn likely wouldn't have "come out" as a "a" homosexual because, in his own estimation, he wasn't one. I believe he spoke to the matter at one point and clearly denied being a homosexual, a term that refers to emasculated men, but rather said that he f**ks women and he f**ks men. In many cultures it's the HYPER-masculine men who f**k other men. They're so masculine that (in their view) "doing" women doesn't suffice, etc. Of course I know nothing about Cohn's actual homosexual antics or even his personality so I can't comment on that, but I believe that it's a false dichotomy to ask whether he would have "come out" or not being as that only presents a binary view of whether one "is" or "is not" a homosexual according to the prevailing 21st century view of the thing.


Anon -

Cohn was an ugly sonofabitch who lacked morals beyond winning. As for sending the Rosenbergs to the chair, I guess it's fair to say that he really was the fellow to do it. Until just now I hadn't been aware of the claim that Irving Kaufman was helped up to the bench in this case by Cohn bug if in fact he was then it looks like the only role in the Rosenbergs' execution that Cohn DIDN'T play is that of actual executioner.

As an aside, this thread must be so confusing to antisemites. You guys love the fact that those Jew-Communist Rosenbergs were killed so, in theory you should appreciate the Jewish Judge and Jewish Prosecutor who sent them to the chair. But that would mean lessening your antisemitism based on this information and thus not reviling Jewish criminals more than you do other criminals and thus caring less about who killed the Rosenbergs, etc, etc. It's a killer loop really, but you guys are nothing if not inventive so I'm sure you can find ways to short-circuit it. Good luck.

1/29/09, 1:16 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Cohn was related by marriage to feminist writer Anne Roiphe.

1/29/09, 1:27 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Of course I know nothing about Cohn's actual homosexual antics or even his personality"

Well, Cohn had been diagnosed with anal warts as well as AIDS, so I guess he did his fair share of "catching". In Cohn's case, his hypermasculinity was probably a front and a denial mechanism, like those supermacho gangsta rappers who play "catch" with their posses on the down low.

1/29/09, 2:40 PM

Anonymous Canson said...

"As an aside, this thread must be so confusing to antisemites. You guys love the fact that those Jew-Communist Rosenbergs were killed so, in theory you should appreciate the Jewish Judge and Jewish Prosecutor who sent them to the chair."

As far as the trial of the Rosenbergs is concerned I haven't noticed that the fact that many of the figures involved were Jews has done much to derail the narrative that the whole affair was motivated by antisemetic hysteria masquerading as anti-communism. Curiously, that they were actually guilty as charged doesn't seem to have had much impact on this narrative either. There's a head-scratcher for you to ponder, Mnuez.

1/29/09, 3:56 PM

Anonymous Bill said...

josh said...

I remember seeing him on Nightline once and he kept licking his lips in a weird,forceful way.


He was probably on coke.

Anonymous said...

Did Cohn regret his role in have sent Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair?


Why should he? The Zionists and Communists had already split by that time. The Rosenbergs were traitors to the Jewish state as well as America.

1/29/09, 4:43 PM

Anonymous Chief Seattle said...

I remember in Bonfire of the Vanities how the Irish prosecutor says to the Jewish one something like "all you Jews have the gay gene". I wonder if this review had anything to do with the genesis of that.

1/29/09, 5:01 PM

Anonymous David Davenport said...

Did Cohn regret his role in have sent Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair? Or was that something that Tony Kushner made up?

The Rosenbergs were guilty. They got what they deserved.

The anti-anti-Semites herein are parroting the usual Pee Cee cant.

1/29/09, 6:44 PM

Anonymous Bret Ludwig said...

The roles of Jews in the Rosenberg case are actually easy to understand once you consider the basic facts. As a group, Jews have ben selected by long evolution to do what is best for the tribe. If that means doing something bad to one or two individual Jews, that is not necessarily unthinkable. The Rosenbergs were, as Cohn and Kaufman knew, almost certainly factually guilty, even though Venona (and positive confirmation of that guilt) was not public knowledge. Stalin was the head of the Soviet Union at the time, and he was not above some suspicion of having been prepared to backstab the Tribe when he, so co-incidentally, died. So while the majority of Jews still listed to port politically and the ranks of hardcore Marxists were still predominantly Jewish, anticommunism had a Jewish component as well by then.

Leniency toward the Rosenbergs from an all-Jewish court would have been percieved as Jewish cohesion. Executing them on the other hand did more to provide an illusion of Jewish noncohesion than any other act in the century.

Further, they did offer them an out if they would confess and fink on others, all the way to the final walk. Julius would probably have went for it, but Ethel preffered they die martyrs than live as finks-a decision with at least a component of Tribal loyalty in itself.

If they had faced a Gentile court, or if loving brother David Greenglass had not narked, or if it had taken even another year or two to bring thenm to trial, they likely would have got a few years.

The fact is that many American bomb scientists, most but not all Jews, had decided that giving the Soviets assistance in bomb building was a right thing to do. They did not want an American nuclear monopoly, nor did they want to simply give the needed bomb data to all and sundry-and in those pre-Internet days couldn't have done so anyway. They decided that if the Soviets had nuclear weapons, the nuclear genie could be contained to a few "superpowers" and there would be a "balance of power". The Rosenbergs were part of one chain in a multiple transmission and I think by 1955 the intelligence services had that figured out. Killing them served little purpose, but by then it was done.

The people I felt bad for, but only out of dismay of their own lameness, were the Rosenbergs' sons, at least one of whom was consumed by hatred for Cohn. He should have just walked up to Cohn-who was chauffeured around in an aluminum bodied Roller with COHN on the license plates-and put a 1911A1 clip into his guts in front of as many witnesses as possible. He should have dropped the piece, turned himself in, pleaded bugsy, did a few years, taken a dive for Jeboo and hit the rubber chicken circuit like Colson.

1/29/09, 7:07 PM

Anonymous Yawn said...

Man, it'll be great when mnuez becomes a bar mitzvah and finally finds something else to do besides boring everyone here.

1/29/09, 8:46 PM

Anonymous Flak Catcher said...

Cohn was related by marriage to feminist writer Anne Roiphe.

Got it.

1/30/09, 4:48 AM

Blogger Dutch Boy said...

Another thing about Cohn is that he had the classic homosexual upbringing: distant, uninterested dad and plenty of smother love from his mommy. In pre-PC days this type of family dynamic was regarded as the incubator for a homosexual personality disorder.

1/30/09, 1:10 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Cohn likely wouldn't have "come out" as a "a" homosexual because, in his own estimation, he wasn't one. I believe he spoke to the matter at one point and clearly denied being a homosexual, a term that refers to emasculated men"

The HBO production of Angels in America addressed this, with lines by Cohn (played by Al Pacino) said to his physician (played by James Cromwell). When his physician brings up the anal warts, Pacino goes into a rant about how he's not gay, that a gay man wouldn't be able to pick up the phone and call the White House, etc.

"Leniency toward the Rosenbergs from an all-Jewish court would have been percieved as Jewish cohesion. Executing them on the other hand did more to provide an illusion of Jewish noncohesion than any other act in the century."

In other words, an actual act of Jewish non-cohesion is, in your mind, evidence of Jewish cohesion. Got it.

- Fred

1/30/09, 2:28 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"BTW Steve: What calls to mind a 21-year-old review of two biographies all of a sudden?"

First I've heard of Cohn personally, kind of reminds me of Rahm Emanuel (except Emanuel is a much better ballet dancer).

1/30/09, 4:09 PM

Anonymous David Davenport said...

Perhaps the much-reviled Sen. Joe M. wasn't as wrong as people have been taught to think he was:

The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America--The Stalin Era (Modern Library Paperbacks) (Paperback)

by Allen Weinstein (Author), Alexander Vassiliev (Author) "WHO WAS LAURENCE DUGGAN and why was he targeted for recruitment as a Soviet intelligence agent?..." (more)

Key Phrases: New York, United States, Soviet Union (more...)


Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review

The Haunted Wood fills in a valuable part of cold war history: the Soviet Union's attempts to spy on the United States from the time of FDR's New Deal, through the Second World War, and into the 1950s. Allen Weinstein (author of a highly regarded history of the Hiss-Chambers case, Perjury) and Alexander Vassiliev (a KGB agent turned journalist) ( Weinstein undoubtedly part of tribal plot to cover up all sins of fellow tribesfolk. -- DD ) show that among the Americans caught in the Soviet orbit were many top government officials, including a Congressman from New York and a close advisor to President Roosevelt, as well as an American ambassador's daughter. Most of these early spies were leftists driven by ideology--as opposed to money, which seems to have motivated many of the later cold war traitors, such as Aldrich Ames. (The Congressman, interestingly, is an exception--he demanded so much compensation that the Soviets gave him the code name "Crook.") The greatest windfall for the U.S.S.R. during this period was the acquisition of atomic secrets, with contributions from agents like Ted Hall, Klaus Fuchs, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (the authors do not believe, however, that the scientist Robert Oppenheimer was a Soviet spook). Yet there were also notable failures, many brought on by Stalin's insatiable appetite for purges; defections by Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley also dealt several mortal blows. By the end of the 1940s, the Soviet spy ring in the United States was in serious breakdown. Weinstein and Vassiliev make use of both American sources and Soviet archives to deliver what will surely be an authoritative account for many years--or at least until more top-secret archives on both sides of the Atlantic become declassified. And don't expect that to happen anytime soon. --John J. Miller --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Like Yale University Press's The Secret World of American Communism and The Soviet World of American Communism, by Harvey Klehr et al., this account of the "golden age" of Soviet spying, 1933-1945, draws heavily on recently declassified Russian archives, but turns those documents into a narrative history. Historian Weinstein (Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case) and retired KGB agent Vassiliev offer new background for such controversial Cold War figures as Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Unlike recent spies (such as Aldrich Ames), Stalin-era turncoats were motivated primarily by ideology. Many harbored the naive belief that the U.S.S.R. was an oppression-free utopia, while others saw the Soviet Union as the only credible bulwark against European fascism. Some spies even mixed ideology with emotion, such as the daughter of the U.S. ambassador to Germany who carried on a love affair with her Russian handler. Soviet espionage's most dazzling success was the theft of atomic secrets from the Manhattan Project, a coup that enabled the U.S.S.R. to accelerate its own nuclear program. Ironically, by the 1950s, when America became obsessed with the "Red menace," Soviet espionage had been decimated by the high-level defections of Chambers and Elizabeth Bentley. The authors write as historians, not polemicists, eschewing both cheap moralism and apologetics. Although the narrative occasionally bogs down in profuse detail, it is also packed with plenty of intriguing characters and cloak-and-dagger tales of secrecy, subversion and betrayal. This is an important contribution to the history of the Cold War.

Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

...


http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Wood-Espionage-America-Paperbacks/dp/0375755365

1/30/09, 5:54 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

"an actual act of Jewish non-cohesion is, in your mind, evidence of Jewish cohesion. Got it."

Anti-semitism is truly a foolproof ideology. Every Jewish behavior supports it, no matter what - whether a Jew does X or the opposite of X, either way it's evidence that the Jews are like the anti-semites say they are.

1/30/09, 6:02 PM

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Everyone seems to have posted in 2009 and some refer negatively to George W. I just want to point out that under Obama that when congress did away with "don't ask, don't tell" in the US military, they did away with prohibitions on sodomy of both humans and animals with no explanation.

12/29/12, 5:24 PM

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