The most awful thing I can imagine is that Donald Trump is what people claim because he would not be a person in any way. He would never say to his son as he rises from the couch, I'm getting old. He would never age. He'd be supernatural, god like, a manifestation of boiling hideous evil that flares when his eyelids open and scorches the vocal chords of children awaiting blessings from him as he molests them.
One biographer of Ronald Reagan explained Reagan's silence on the Iran contra matter as something typical of a child whose father was alcoholic. There are many people who have a relative or are themselves alcoholic. My father drank beer all day to maintain and had to stop for his health. That's not a stray example of failing or a cheap shot at Ronald Reagan, a public figure, or my Dad, a private person much more important to me. I picked it because we're forecasting Trump's role in history but forgetting his psychology, humanity and thus his decay, his dying cells, his ailing heart, his joints and so on. Maybe Trump is a harassing laughing poison toxic to an innocent idiot like me. I didn't vote for him and won't again but we're not getting a full view of him as we never do (not the fault of the writers. How hard is it to describe someone exactly as they are?). If people remember only his mortality, they might boil over less frequently.
4
Supported forced busing while sending their own spawn to private school. Archie Bunker doesn’t arise in a vacuum.
4
"Cohn was manifestly despicable, but he was embraced, rather than shunned, by New York elites ...." This explains for me how Trump was elected and has managed to break all rules of decency so far with blatant impunity. There will always be those among us who excuse if not altogether embrace evil.
6
Yes , we learn, “whatever you accept into your mind has reality for you ,Its your acceptance of it that makes it real.”This is from a course in Miracles .If it’s pure evil garbage and you believe it then
Trump behavior is just fine.Terrifying isn’t it.
Turn your mind away from anything he says, stop looking for change.He will only get worse!
4
Roy Cohn was not tolerated because he was "amusing" or interesting. He was tolerated because he was powerful. He was powerful because he would do things decent people wouldn't.
In general, in New York, he was despised, the same way Mafia thugs were despised. But why did/do people pay for protection? No one wants to get beaten up, no one wants to get busted or have their children kidnapped.
Joseph McCarthy practiced fear, Roy Cohn practiced fear, Kim Il-Jung practices fear, Benito Mussolini practiced fear, Donald Trump practices fear -- some more outrageously or smoothly than others.
And dear Michelle, everyone of that era went to Studio 54 and talked with Andy Warhol who was remarkably accessible, but despite his enormous success was no George Bernard Shaw or Alexis deTocqueville of social observation.
Read or watch Angels in America. Are you really as jejune as this article sounds?
13
quoting from this very interesting article :"being amusing and interesting " WAS not WERE !!! "more important.. ." and being literate was important if you were a writer. Now it seems it's just an option.
3
Great article for the most part, just a shame it dived into the tiresome millennial SJW preachiness.
5
We got Trump because Hilary Clinton and the Democrats forgot that they were the party of the middle class and its workers. Blue collar workers in this country were desperate during the last election campaign. Their desperation was the result of no longer having jobs , which had been outsourced by the greedy multinational corporations in order to increase their profits and likability for the bettors on Wall Street.
Many cities were also decimated because of the loss of factories and they still haven't recovered. Hillary ignored this problem and made it worse when she accepted large fees from Goldman Sacks to give speeches.
Trump saw this opening and being the liar he has always been, he exploited it by telling the desperate workers that he and he alone would bring their jobs back to the US . Desperate people suffering from economic causes will do desperate things to reverse their economic losses. History repeats itself. The same scenario existed in pre-WWII Germany when Hitler told the Germans that he felt their pain and would reverse their poverty by tearing up the Treaty of Versailles, which actually made the German people poorer because of reparations.
History repeats itself if we don't know it.
8
Remember one thing about RFK and LBJ. Many who see RFK as morally superior to LBJ, despite all of LBJ's Great Society legislative achievements, do not realize that RFK worked with Roy Cohn for McCarthy and LBJ shut McCarthy down.
10
Good topic for discussion and one that has long puzzled me. That the amoral, vapid celebritant artist Andy Warhol was in the circle of Cohn and Trump is no surprise. I'm 56 and first began seeing stories in the media about Trump when I was a teenager. I found him neither amusing nor interesting. He seemed to me, in words my grandmother might have used at the time, "sleazy". His open obsession with wealth to the exclusion of any other value and his obvious objectification and sexualization of women and girls. And again, I was a teenager, and not a particularly religious one. Leaving home, attending art school, and experiencing the world on my own terms, I made similar observations about youth obsessed and now semi-disgraced director Woody Allen. Manhattan anybody?? Boomers rolling their collective eyes at the Millennial call-out culture should just deal with it. I welcome it as unsurprising given the wreckage many of them witnessed growing up in the era of the Gulf Wars, the Great Recession, and global warming that threatens to make large swaths of this planet more unlivable every day. May their outrage only be outshone by their votes in November 2020.
11
The Cohns and Trumps of this world believe that if you repeat a lie one thousand times, it will become the truth. So, good people must respond one thousand times that it is a lie. Never give up. Never give in.
17
The portrayal of Cohn in HBO's 'Angels in America' is must-see. Someone ought to look into his childhood and what made him the devil incarnate.
4
Cohn lived. Just take a look at Stephen Miller!
9
Cohn was the living embodiment of the German word
Backfeifengesicht: a face in need of a slap or a fist. Anyone he mentored is worrying.
10
Netflix's new series, Trump-An American Dream, is a recommended compliment to Goldberg's superb historical perspective on Cohn's odious relationship with a young and cocky Donald Trump. As a young gay man during the later 1970s and early 1980s, that time period before AIDS was the 'belle epoque' for decadence, gay and straight, in NYC. Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, coupled with Trump hiring the despicable Cohn to get tax cuts to build the Hyatt Hotel (fka Hotel Commodore) next to Grand Central Terminal and his Tower on Fifth Avenue, provided a green light for material arrogance. An account at Bergdorf Goodman or an entry in the Social Register would be 'insufficient' to the likes of Cohn and Trump.
AIDS brought a terrible end to the 'belle époque' for the gay community in NYC. But that crisis brought about a grass roots movement that would galvanize that community by jettisoning the excesses of the 'belle epoque' and beginning a grass-roots movement towards civil rights and more research on dealing with AIDS.
It's terribly ironic that the Wall Street crash of 1987 and the recession did not cause the likes of Trump and his henchmen to humble themselves and to jettison their extravagance and arrogance. Trump was still living his belle époque without paying for its expensive consequences. Cohn, still full of hatred for the 'undesirables' such as Communists during the 1950s and gays during the 1970s and 1980s, would die of AIDS. Talk about such irony!
5
Anyone else notice the resemblance between Cohn and Stephen Miller?
17
Roy Cohn was a despicable person.
But Cohn and Joe McCarthy were used and tolerated by the GOP just as Trump is today.
Before the election of IKE in 1952, the GOP had lost five straight presidential elections.e
The GOP was desperate to regain political power.
Even a presumably principled conservative [yes a reactionary and isolationist but presumably with principles] Robert Taft supported McCarthy.
The GOP only turned on McCarthy and even then only just some in the GOP] when McCarthy and Cohn attacked IKE and the US Army.
Similarly today the GOP knows that Trump is a despicable demagogue.
But the GOP is willing to tolerate and accept Trump's horrible behavior in exchange for tax cuts for the rich and slashing social programs and gutting environmental and financial regulations.
While clearly not of the same magnitude in Germany in the 1930's Adolf Hitler was seen as a means to stop the Communist party in Germany.
12
You may have unknowingly answered ?Why did elites embrace Cohn? when you noted that Cohn got canceled when Cohn was disbarred
In a nutshell: Cohn was the "connection" through whom those on the outside sought to get something from an insider such as a politician, mobster or racketeer
Through Cohn Trump was able to use non-union labor, mostly Polish immigrants, for demolition work without the unions throwing up a picket line; sweetheart deals on tax abatments for Trump projects in Manhattan and entry into the AC Casino industry as a front for the Genovese Crime family and that led to his dealings with Russian organized crime as the NYT wrote about in 2015 and 2016
The whole crowd you write of that surrounded Cohn was strictly transactional and without his law license Cohn had nothing to offer hence Cohn was left alone while Cohn died of Aids
Trump who feigned affection and loyalty for Cohn as well as being closer to most to Cohn canceled Cohn when Cohn could no longer serve Trump - which all should take note of
As a sidenote, Trump's White House Counsel, Don McGahn, is the nephew of Patrick McGahn who represented Trump in real estate matters in AC. Perhaps the reason Don McGahn made notes from meetings and conversations with Trump, which Trump complained of, is Don McGahn was forewarned to protect himself and did so
7
Before getting too comfortable with how much New York and the world have changed thanks to the cultural power of the left, remember Jeffrey Epstein. His disgusting deeds were overlooked by a number of well known feminist lefties.
6
The plays of "Angels in America" by Tony Kushner had as a main character Roy Cohn doing his evil work and denying his homosexuality. Reminder of the brilliance of Mr. Kushner who singled out Cohn and helped many learn of his terrible deeds.
3
Everything about this column made me sick.
And I'm a middle aged white man.
6
Here’s what a lot of you commenting don’t seem to understand (more below) — and please don’t be offended by that statement. In fact, consider yourself lucky that you don’t understand, because it means you are a healthy, empathetic person who has not had the misfortune of “knowingly” interacting longterm with malignant menacing men like Cohn, McConnell, Trump, Epstein... the list goes on. What you don’t understand is:
They not only don’t care — they are entirely unable to care. Their brains are literally disordered, malfunctioning. And not only do they NOT care, they are also quite comfortable in their own skin, in their perceived superiority of who they are. They are monsters and that suits them just fine. They see normal people as targets and supply sources. It’s all transactional. Human life exists to satisfy their insatiable impulses and relentless urges for power, control, money, sex, deviant durations etc.
Do you see? I’m not being hyperbolic. This is actually how these people are.
So you (we as a society) can’t keep being “dismayed” and “disheartened” by the Cohns, Hitlers and Trumps of the world. We need to remove our emotions from how we view those people, recognize them for what they are, and prevent them from being in power positions in the public trust. They are not playing by the rules of ethics, decency and civility that the rest of us are. They only appear to do so insofar as it get them what they want. They truly are the enemy of the people.
19
People associated with Cohn so they could show up in the newspapers. Do nothing "celebrities" enhancing their celebrity. Everyone knew he was a creep, but those with little integrity didn't care, Getting into Studio 54 was worth being seen with the man.
Donald Trump and his ilk wanted to be seen with Cohn. This says more about Trump than Cohn.
3
Cohn is dead. How we got trump is the fools that voted for him and the fools in the electoral college.
2
Trump now has Bill Barr, who is even more weird and horrifying than Roy Cohn. And he also cuddles up with Stephen Miller, who sets his agenda on immigration and torture.
4
Edward Bernays gave us Trump. Why does no one write about him and everything he spawned?
http://theconversation.com/the-manipulation-of-the-american-mind-edward-bernays-and-the-birth-of-public-relations-44393
1
Why did the elites embrace him? You should have asked that question of Bobby Kennedy who was co-counsel with Cohn when they were both working FOR Joe McCarthy's committee investigating communism.
The answer is: Cohn did the dirty work for the elites, be they Republican or Democrat. Kinda like Comey and Mueller.
This account of the like of Cohn, Trump, et. al. just makes me sick. None of this social behavior and acceptance constituted any kind of ethical or moral code. It was pure status seeking hedonism. If this situation is at the roots of our Trump problem, it needs to be exterminated asap.
4
William Barr = Roy Cohn.
Barr is a sick and twisted man who will go down in history as the worst Attorney General ever. He's a soulless man protecting the criminal machinations of his boss at the expense of our democratic republic and the rule of law.
And he cares not.
William Barr should be impeached along with Trump. He is obstructing justice every single day
11
The photo you've chosen for this article is sooooo Stephen Miller.
4
Without Fred Trump's dysfunctional mentoring, telling him to be a killer, be a king, Donald Trump would never have been attracted to Cohn.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/13/us/politics/fred-donald-trump-father.html
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/03/2016-donald-trump-brutal-worldview-father-coach-213750
34
From the get-go, I have wondered where Ms. Goldberg's head is at. Take this one: "The film, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, will likely be of wide interest because of how Cohn helps explain Trump."
Ms. Goldberg seems to think that there are teeming masses who want to know how Roy Cohn explains Donald Trump, and are willing to pay whatever it costs to find out. As I said, I have always wondered where Ms. Goldberg's head is at.
2
There was a certain amount of poetic justice in Cohn's dying from AIDs. He despised any person who was different yet in the end he died from something that made his difference quite obvious to all. He was a petty man. He was a mean man. He hurt others. His legacy lives on in the person of Donald Trump.
Trump couldn't even give condolences about Cokie Roberts without injecting his grievances with her into the statement. What a brat. But I'll bet anything that Cohn and Trump's father taught him that: make it about him even when it's not. A legacy from Cohn we didn't need.
7
Ed Koch, the mayor who lived in a rent controlled apartment in Greenwich Village standing in the middle of two men in the picture shown, seams to fit his character. Mr. Cohn was not a very nice person, too devious and it appears that Trump liked that.
1
So what are you saying - he was a great guy?
You said it, Michelle! Thank you!
It is time to come up with new things to write up besides Trump. Every possible angle has been covered and reiterated over and over. In case no one at this point knows the NYT, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, evening talk show hosts, and every other liberal media sources hate Trump and are still in denial he won and is president. The dead horse has been beaten.
If the only topic to write about is Trump the nails are in the coffin when he leaves office.
I hope that there is an afterlife so that I can imagine the eternal frustration of Roy Cohn wishing he could sue Tony Kushner for the way he is depicted in "Angels in America."
2
Sorry - no sale.
Donald inherited his father’s contempt for people - and only respected Fred.
If you listen to Donald speak on his favorite subject, himself, you find the only mention of Mom was her English Monarchist tendencies - nothing else.
Fred taught him “the art of the deal”, and didn’t do a very good job - having to walk in to his son’s monument to Atlantic City’s bad taste, the Taj Majal, and illegally buy more than $3 million in chips.
Roy Cohn was the obvious product of schoolyard bullying and an era when “real men” refused to accept men who loved men, who would clearly never accept (until two decades too late) the Beats who would.
Remember the Army-McCarty hearing films (don’t think either of us saw them any other way).
Boozed up Tailgunner Joe is missing on 4 of his 6 cylinders - catches a bit of his old style - and launches a planned rear-guard attack on a junior lawyer - Joseph Welsh’s junior.
Bad move. Welsh is prepared, floors McCarthy with the classic “have you utterly no compassion” speech. McCarthy leaves the room, the hearing in the hands of a little pale guy in a suit and glasses that look about 2 sizes too large, blinking in the glare of the Kliegs.
Who, in black-and-white memory, seems to shrink further still, looking for the rock he’s been hiding under to avoid any light for the past decade or so.
Only later, much later, would he become the small man trying to loom large, for the most part as a crook defending the crooks.
Just Donald’s kinda guy.
3
Is Cohn how we got Trump, or also a prelude to how we got the article on Kavanaugh last weekend? Slippery evidence, outlandish accusations that elude more serious inquiry (but some damage already done by the wild accusation). The NYT needs to restore a bit of integrity at this point without diverting attention elsewhere.
Fred Trump created the monster long before Roy Cohn fine-tuned him
6
you write about decadent New York Society used to be because of its embrace of Roy Cohn but I'm surprised by the past tense because look at all the people who were close to Jeffrey Epstein.
8
After watching ad nauseum the Epstein saga, we can only hope that miscreants like he and Cohn have worn out their welcomes everywhere.
Did I forget to mention Trump?
3
lawyers are paid to disregard the welfare of others, or at half of them at any one time.
1
MG at one shot articulates exactly the beginning, middle and end of Cohn. She also describes the vast differences (to PC now) in Cohn’s world & his glamorous NYC life - and NY’s glitterati acceptance of their posh little satan.
MG is often on Real Time/Bill Maher, next time Bill should let MG discuss these differences at length-SHE gets it.
1
There are a lot of reasons we got Trump, but Roy Cohn was his mentor and gave him all the tricks. It was Cohn who taught Donald to never admit guilt, never apologize, and when someone hits you, hit back 10x harder.
After leaving D.C. in disgrace as Joseph McCarthy's sidekick, he became chief lawyer for the NY Mob. He was mouthpiece for the Gambinos and other underworld figures. He represented John Gotti.
David Cay Johnston, who writes op-eds for NYT, wrote a great book on the subject: "The Making Of Donald Trump." I read it in 2016 when it looked like he would be the GOP nominee. It was clear to me what we'd be getting, and I haven't been a bit surprised. Just disappointed.
2
No, that's how Trump became Trump, but the ineffective, bought-out Democrats is how WE got Trump. No one votes for the Do-Nothings.
2
Back when we were schoolboys and girls, we learned all about our country's great system of "checks & balances". That system is more suited for children than the brutal world of politics. I'm embarrassed and disgusted at how weak our system really is. Everyday on the news we hear phrases like "deeply troubling", "unprecedented behavior", "sends a chill". Now what? I don't get it. Is executive privilege to block a subpoena real or not? Is the emoluments clause real or not? Do only those in power get to interpret the laws?True patriots with real expertise have been insulted by this ignorant grifter but will not speak up. "Mad Dog Mattis" walks meekly away without a word against Trump. Rex Tillerson and Gen. McMaster et al are silent. Why? The Democrats seem pathetically weak but seem to be trying. Is it them or the system? I feel that if the Dems win big in 2020 we need a massive overhaul of those supposed checks and balances and make them work.
13
Had Roy Cohn not existed, Trump would've had to invent him.
I suspect the percent of people who like to pretend evil is limited to serial killers and child molesters will write in here, unable to comprehend that people like Roy Cohn and Donald Trump aren't like you and me; by the same token, because these two aren't labeled "common criminals" they get (got) a pass. After all, if you can "get away" with crime, is it really crime? White collar/uber wealthy criminals are parasites who are emotionally dead and whose victims can easily number in the hundreds or thousands. It's not complicated at all, but the simple-minded and partisan among us won't comprehend how someone of their own class/party could be, in fact, a traitorous villain. If you point out the obvious signs of their evil ways, you get accused of hyperbole and drama and partisanship yourself. Thanks for highlighting the horror show of Roy Cohn, because tragically his legacy continues.
5
Just what is an elite? Everyone seems to hate them so.
I could claim to be one because I'm 1) white 2) male 3) have family history here from the Mayflower 4) have way more education than most, and 5) have a larger public presence than most Americans (Google me; I'm like the third Kevin McGowan down).
But, neither I nor any of my family has ever influenced public policy. We have never hurt or shunned you.
I know lots of over-educated Democratic-voting types. None of them have ever had any power in government or policy making either.
The only elites I know about come from family money and influence, like the Bushes, Kennedys, and Trumps.Wall Street, mostly republicans. Andy Warhol was interesting, but he never influenced anything that really mattered. Roy Cohn did, may he rot in... whatever.
9
Years ago The Economist had a ready explanation for what went wrong in corporations, societies, nations: "Rot at the top".
Rome, France during the reign of Louis XIV, the USA in the Robber Baron age.
And now we have Roy Cohn, Trump, college admission scandals. Something smells at the top.
7
and again the world wonders why it is so easy.
6
I ask myself how do people become sociopathic, amoral, and sadistically competitive; is it money, power and elitism that bubbles these character defects to the surface until all moral decency is lost? Trump’s admirers and supporters celebrate his roguish indecency, and still call themselves Christians; I’m completely lost in understanding this, however I’ll celebrate one thing, I’m grateful not to be one of them and to clearly see the Trumps of the world as what they are, anachronistisms.
4
"But the left has far more cultural power than in the past, and some on the left have used that power to re-moralize the public square." Biggest joke of the day.
2
"...watched the radical promise of the late ’60s curdle into violence and farce..." Could you be more specific?
5
This article bugs me in several ways.
First, assuming that anyone was part of an "elite" just because they went to the Palladium or Studio 54 or invited Andy Warhol to a party in the 80's is ridiculous. Unless you mean that that having the disposable income to spend freely in NYC makes you part of an elite.
Second, everyone I knew back then who was a good person (and I knew many) was fully aware that Trump and Cohn were dumpster dwellers. The smell off of them told you so, if you happened to run across them; which hopefully, you never had to.
I am irritated because Michelle Goldberg assumes that back then we were all bottom dwellers. We were not. These two exemplars were universally recognized as such, even by those who put up with them.
And finally, I should not have to remind Ms. Goldberg, or the New York Times, that tolerance is a good thing.
3
I'm sure that like J Edgar Hoover he had a file on everyone that allowed him to maintain his closeted status. That's how he managed to have so many powerful friends, starting with the Archbishop.
3
Roy Cohn is not how we got Trump. We got Trump because a lot of working class voters in the Midwest rejected the condescending contempt that establishment grandees like Michelle Goldberg have for them.
99
@Douglas
People are angry and have hurt feelings because they have been sold a bill of goods that plays on their self respect. I get it but it is not true. That narrative has been repeated (especially on a certain network) in order to manipulate people. The contempt comes from the conservative elite and it applies to all of us not in their class.
154
Finally, someone who gets it.
Having The New York Times publish nonsense like this on a regular basis neglects to mention that the very people that elected Mr. Trump to the presidency were angry at Congress for ignoring them for years, and fostering neglect in the cities and towns these people live in.
There is no excuse for that and, although I don't support Mr. Trump, I don't see how blaming a man who has died many years ago is anyhow helpful. If The Times really cared about what happened in 2016, they'd be publishing more stories about the neglect that caused so many of those voters to vote for Mr. Trump, and urge Congress to take action.
The news media doesn't only have a responsibility to report the news, it also has the power -- and, as history has shown us, the tools needed -- to create change by informing, and advocating for changes that are needed to help alleviate the pressures faced by people, such as those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, in their day-to-day lives.
27
@Douglas
Oh please. The midwest has been decimated by Republican policies since Reagan. They voted for Trump because he's a racist, and so are all of his supporters. Sure, they were tired of the status quo, but only a fool would vote for someone like Trump. Then again, with how the GOP has decimated public education in this country, it's not surprise all those midwest voters were so easily duped.
Trump showed us exactly who and what he is, long before he was "elected." When someone shows you who they are, believe what you see, not what they tell you.
Let's not even get into the Russian hacking of our electoral system. It's real and they did it, whether you want to believe it or not.
264
Having interviewed Roy Cohn several times back in the 1980s, I suspect he might call this column "McCarthyite" for its character assassination of a dead man. Too bad Goldberg didn't do due diligence and interview people who knew Cohn well, like the son of the late former NY Times legal reporter Sydney Zion who ghosted Cohn's autobiography. It's also too bad Norman Mailler isn't alive. He was a friend of Cohn and neighbor of his in Provincetown. Cohn was the only child of a Judge appointed by FDR. He was Democrat. Yes, Cohn represented "Mob" figures like "Fat Tony" Salerno.He also represented the New York Archdiocese. But I digress. This demonization of Cohn is not journalism. It's an ugly cartoon.
36
Certainly you jest.
153
@Mary Reinholz: Marvelous! You make the author’s point perfectly.
181
@Mary Reinholz,
this is the hill you are going to die on? defending an evil, indefensible man?
44
Yes, this is a matter of how the power elite do what they do and we proles suffer. Elites always support their own and those who can serve their interests effectively---that empty holiday party table post-disbarment is so telling, no? Prior to his losing his ability to work as an attorney, Cohn was useful and made so much money that he gave in his soul for cash. When elites with a broken-down moral compass are caught and things look pretty bad for them and they need a hand, they turn to the hand of evil or, at least---if they're, say, atheists---abandoned ethics. Enter Roy Cohn. I think this editorial is the sort needed to speak of such a person in these times when elites are brazenly living decadently. We have had a left in this country for a long time. But now the left is trendy, the "in" thing to be. I hope the newer generation can stay focused long enough away from their devices speeding them through the day's headlines and toward the serious crimes of environmental deregulation and creeping fascism via anti-union propaganda and anti-Russian narratives that distract us. Forget not that Trump is a performance piece. We have had bad leadership at the federal and most state levels, but this one makes Reagan look good only because too many of us forget how terrible Reagan was for labor and minorities and the environment. Should Cohn be kicked around posthumously? Think of this man's role in the 1950s and you tell me. Think of what the power elite has done and you tell me.
3
I think we got Trump because of the Democrats. People voted against the Democrats and Trump was the best of the worst.
Among certain people in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and on to today, sexuality encompasses thoughtlessness, self-absorption, cruelty, depravity, abuse, pedophilia, and other harmful and evil behaviors.
Can we recognize that sexuality as practiced by the Jeffrey Epsteins, Donald Trumps, and Harvey Weinsteins, was and is aberrant?
Let us not mistake the vile and demonic sexuality of Trump, et al. as the norm.
Let us think of sexuality the norm as healthy, pleasurable, consensual and safe.
2
So Roy Cohn counted among his cohorts over the decades both conservatives (like Andy Warhol) and Kennedy’s and many many dunces. But I find the revisionism around his strange-enough-if-left-untouched legacy to be tinged with a very specific flavor of homophobia that some elements on the macho left keep in reserve as an extra dose of damnation for those they disagree with - and who also happen to be gay. Had the man been a cigar chomping manly power broker in the mold of George Meany would things be different? Yes they would.
2
Most people who have a serious vendetta against humanity address it with a murder-suicide, shooting rampage, etc...
Not these guys. Not Cohn. Not Trump. Not Stephen Miller. These guys clawed their way to prominence of wealth and power. They know that living well is the best revenge.
My only question is why are they so full of hate? Who hurt them so bad when they were young and impressionable? And why did they end up transferring and aiming that hate at masses of perfect strangers?
1
I don't understand it but I know people who think trump is the greatest president ever. How cn intelligent person who is a Christian have such passion for to me is anti=Christian.
Roy Cohn must have learned a lot at the end.What a scoundrel,
2
If you set out to prove Roy Cohn created Trump, you failed. This article, like the other editorials written by you, are only poor excuses to bash Trump.
Thank goodness that things are slowly changing and behaving disgracefully is no longer tolerated by the majority of people.
2
We got Trump because of the American obsession with fame and money, money, money, money (sing along Apprentice fans...).
2
By focusing on generational differences, I am afraid Ms. Goldberg overlooks why such despicable individuals are tolerated by the elites then and now. These folks have mutual interests. They do not wish to ostracize the "bad" people as they have a lot to bring to the table. Call-out culture is not a panacea for this kind of behavior because by the time its participants have become aware of these folks, the damage is done. The ones who are likely to "call-out" these folks do not belong in the same social circles.
1
Back when we were schoolboys and girls, we learned all about our country's great system of "checks & balances". WHAT A JOKE. I'm embarrassed and disgusted at how weak our system really is. Everyday on the news we hear phrases like "deeply troubling", "unprecedented behavior", "sends a chill". Now what? I don't get it. Is executive privilege to block a subpoena real or not? Is the emoluments clause real or not? The Democrats seem pathetically weak but they are trying. Is it them or the system? I feel that if the Dems win big in 2020 we need a massive overhaul in those supposed checks and balances and make them work.
6
Trump is president because Hillary was a poor candidate who did
not even campaign in the crucial swing States that Trump won.
Michelle, please, please stop making excuses and face the facts as they quite evidently are.
2
Roy Cohn was a particularly vicious character who was prepared to destroy peoples' lives during the red scare period when Joe McCarthy claimed to have a list of names of Communists or Red Travellers working in the State Department. What appealed to Trump was that people were terrified of Cohn because they knew he would go to any extreme to achieve his end. It is obvious that the bombastic rhetoric and hyperbolic threats of another of Trump's lawyers, Michael Cohen (now cooling his heels in Federal prison) were modelled on Roy Cohn. Such people, including Trump, are able to rub shoulders with the elite as long as they have money and influence because that's what matters in "high" society, not whether you are a decent person. As far as being left or right politically, it didn't matter to Bill and Hillary Clinton who attended Donald and Melania Trump's wedding or for that matter to Chelsea and Ivanka who, apparently, were until recently great pals.
3
Ms. Goldberg doesn't mention that "call-out culture" is itself McCarthyite to the core. Have you been accused? Then you must be guilty: all my friends say so. How gratified McCarthy would be that his methods have at last found favor on both left and right.
5
In the time before Mr. Trump became the Republican nominee for President, he made several comments about the influence of the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale had on his Christian faith. Dr. Peale was well known for his emphasis on the “Power of Positive Thinking.” The focus of positive thinking was and, is all about building a successful Christian Faith. Peale once observed that “The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.” Unfortunately, Mr. Trump absorbed the teaching of Roy Cohn who advocated the power of intimidating people and threatening ruin.
1
I'm not sure these embracers can truly be called elites. Barbara Walters? Andy Warhol? Donald Trump? They're celebrities, or they were; "Spy" magazine once filled its pages with their exploits. But the genuine elites kept Cohn at two arms' length.
Roy Cohn was a great lawyer the way that Donald Trump was a real estate mogul: in their own publicity. Doing business with either was usually a sign of desperation or naivete.
2
By the late 70's and early 80's Trump, Cohn, Studio 54 patrons, and even Warhol were nobodies in younger NYC club and new wave culture. I recall being in a crowd at a rave that was invited to some Trump thing with the promise of lots of free booze etc. No one went.
11
We got Trump for many reasons. Seemingly at the polar opposite of the decadent ethos Godlberg describes, would be the Evangelicals whose support for this NY grifter needs further analysis.
30
Wealthy people on both the left and the right are equally decadent. But many aren’t. I suppose that an elite social circle is sort of a workplace so they put up with it for the same reason the rest put up with sleazy behavior in our own. But when the decadent ones with lots of money go down the rabbit hole they sure do take a lot of people with them.
7
The “elite” or in crowd no matter where situated get passes. No matter if it is NYC, a small town in Iowa, or in business. People often look the other way because the offenders are seen as the elite. A short tale, is when I lived in a small town in California, six high school students who were part of the “elite” jocks were caught by the teacher cheating on final and he wanted to fail them and therefore put their college applications in jeopardy. The parents screamed and principal caved in either willingly or due to his elitism. The students didn’t even get a slap on the wrist. One even got in the Air Force Academy, however, he flunked out after one year. I think those who supported Trump to get even with the coastal elite, better take a look at themselves,their communities, and leaders if they also are enjoying their “elite” privileges. Just look at the Liberty College scandal for one or Jared Kuchner’s real estate scamming of low income housing opportunities.
30
Editorials like this, identity politics, failure by Democrats to significantly change economic issues like unemployment and then pushing Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate in 2016 opened the door to Donald Trump to become President Trump.
Now more than 2 years later after endless investigations and accusations, daily assaults in the Trump Administration, the Democrats have a bevy of candidates offering unrealistic policies / promises that would bankrupt the country and further widen the gap of income inequality that would dissolve the middle class with taxes that Dems now claim would only be increased on the wealthy.
Do the math Elizabeth Warren and Bernie because you can confiscate every penny from the richest and will still need to heavily tax the ever shrinking middle class.
3
We have the worst income inequality of any developed nation. The policies Democrats are looking at are policies that have been used in the past, during times of great prosperity or by countries presently enjoying a better quality of life than we are. We are the only developed nation where medical costs are the number one reason for bankruptcy. Forbes lists the Scandinavian countries as the best place to do business. Republican economic policies have only hurt the average American over the last 40 years.
51
History will out it seems. As a student at UCONN, I heard about Trump and how he was despised by many of the people of New York in general, but he was and is a showman which he continues to use such skills right now. His rallys look much the same each time with no particular nuances except to repeat what ever he may remember he said at the last one. He keeps us all on edge this way and his followers keep on keeping on. I hope that the upcoming election will work and the candidates can show spine enough to get at his methodology to counteract it effectively. I am not holding my breath. Michelle has always seen through much of what passes for news and Trump in particular and I hope she will intensify her work for the NY Times and the Nation at large. Thank you Michelle
29
Supporters of Hillary are most naturally reluctant to tie their own support for Hillary over many years to the election of Donald Trump for president.
Hillary had a lot of well known baggage and she simply lost the electoral college to Trump, apparently because so many voters felt he was the lesser evil.
Its always everybody's fault but your own.
Looking for every excuse in the book,
its now Roy Cohn who is responsible for Hillary's defeat in 2016,
not Hillary's fault at all,
many years after Roy Cohen had long ago been dead and buried.
You can't make this stuff up.
6
The article had nothing to do with this guys defeating Hillary...it was about how an evil person showed Trump the “evil” ropes. We’re seeing that play out now as our country is destroyed
1
@David
How did Hillary get into this, yet again. It seems the despicable Cohn should not be written about because he’s gone for years. So was Bill Clinton’s ridiculous impeachment, but Cohn’s pupil had no qualms about bringing former alleged Clinton accusers to the debate in the front aisle.
I’m hoping Ms. Daniels, Ms. McDougal, E.Jean Carroll, and the list is too long to mention, all clear their schedules for the 2020 debates, unless by some miracle the pathetic House Democrats finally do the job they were elected for and rid us of the thief in chief.
For the record, the amazing Ms. Goldberg, never once mentioned Hillary Clinton. You need a new line already, so many current politicians to whine about.
1
Psychopathy is a hard thing for most of us to deal with. Amorality, lack of conscience and empathy are difficult to cope with or accept because they shock us into disbelief and inaction.
Once we recognize them it is easier. We should not forget nor underestimate their ability to mesmerize, con and seduce. In this case, the zeitgeist of the fifties and early sixties enabled this behavior - Cohn no doubt made it seem "uncool" to be critical of him. But then and now, these people have their enablers, who either identify with them in some way or fail to see that they are as expendable as anyone else. Or perhaps they fear being targeted if they are no longer useful.
15
@Kim R
It is difficult for those of us with moral fiber to grasp the predatory behavior and motives of sociopaths, psychopaths, and malignant narcissists. We do not know what a dearth of empathy, lack of conscience, and morality feels like to them. We do know they use their extreme charm to lure us to be taken advantage of. Our naïveté causes us to give such people the benefit of the doubt.
I grew up in a very small town where everyone knew each other, including the few police we had. We had a few bad apples, of course, but they were pretty much weeded out and/or shunned. Our town was so insular that I never learned there was such a thing as people who had no conscience. As an adult, I found out the hard way what that meant, twice.
We must teach our children to be aware that such people exist and mean to harm unsuspecting victims. I sure wish someone had taught me.
26
So well said. And Ms. Goldberg’s wrestling w/our present and recent cultural history is, as always, beautifully thought-through. In my life, I wrestled countless hours to understand close people with the kinds of personalities you describe. How? Why? What had I done? Etc., etc. Recently, I understood they simply didn’t care! And, I’d cared too much. I think this is part of the seduction—when confronted with such a character, or maybe in all conflicts, how can I care less? Not too much less, but just enough.
5
Regarding the ending of the first paragraph: you could easily substitute Stephen Miller for Roy Cohn, and the face of evil.
53
I saw "Where's My Roy Cohn?" and it's well made but makes you want to take a hot shower. I couldn't escape the feeling that as scathing as it is, it is nonetheless in thrall to the bravado of a man who couldn't interest me less. Kind of like seeing an antiwar film that inadvertently celebrates the heroism and camaraderie of war. Even the idea of watching the partygoing friends and gay partners of a figure like Cohn turns my stomach. Why even give him the time of day? As a nation it feels like so many of us just can't escape our admiration for figures like Cohn and Trump who will do and say anything to win. There's no part of me that would want to go to Studio 54 with either one of them.
22
Well said, and yes, there were plenty of us around NY at that time who disliked the club crowd, saw the sudden intense rise of materialism, and the meaning of “cool” became not a unique free-spirited & experimental person, but about having expensive things and expensive times.
6
Cohn used money, fear, and lies to wield power. Twisted, but it worked for decades. And he was greatly gratified by his machinations. Wicked creepy. You can see why Trump idolized Cohn. They could have been roommates in Creedmore, laughing in conspiracy as they pulled the wings off flies. Instead, we let them out of their straight jackets to run wild and take over the world.
2
"...how decadent, in every sense, New York society used to be."
USED to be? Boy, have I got a scoop for you, Michelle.
18
Cohn may have been able to circulate in cafe society, but he was never accepted by the old upper class, for whom his behavior (pretty much all of it) was far beyond the pale. Cohn's milieu was the people who have money, or something the rest of them want, but lack what it takes to be an aristocrat. That's why they dropped him when he lost power and got AIDS.
12
@DKMK
As for the old guard, they never cared about anyone with AIDS. I don’t know that I’d hold them up as examples of virtue even in this sleazy era.
3
The physical...and political.... resemblance between Roy Cohn and Stephen Miller is striking. No wonder he is the one member of Trump’s White House staff who has job security. Where else would you find someone able to cook up such evil policies?
39
who cares how we got him but how can we get rid of him?
17
@carmelina
How we got him provides clues as to how to get rid of him. So I care.
5
Um, he was a lawyer.
1
The silence of Mitch McConnell is deafening
16
No. Bernie Sanders is how we got Trump.
10
by having a genuine progressive candidate, who showed Hillary to be the corporate lite Republican she really was?
4
something about the perfect being the enemy of good
2
At least that story had a happy ending.
8
“The left has far more cultural power than in the past, and some on the left have used that power to re-moralize the public square. Sometimes that means ostracizing people, or, as they say on the internet, canceling them.”
The progressive (not) left has no issue whatsoever destroying people, careers or entire businesses if possible, if their higher moral standards are not followed in lock step. SNL did as much this week.
No one, conservative or liberal will defend the likes of Cohen but to say that the left has re-moralized the public square while attempting to destroy anything good and moral about the US is ridiculously untrue.
IKEA apologizing for calling a bean a pea,
calling a person by the wrong pro-noun is a punishable crime and transgender boys are allowed to compete with girls in athletics, while wiping the floor with them.
This is what progressivism has given us and Ms Goldberg revels in it daily, while “cancelling” people she doesn’t agree with.
4
Cohn may have been Trump's guru but the Republican Party paved the road of bigotry and voter suppression that Trump traveled to his Presidency.
35
Barr is not Cohn and it is unfair to snidely insinuate that.
2
@No
Yes,he is much worse.
2
@No: Unfair to whom?
2
“Roy Cohn’s contempt for people, his contempt for the law, was so evident on his face that if you were in his presence, you knew you were in the presence of evil.” Besides me, does Stephen Miller remind anyone of Roy Cohn?
35
His donned the robes of the KKK. His grandfather ran a brothel in the Pacific Northwest. It’s in the blood and bone.
13
@Albert Greenberg
Sociopathy is heritable roughly 70% of the time, and the remainder is learned behavior. The incidence depends on the profession one has chosen.
In the general population, the percentage is about 5% of men, and 2% of women. With Wall St, politics, surgeons, and chefs, the percentage grows to between 10% and 25%.
I didn’t make this up. Read the research of Robert Hare, PhD, and Martha Stout, PhD, who have studied people without conscience for decades. It’s very enlightening.
13
It's Mitch McConnell who gave us Trump. And Trump already has "his Roy Cohn." It's Stephen Miller!
23
The photo of Cohn at the head of the article reminds me of Steven Miller, dead eyes ... evil indeed!
19
Roy Cohn was the type of guy who would log into the comment section of the Times every day pretending to be a lifelong Democrat who is so disenchanted with his party that he just might stay home or vote for Trump
Lots of Roy Cohn's out there these days ...
19
Cohn, Epstein, Weinstein, Weiner, and Buck have one thing in common but it runs straight through the heart of the DNC!
2
Steven Miller is Cohn re-incarnated.
14
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”
In Bill Barr, Donald Trump has finally found him, and in a nod to honest labeling, the Justice Department must be renamed the Consigliere Department.
17
When they go low, we work harder at calling out and removing evil and corruption. When they go dark, we bring light. When they bring evil, we bring true goodness. Sounds corny to some but it is the only way I see to turn around the ship of state which is now steaming directly towards the falls. And while all of this is hard work, the price of not doing that hard work is to scary to contemplate.
10
Roy Cohn helped destroy thousands of people's careers through his red-baiting crusades with Senator Joe McCarthy and Cardinal Spellman.
Like Trump, he never served in the military but often attacked combat veterans that had different political views than he.
Birds of a feather.......
16
Just being associated with Cohn in any way is enough to tell you about the person involved, let alone a mentor. He and Trump must have gotten along together swimmingly. Laws are for chumps and the money makes the rules. We need to bring back shame and ostracization. Start being a civil people instead of a creep admiring bunch of fanboys.
14
When I look into Roy Cohn's eyes I see Stephen Miller looking back at me.
12
That is the psychopath’s (sociopath) stare. It’s still partly their mask, but some of the truly malignant types are not as skilled (or don’t care enough) at arranging their faces into passable human form.
10
@Misplaced Modifier
Sadly, the sociopath stare and its shuttering of the interior can be very intriguing. Psychology courses in high school are electives while they should be required, including study of abnormal psychology. Turning kids out into society without knowledge of how they can be manipulated by bad people is doing kids a tremendous disservice and it’s poor educational policy.
1
Although the author frequently engages in unfair ad hominem attacks, today's statement equating Barr with Cohn is particularly unfair, baseless and mean spirited.
what is really unfair is to have a dept of justice that doesnt follow the rule of law but protects trump
where is justice?
15
Sorry to disagree. How we got Trump? The New York media(circus), that's how. Back in the 1980's the media made Trump what he is today: a showboat, blabber mouth egomaniac. Headlines on the weekly basis with Trump's name in the New York Post and Daily News. Trump had the best PR gimmick going. whoever he hired to promote him deserves a gold medal and kudos, "Job well done". Then NBC and his "Apprentice" show solidified his national reputation. All the more proof people will buy anything if packaged and presented in the way they like it most. As George Carlin famously once said: "Some people are really ------ stupid". Hew was wrong, most people are really stupid.
333
@lou andrews ANd as MArshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message,"
22
The head of NBC is best buddies with Trump, fyi
5
Easy. Because Republicans are evil.
6
@Iced Tea-party
All of them, every one?
Of course, all Democrats are saints.
You know, a lot of people who don't identify as either, voted for Trump.
In the picture with the article, Cohn looks just like Stephen Miller. I guess there is a "look" for evil....
12
Yes, most sociopaths wear a mask. But look closely and you will see what’s lurking beneath. Seeing the psychopath mask slip is truly frightening. If you’ve never seen a sociopath/psychopath when his mask is off, consider yourself lucky. It will haunt you until the end of time...
2
The reason we ended up with Donald Trump is because of the Electoral College. It is that simple. Most of the voters saw through the fraud that is Trump and voted against him -- by a lot. Had we a true democratic process, he would little more than a pathetic footnote to history.
And had Trump not taken office, Roy Cohn's memory would be little more than a disturbing blot on America's past. There will always be misanthropes like him, we have to guard against sickos like him.
325
@Billy Baynew . I think the article is saying "how we got trump" as in how we got a president with the characteristics of #45. The article isn't talking about the process but the character of the man.
34
@Alan
I agree Ms. Goldberg was referring to personal character development not the Constitution’s antiquated process of appointing a President via The Electoral College in lieu of by majority public votes casts nationwide. Could enough State delegates be possibly bought next election? The average going price last time for a Hillary super delegate was reported as $200,000! And that was paid to get just the DNC nomination not the Presidency. What a long-standing mockery and unlawful intrusion political parties and their minions have made on The USC.
14
@Billy Baynew Trump lost the popular vote by 3% - that's not a very large number, and he won the popular vote outside California. So it is important to understand why so many people voted for him. But this is part of a larger question - why did so many people vote for George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, who were, to many of us, so transparently shallow and incompetent?
15
Do I remember correctly in a black and white documentary film about the 1960's, Roy Cohn leaning forward to whisper advice into the ear of then New York Senator Bobby Kennedy during a hearing that Kennedy was helping to conduct? In other words, Cohn wasn't influential just among the right wing.
3
@Gregory
You're thinking of the Army-McCarthy hearings in the '50s where Bobby Kennedy got his start, much to his later regret when his politics turned progressive.
4
"If you are under 35 or 40, it’s probably hard to grasp just how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles, and, further, how tolerating it was itself taken as a sign of sophistication."
Ms. Goldberg, I am 75, lived in NYC at the time, and was not in the fancy circles you describe. I was involved in the anti-war movement and the women's movement. I'd say there were a lot more of us than the fancy people. We despised the likes of Roy Cohn and Andy Warhol. And we despise their descendants in high places today.
19
We got Trump (thankfully) because Democrats abandoned their centrist conservative roots and went dancing on the far Left, alienating the majority of Americans. It's even WORSE this time. Four more years of Trump is a good deal compared to the pandering Socialist clown show the DNC has going on now.
6
@Mark
I guess you've never heard of FDR who brought in all those "socialist" programs like Social Security and the WPA which rescued this country from the free market excesses that brought about the Great Depression. Not to mention LBJ from the state of Texas who gave us Medicare. But I guess you're one of the under-educated Trump "loves" so much as he takes away your health care and gives the money to himself and his rich friends. You'd do well to take some history courses.
3
We see an upsurge of morality and decency in the sexual sphere, but not much in the economic or financial spheres. It is still acceptable in investor circles for the price of insulin to skyrocket until many people are paying most or all their disposable income to stay alive and healthy, and some are sickening and dying. It is seen as an ugly but financially acceptable byproduct of free enterprise rather than as a free enterprise product and behavior that prove the need to have firm, enforced limits on free enterprise .
These limits must be constantly revised to close loopholes as soon as clever lawyers find them or clever lobbyists manage to introduce them; nobody knows how to do this within our present system. We could change our legal system so that a corporation that learns its products or services are harming customers or bystanders and does not not take action to warn them and mitigate the harm loses its charter and its investors their stake. It would be up to investors to figure out how to get accurate information on what their investments were up to and how they made their money. They would have to insist that finance stop being a poker game with little protection against rigged decks, and more like a game of chess where everyone sees the board and secret strategies must be pursued in the open.
5
The label "sybaritic con man" Ms. Goldberg pins on Cohn could just as truthfully be pinned on Trump. A sybarite lives for sensual (not intellectual or artistic , but bluntly bodily) pleasure and a con man is prepared to lie and yell wildly when confronted with the truth. How was such a man elected? How could the deceitful sybarite Roy Cohn (the closeted gay man who persecuted gays) move so effortlessly in the highest social circles? We encounter the mystery of success---not always merited. This is the philosophical quandary facing all religions: why do evil people often live the richest lives while the saintly are often mired in abject poverty? When will the fire and brimstone descend from heaven to inflict a just reckoning ? I hope the Powers That Be are not relying on our own politicians to destroy ourselves by ignoring climate change. If we lack the wisdom to put them out of office, then . . .??
10
I was “in the presence” of Roy Cohn once - in the early 1980s during a lunch at the famous 21 Club. Cohn was holding court at a round table in the center of the crowded upstairs dining room. A waiter brought him a white telephone (they plugged in actual telephones at your tables in swanky restaurants in those olden days). Holding the phone’s receiver to his ear, Cohn stood up and rotated constantly during his conversation, scoping out the room. He was a small wiry man with dark sunken shadowy eyes. I’ll never forget the intensity of his look when his gaze reached my table. I wasn’t alone and I suddenly felt very uncomfortable - almost ashamed - like I was looking into the eyes of a demon - creepy yet pornographic. It took quite a bit of strength to finally look away. Corey Lewandowski has that same sinister look.
14
“Creepy yet pornographic” may be the best description I’ve ever read of what it’s like to experience a psychopath’s stare.
1
Ah, Roy Cohn, a fascinating figure. I remember reading Citizen Cohn (essential reading to fully understand where Trump evolved from, even though he is not looked at in depth in the book). At the time it was published there were those that criticized it for its relevance, the man was dead and his influence going forward was going to be naught. HA! Also thinking how prescient Tony Kushner was in his Pulitzer Prize winning Angels in America. If there was any thought of this play dating badly with the changes on the medical horizons vis a vis HIV, Cohn as a central figure precludes that happening.
Wow, and by that I mean WOW!! Everything old really is new again.
6
The acceptance of behavior we no longer tolerate today helps to make it easier to understand how boys like the future Justice Kavanaugh viewed the world, and what they could get away with, back in the 80s.
11
Sadly NYC elitist society hasn't changed all that much. We still had the Clintons (and of course many others) going to Trump's wedding in the 2000s and George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Prince Andrews and others at Jeffrey Epstein's table. What they enjoy today and then is going to all the best events/parties. Doesn't matter to many who the host is.
8
Let me get this straight. Goldberg is arguing that the contemporary critique of political correctness and victim culture stems from a previous acceptance of bad behavior on the part of Cohn, Trump, Warhol, and Epstein, et. al.? This is among the most convoluted arguments I've seen in a long time though it is characteristic of the if-I-say-it-it-must-be-so theorizing typical of millennials looking to blame the baby boom generation their own inability to cope.
Cohn, Trump, Warhol and their hangers on were always horrible figures and no one of good conscience thought otherwise. Admiration of these men is not a pre-requisite to opposition to contemporary identitarianism which has many more obvious antecedents. The primary of these is a narcissism that privileges feelings over all else-- "I feel triggered"-- a narcissism I would add that is at the heart (if he has one) of Trump's psyche. In Trump's case that narcissism is joined to grandiosity; among today's culture warriors it has a strong social component, hence the emphasis on identity groups.
The generation that protested the Vietnam War, that fought for desegregation and racial justice, that created Earth Day, that lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment, were not down at Studio 54 in the 1980s hoping to catch a glimpse of Donald Trump. They certainly would have flushed an invitation to Roy Cohn's birthday party down the toilet.
Cohn, Trump, et. al. share one thing with identity politics. Both represent dead ends.
14
We have President Trump, because of the people.
We aren't mindless robots who can be programmed and manipulated. The people made a decision.
NY and CA may not like it, but a lot of us do. We look on these states with the same attitude that they have towards us and our President.
These two states do not represent the feelings of the nation. In fact, they are utterly out of touch.
Clinton won CA by about 4.3 million votes, and NY by 1.9million. Take these away and she lost by 3.4 million (i.e. Clinton lost in the 48 states besides CA and NY by 3.4 million votes).
I think this illustrates very well, their being out of touch with the rest of the nation.
The electoral college served those 48 states, very well. We don't want CA & NY determining our future, especially when their desires conflict with ours so fundamentally.
6
Hillary Clinton received more votes than Donald Trump in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The electoral college should not be given so much credit for serving democracy as you give it.
8
@Raz
@Raz
Donald Trump won because people watched him and the polls and thought there was no way the United States would ever elect a man like Trump. So, they stayed home and this is what the rest of us ended up with. If you think you're in the majority, you're the one out of touch.
10
Most of us in NY or CA grew up in the middle off the country and had to leave for jobs. I love North Dakota but am fortunate to call Southern California home. CA has led the way and will continue to do so.
12
Par for the course! Trump likes to think of himself as so unique, but even his repugnant inhumanity was ripped off from someone else.
11
The fact that Trump has the audacity to even mention wanting Roy Cohn is evidence of Trump's corruption and moral depravity.
How the Christian Right is able to embrace Trump and still pretend it is truly preaching Christ's gospel is simply mind boggling!
19
Steve Miller's father.
10
Is it me, or is there a physical resemblance between the young Cohen and Steven Miller?
11
I have noticed that too!
7
Watch The Good Fight Season 3.....
1
Roy Cohn and Stephen Miller both have dead eyes.
13
You ought to try to explain Cohn’s New York world and Trump’s place in it to the evangelicals who see him as some kind of a precursor to the Second Coming.
6
Speaking of decadence, recent and not necessarily in New York, remember Jeffrey Epstein and his circle of high-powered friends like Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump?
7
Trump has been mentored by and picks associates based on the “ dastardly “ criteria, cruel and evil. It is in this cesspool of individuals that he is most comfortable.
9
No, Michelle, Obama and Hillary is how we got Trump.
1
@Victor
I can understand you sticking up for a former family member.
Roy Cohn and Richard Nixon were Joe McCarthy's two top aides & advisors. Anybody who supported McCarthy and the Mafia can't be all bad to somebody like Trump.
6
Quite a good piece which shows that the Times should dig deeper in the Epstein affair. Epstein was also a protégé of Cohn’s.
11
Since our ancestors. We adore bachanalia in all its forms.
Powerful and rich get carte Blanche.
Always have and will in media and in reality tv
Reality is raw. We need diversion.
But we became apathetic and we got lazy as community activists.
A simple way to become involved.
Join a social group in town or the PTA.
Forget trump. Nothing will change. It will get worse. We don’t have to be informed any longer. Just tell us all how to stop payroll deductions for taxes.
2
An early death: the just reward for persons like Roy Cohen, Jeffrey Epstein and Lee Atwater.
7
Why did "elites" embrace Roy Cohn? For the same reasons "elites" embraced Jeffrey Epstein. I used to harbor provincial views about NYC, being from the same hometown as Cohn's old boss, Joe McCarthy. Then I moved to NYC and realized it is among the world's greatest cities--in spite of Roy Cohn and his so-called elite friends.
3
Ms. Goldberg talks about "how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles," in regard to Cohn. Today we have the same or worse depravity in how the Republican elite tolerates Trump.
12
This behavior still goes on among Establishment elites; it has adapted to the current milieu. Look at the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas. They all have a version of Roy Cohn watching their back. Thank you.
27
@Southern Boy
If you're going to make such a strong assertion, please provide us with evidence to support it. In other words, name the lawyers and/or power brokers behind the Clintons, the Bushes, the Obamas, who are nearly as sociopathic as Cohn and Trump?
Sure, they have "powerful" and "connected" people who "watch their back." But so do business execs, Wall Streeters, people who went to elite colleges, etc.
There's a huge difference between having (or having friends who have) plain power and influence versus people who use that power in illegal and immoral ways.
Who is the Roy Cohn behind the Obamas? There is none.
And even though I disagreed with the politics of the Bushes, and I detested the fact that GW Bush became rose to the presidence because of the elitist legacy of his family rather than any particular intelligence or skill of his own, I don't see him as being connected with an evil cabal of psychopaths like Cohn and Trump. And even after all of the conspiracy theories about the Clintons after all these years haven't unearthed a Cohn/Trump in their circle.
You're way overstepping an assumption that everyone who is "elite" is therefore morally bereft. I could do the same, and assert that all Southern Boys are de facto uneducated opiod addicts who enjoy hanging out with who lynch Black people and beat up LGBT people on the street.
Get the point?
92
@Southern Boy
Don't include the Obamas in that group. The Obamas represent a different generation and the future generation is where I find my hope for this country.
28
@Southern Boy EVERYBODY, regardless of wealth or status, has some version of Roy Cohn in their lives. The sleaze bags, like the poor, will always be with us.
2
Something that Democrats, liberals, and progressives just can't seem to get through their heads is the fact that a lot of working people, not just Republicans, vote for conservative candidates because:
1) They resent the fact that so many people have their hand out to the government, and it obliges them by giving them an easier financial existence than WORKING people...enough with the handouts, get to work!
2) They don't want to turn our country into another Latin American country (are there any of those that function anywhere near as well as we do?).
3) They want our government to control our borders, helping us to control our population. Overpopulation is at the core of so many of our problems, including poverty and climate change.
4) We need fair trade deals, even if it means paying a short-term cost. Is it fair to have a 65% tax on American wheat going to China, when they can import to the U.S. without any tax? How about a 28% import tax on American vehicles going to Germany, but only 1.4% on German vehicles coming to the U.S.? We have been subsidizing the world economy since WWII...time for that to end.
5) LGBTQN citizens already have the same rights as everyone else. Just be quiet and live your lives, like everyone else. It is possible to have logical reasons for opposing homosexuality, etc.
The Democrats address none of these issues.
5
It might be nice if those voters had just a smattering of concern for decency, lawfulness, Democracy.. donald trump is the greatest threat to democracy in 170 years, and if you don’t understand this, or worse, refuse to understand this, then Anything I could say ..wouldn’t help.
9
@Steve Snow
EXPLAIN to me why is the greatest threat to democracy...
I admit, I'm ignorant, but willing to learn.
Gosh! I wonder if Roy ever wrestled with an angel (and won!)
2
Lke Cohn, people fear Trump. These type draw power from fear. And when an entire branch of government lacks moral courage;individual 1 can and has put US and the world in a very bad place.
6
Roy Cohn May have helped manufacture Trump but he was working with a splendid natural resource. Trump was born a sociopath with a fortune to spend on his evils. If not Roy Cohn someone else would have molded the Donald. All of the raw materials were there. The question is what do we do about it?
8
The elites embrace anyone who gets done what they want done.
Unencumbered by morals or ethics, Roy Cohen got things done.
Your father is dying in a hospital bed, oblivious to the world.... Cohen put a pen in his hand and .....'allegedly'......got a new will signed.
He may have benefited by being appointed trustee but the child inheriting benefited far more....'allegedly.'
For such people it's all about getting things done - not how it's done.
Those who've acquired power and wealth rarely do so without crossing a few lines. Cohen was willing to obliterate limits - legal, ethical or moral.
5
"...Cohn’s contempt for people, his contempt for the law, was so evident on his face that if you were in his presence, you knew you were in the presence of evil." Yes--that face, those dead eyes. Saw the photo of a younger Roy Cohn, realized: He and Steven Miller could be brothers. Every time I see a photo of Miller, I have that same feeling. Cold. Calculating. Nothing warm or caring can live on that face.
Excellent article.
10
Of course the richie rich embrace their despicable fellows, because none of what they sow upon the people applies to them, liberal and conservative alike. ("Let them eat cake!") That is why liberal Wall Street embraces the anti-abortion religious right, because the rich can always be gay without consequence and have abortions as much as they like, no matter what the laws says or what the average person has to deal with. Their wealth is their overriding concern, and they have the conservatives and the Dirty Party to protect and ensure their status.
4
Bill Barr is the new Roy Cohen. Unfortunately he is also AG of the US.
7
Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein were also fascinating people. The reason why Roman Polanski got away with raping someone and continued producing movies and winning awards as if nothing happened was his charm. There are probably new conmen scheming their way to riches and wowing the art crowd with pseudo-intellectualism as we speak. I don't think we have seen the last of the Roy Cohn archetype.
2
I always thought that Bela Lugosi was the consummate one to play the character of Count Dracula, but the photo at the head of this article proves me wrong...
2
Maybe they'll share the same fate?
2
Under other circumsstances, on a different life trajectory, this man would have been a serial killer. Without a doubt.
7
The staid old money,the Mayflower mavens, the brandy sniffing, smoking jacket barons looked down their through their monacles with disgust and horror at these nouveau riche. The boy from queens, the wannabe who bought class and status,whose overt debauchery were taboo; did these people not realize that certain predilections were best left behind closed doors?
3
Loved your article, Michelle.
As the decadence lives on among the glamorous and edgy all I see is the malevolence as espoused by the perpetrators and the "wanna be"s.
I'm not as concerned as to how Trump got that way, I just want to know how to boot him out of office. His influence is detrimental to humans--and other forms of life.
6
There was and still is old money New York and then upstart new money New York. Old money operated on a set of firmly established rules of conduct and decorum. New money could never crack the social barrier, so they set out to create their own rules. That’s where you found the Warhol’s and Trump’s. Same deal in Palm Beach. Trump never was accepted in old money Palm Beach society either. Many of them were the same people who shut him out in Hew York. So, if he couldn’t be like them, he would establish his own rules and give them fits. Money will buy almost anything except health and class...
5
Its like Trump and Cohn and moral depravity and power are thrown into a blender and the current presidency came out. Most of these people seem to be entirely amoral but the amount of time they spend on depravity pales in comparison to the amount of time they spend of amoral power and money grabbing.
4
Where's the 2019 version of Joseph Welch? That's what we need.
140
@W
Certainly not to be found among Republicans!
16
@W If he was in the federal court system, he's been fired by now.
14
@W
If McCarthy, Welch, and Edward R. Murrow were alive today, McCarthy would destroy Welch and Murrow, and Fox News would sneer and smirk.
8
I lived in New York in the early 1960s, and would like to take some exception to Goldberg's characterization of that era. This was the time when the resurgent Left was establishing itself through the "hippies." We were more tolerant, more open-minded, more interested in other countries. We traveled to other countries, got educated, integrated our communities racially, and were the foundation of the more conscientious society we have now,
4
“Sometimes I feel this nostalgia myself; if you came of age in a culture that celebrated transgression, norms that demand sensitivity can feel restrictive.”. I don’t know if Ms, Goldberg reads these comments, but I find this one fascinating. Do those who are younger (I am not sure if she fits Gen X, Y Z ) somehow misunderstand the upheaval that began in the 60’s into the 70’s? The Generation Gap where, indeed, transgression was definitely ‘in the face’ of the WWII generation? Free love, women choosing lives beyond wife/mother/nurse/teacher/secretary, weed and psychedelics, Black Power, Viet Nam protests, civil and gay rights. None of these are seen as transgression? I find her perspective there curious indeed. Roy Cohn, and his protege, Trump are not merely transgressive — they are brutal and not immoral, but amoral. When cruelty is the point, that is not a transgression, it is an assault on humanity and decency.
8
@Cathypsyche
Well said!
But let us not forget that Trump did not completely forget his old mentor. He sent him a gift of jewel-encrusted cufflinks and matching buttons, in a velvet jewel case, when Cohn was too sick to wear them or to notice that they were actually cheap fakes.
8
Americans have always tended to mythologize and romanticize their outlaws, from Billy the Kid and Jesse James, to the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age, to Bonnie and Clyde and Al Capone, to John Gotti and today the tech billionaires quietly robbing us all silly while gaining much adulation. Now we have elected one of those outlaws president and we are seeing just how really depraved and even evil these characters tend to be. Donald Trump was fun when he was America's buffoon that late night talk show hosts could wheel out to get a good laugh or two. But it's not so much fun anymore watching this buffoon take our society apart at the seams....
11
Great article. Thank You.
3
Don’t leave out the name McConnell.
8
Elites didn't embrace him. The Manhattan elites, whose acceptance he craved, always thought of him as a vulgar nobody from the outer boroughs and he has never gotten over it.
9
The elites, the Roy Cohen aficionados, have been resurrected as the white heart land "deplorables" and still infest the sewers of NYC. This from the New York Post, a wholly owned subsidiary of the fake news empire. "Roy Cohen was way more entertaining than the new Documentary about Roy Cohen."
The fact that about 40 % of Americans adore the Roy Cohen epigone who occupies the not so White House suggests that Roy's ghost still hovers over the land.
3
In hind sight it is perhaps easy to castigate the liberal artists/elites who socialized with the Cohn’s of the world and relegate them to the simple decadence of their time.
Today we live live in a society utterly intolerant of opposing political views to the point that there is little if any intermingling.
Likewise, we live in a period of hyper intolerance combined with a puritanical zeal akin to the Salem Witch trials or McCarthyism exemplified by the mere accusation (by even the most questionable of sources) of sexual impropriety combined with over zealous press sensationalism will destroy people- with virtually no chance of recovery.
Bottom line: it is difficult for me to see this period of intolerance/Puritanism that we now live as “progress” or less destructive than the 80’s. As odious as Cohn was, it is better to tolerate miscreants than shun and demonize those with whom you disagree
1
Most disappointing of all is the subtext of Ivanka and Jared being invited to, attending and welcomed by jet setting liberals at a society wedding...even as they and their father/father-in-law try and use and abuse this country. It is often times hard not to be disgusted with the human race.
321
@Murphy4
I'm pretty much disgusted all the time and distrusting of anyone who isn't. Even today there are people who should know better but don't. Actually, people make me sick.
9
@Murphy4
She just said "celebrity weddings", not "jet setting liberals".
7
@Murphy4 There is nothing in Ms. Golberg's column that suggested Jared and Ivanka were welcomed by jet setting liberals to any party, only that they apparently got invited to one or more celebrity weddings. Somehow I don't think the liberal jet-set would risk inviting those two to their parties anymore than they'd risk clowning around in blackface.
13
To paraphrase Maynard Keynes:
In the long run, the market will be rational.
But the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
We'll see how much damage is done to our country before Republicans begin to put country before party.
3
Trump can only do what he does because of Paul Ryan (before he quit), Mitch McConnell, John Roberts, Republican senators, and Republican House members.
None are speaking up.
13
IMO followers of trump are most definitely not the elite. The people attending his "rallies" are everyday people who feel they have been mistreated by government for decades. They're usually middle class or below. Remember trump said he loved the uneducated? Having said that, they have a voice in trump for their racism, for wishing that women would continue to be barefoot and pregnant and a leader who claims he is anti choice. One question I would love to ask trump is how many abortions he paid for back in the day. As a former NYer, he isn't fooling me. He's always been a cheat, a liar and is now a disgrace to our country as a president. There is no redeeming value in him or his grifter family. His followers follow him because they think he cares about them. Nothing could be further from the truth. trump has always existed for trump...ONLY.
12
I really enjoyed Michelle’s Op Ed as she quite astutely narrated the relationship between Cohn and Trump.
I can somewhat relate to this era because as a naive youngster, I was first exposed to NYC under Ed Koch’s mayoralty when Trump was involved in his first major project: the Grand Hyatt Hotel in midtown and Cohn was his lawyer (may be the appropriate characterization would be: CONSIGLIERE).
I think Cohn always vicariously sought attention and power through commanding people like McCarthy or Trump. He wanted to be the “King Maker” to bolster his fragile ego and also to cover up his insecurities. This was his “Schtick”.
As an ambitious and flamboyant businessman, Trump needed Cohn’s unscrupulous skills to maneuver through the maze of NYC’s bureaucracy and politics. They complemented each other and then, Trump dropped Cohn as soon as Cohn’s usefulness dissipated. Typical Trump.
In some ways, people like Cohn and Trump also exemplify the “primal instincts” as well as the “Id” of human beings. That’s why people love the voyeuristic pleasure of delving into Cohn’s sordid life through this movie.
Finally, notoriety is also a crowd pleaser because subliminally we all want to be somewhat notorious (in varying degrees) and of course, also want to get away with it by being famous. In some ways, that’s why Trump is our President notwithstanding his notoriety because all of us (including possibly the progressives and religious moralists) have our “Inner Trumps and Cohns”.
3
It is true that Trump was Cohn's student in evil. He taught Trump to attack viciously when ever challenged But the reality is that we got Trump because of systematic nationwide voter suppression by the GOP, Russian intervention in the 2016 election, and Democratic voter apathy (a pathetic turnout). Trump still lost the election by 3 million votes..a loss by any fair measure despite the outdated and flawed Electoral College. He is not our president, he is a sign of our crumbling democracy..
10
Roy Cohn is not the sole reason we wound up with Trump as president. We got here because the GOP told people what they wanted to hear. I know of several very intelligent people who love Trump, give him a pass on every despicable thing he's said and done because he's said what they think or feel. It doesn't seem to matter that Trump has no morals, lies every time he opens his mouth, has made and implemented decisions that will hurt us for decades. All that counts to these people is that Trump said what they wanted to hear.
Americans worship wealth. We denigrate intelligence. We invest wealthy people with a degree of wisdom and intelligence that is not there. We refuse to recognize that most of us will not be wealthy and that being wealthy involves a lot of luck. We refuse as well to recognize what other European countries have: that allowing wealth to be too concentrated in too few hands is dangerous to society. Our government, though funded by us, is not working for us when it gives out tax breaks that lead to cuts in social programs. It's not working for us when lobbyists get the last word.
Roy Cohn might have taught Trump how to play dirty but we elected him. The news outlets gave him coverage but not enough criticism while they criticized Clinton for her clothes, sounding shrill, and being female. We need to stop being impressed by wealth and start being impressed by intelligence, hard work, and honesty.
9/20/2019 12:56 pm first submit
10
@hen3ry
Thank you for an accurate and concise summary!!
You left out Epstein. That would have made a good article powerful.
3
Cohn was only ostracized when sick and weakened by AIDS, not for his reptilian thug intimidations. He succeeded in bullying doctors and others to pretend he wasn't homosexual.
Does this mean progressive NYC was hypocritical or does it suggest the left tends to hide behind rationalism, amused incredulity- and is, essential, chicken?
Perhaps taking a courageous moral stand where there is the threat of real pushback is harder than living room pontification and 'preaching to the choir.' Calling out Trudeau seems petty - #metoo bold but - at times- without context.
If the modern public standard is to be successful in upholding decency, anti-fascism and democratic principles of personal freedom (including separation of Church and State)-it must call out the new Cohns (i.e. Lewandowsky) but avoid losing credibility by taking offense too promiscuously.
2
For all that he relied on Cohn, Trump totally abandoned him as he neared death from AIDS.
Swell friend, as in, “Where’s my Trump when I need him ??!!??”
5
Roy Cohn has been cloned and is now appearing in the Trump administration as Stephen Miller.
6
“So we beat on, boats against the current, born back ceaselessly into the past.” -Fitzgerald
Just like Gatsby and Epstein and Trump, money and power are damn seductive. Morals and ethics not so much, see Robert Mueller.
2
Trump is President because Hillary ran a horrible campaign and over 80 million people voted for him. You can think it over and over again but it was really very simple.
@Julia
However 'horrible' you think her campaign was, Hillary still had 3 million more votes and in a democracy that would have made her the winner. We do not live in a democracy. I don't think we ever have.
6
She had three million more votes because California was not worth seriously campaigning in because of the way the rules work. If the rules were different the strategies would be completely different and the voting result would be completely different though how we don’t know. In fact the candidates might have been completely different. Maybe neither Hillary nor Trump would have even been on the ballot.
1
Thanks, again, Michelle, so true. I gives me some hope for trump’s final demise, which can’t come soon enough. You’re fabulous on any show you appear on. Rock on.
5
Technically we got Trump because of the abysmal failure of the Clinton campaign and her Pied Piper Strategy (see WikiLeak emails) of them elevating Trump to be her opponent in the general election. That, and her somehow missing Wisconsin completely. Do ya think that had anything to do with why we are cursed with this disaster in the White House?
2
A good reminder of why "The 1%" has some meaning, even if nobody below the 0.01% has all that much say on the rules of society.
Paul Krugman and David Brooks have both pointed out (there's a surprise joint-opinion for you) that the income distribution curve is steepest at the top, that the 1% actually feel the harshest income inequality, relatively.
People who make $50,000 per year have friends who make $40,000 and $60,000; but people who make $500,000 per year have friends who make $200,000 and $10 million...and see that the $10M people are not any smarter than they.
So they most-keenly perceive that they could be making a multiple of their income if they can just get on the right gravy train. Quite the contrast to the middle-income person who thinks they might get a 10% raise if they make a few ethical compromises.
Being nice to the likes of Cohn is how you get connected to that gravy train, and with such a brass ring dangled, moral compromise is difficult to resist.
The 1% aren't bad folks; they're just guys with backaches that happen to work in an opioid factory.
4
Everyone gather round, there's actually something that makes sense in a comments section.
What a spew of hypocrisy.
The issue of the day is climate change. Can the intellectual elite run a con job increasing our gasoline prices from $3 per gallon and our electricity prices from $0.12 per kwh to Europe's $7 per gallon and $0.20 per kwh? All while pocketing the exra $800 billion per year of loot.
Don't lecture us on ethics, please.
In 2018, Trump increased disposable personal income by $597 billion, an all-time record by far. As a result, a record 50 million plus super clean cars were sold and a record 30 million polluting cars went to the shredder. Also, as a result air pollution levels fell to their lowest levels ever recorded.
Trump is advancing the common good just fine.
2
@John Huppenthal
Insanity shear insanity. Ethics and values are the only thing that can save America from the disaster of a peasant driven society into the middle class society the founders envisioned. Jefferson was a scientist and philosopher who saw evolution at work. The first words of the Declaration of Independence are we hold these (scientific) truths to be self evident. America has rejected truth in favour of dogma.
In these days of polarization no one remembers the 1917 Creel Committee and the Committee on Public Information which most clearly defines America imminent destruction.
4
Lawyers are supposed to help their clients and not let their political or moral philosophy get in the way. If Michelle Goldberg doesn't appreciate and respect that, she should stop writing about the law and the courts. Mr. Cohen was a great attorney and Mr. Trump is a great President.
Peccadilloes aside, neither man was intrinsically evil.
1
Cohn did not lead to Trump. At the time he was running for POTUS, Donald Trump did an excellent job of appropriating Bernie Sanders' talking points, which were very appealing to many voters compared to Hillary Clinton's neoliberal chatter. But the Democratic National Committee, and The New York Times for that matter, were determined that Clinton should receive the nomination. And that is how we got President Trump.
1
It all really boils down to money and power. No matter how you look at it.
We have structured our society, our culture, and our economy fully around money – profit trumps all, because it gives one wealth and power.
This has led us to such an imbalanced society, and such corruption in the quest to attain positions of power in politics, that it is a minority who are not stained somehow. People give their soul away little by little and then one day it is too far gone.
Bill Clinton rode on Epsteins jet multiple times, and socialized with him. Not singling Clinton out, as many politicians did so because of the money. The tentacles of corruptive wealth reach everywhere in our society now.
Sworn officers of the court seem to have cut some incredibly lenient deals with Epstein, and rather than suffering, they have ascended the ladders of power.
The decline of our discourse and governmental ethics, brought on by the Cohn protege, Trump, who has truly surpassed his teacher, makes me sick at heart for our nation, and left truly wondering if we can pull out this dive in darkness.
5
Roy Cohn and Stephen Miller. Same dead eyes. Overlay the images and the resemblance is alarming, right down to the cold black hole where a soul should be.
7
... “how warped the city’s values used to be.” Used to be? What about those skinny high rise Manhattan condos whose apartments go for millions of dollars, one for $258 million?
On the other hand, elite and intellectuals joined with rest of America in highly praising Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" in 1991.
1
Great article with great insights.
2
A man so full of self hatred. Just like his former friend, Donald Trump. Money ain't everything. Maybe we're starting to realize that? Maybe? I'm not holding my breath.
3
I often wonder how Donald Trump got to be so misshapen. Clearly "Where's my Roy Cohn?" offers some answers. But I tend to think that more than just a one-way thing, i.e. Cohn corrupting Trump, there has to be some predisposition - by nature AND nurture - to being corrupted as well, i.e. to being mentored by, even attracted to, someone like Cohn.
I tend to think, moreover, that once examined psychologically, we'd find a tragedy - not so much of the Hamlet or Othello variety, where a beloved hero is brought down violently, but more of a Richard III or Iago, who is arguably villainous from the get-go. Had the deformed Richard III found a more accepting circle, and had Othello found it in him to promote the loyal Iago, then perhaps there wouldn't have been a tragedy.
Seen in this latter scenario, Trump may have had just a bit more efficacy and empathy and run a better presidency. Even more personally than that, I think, he may have been a better human being. Sadly, reality tells us otherwise, and his misshaping is a tragedy in the making.
2
I understand how GOP voters think.There are over 300M Americas, most of those can't deal with complexity of a middle class society where there is not enough middle class to man not only public service but the political, judicial and executive branches that used to be what the dictionary defines as middle class. We are a nation of peasants pretending that education and financial success can instill a middle class ethos on those we look to for leadership.
Our media compliments men like Roy Cohn by giving him or ascribing to them an aura of the usufructs of leadership. We do not understand the math, science and philosophy that always took the welfare of society above their selfishness and greed and avarice and lust for power. We mistakenly look at history and talk about Attila the Hun as a crazy peasant when in fact he may not have been a Roman but he was assuredly middle class and looked at the Romans as the barbarians.
I remember Michael Ignatieff who was elected leader of Canada's liberal party and as head of the University of Central Europe lead the protests in Hungary against the return of fascism.
Media decided Mr Ignatieff an intellectual giant was too unkempt, too nuanced and too complex to lead our peasant society into the 21st century.
It is a fake media. The keep it simple imperative allows the barbaric impulses of the Roy Cohns to succeed. The world is not B+W we need leaders who can deal with complexity and that requires middle class discussion not ideologues.
2
@Montreal Moe
More::
History teaches us it took the ascendancy of the poet philosopher Solon to rescue Athens from complete destruction by its elite financial and political elites and usher in Athen's Golden Age. America has more than its share of the world's greatest minds yet it prefers barbarians to the complexity of those who understand the nuances of the new world order.
3
Where was "The Peoples' Reeducation Camp" when we really needed it? The attitudes and behavior described were all learned, reinforced and legitimized. Identify the problems early on, nip em' in the bud and after a few decades of reeducation and careful monitoring, these individuals would have perhaps been ready to reenter society where they could have made positive and meaningful contribution.
Trump has no one else to blame but himself. He is who he is today because of his choices. We can all point fingers at someone who misled us, but the choice always boils down to yourself--good or evil.
1
WE are how we got Trump. WE are how we get of Trump.
1
Wealth, influence and stardom draw some people to them like moths to a bright light. The exoskeleton such status provides people often gives the contemptible among us a bridge into acceptability. Sometimes such a person will reform and grow into a better individual. That was not the case for Roy Cohn and that goes double for his admirer in the White House.
1
These people - the Cohns, Trumps and Epsteins of the world - really are the white collar equivalent of career criminals.
Certainly Cohn did things worthy of disbarment long before the late '80s. And Trumps dozens of breaches of contract, bankruptcies, state gaming violations, tax evasion, etc. over the decades certainly should've landed him in jail at some point, like his cohort Leona Helmsley.
Some social disrupters ultimate goal is to lift us all up. For disrupters like Cohn and Trump, personal triumph and the ability to laugh at the rest of us 'suckers' is the only aim.
7
Having grown up in NY, I was well aware of the thuggish behavior of Trump and his friends. So, I am still in utter disbelief how a party and then a country nominated and then elected this hustler into the White House.
10
That picture of Roy Cohn looks just Stephen Miller. They both share that same malevolent contemptuousness that just screams “I don’t really care, do u?”
21
The GOP is El Trumpo's Roy Cohn.
9
I agree and disagree with you. Trump is Cohn now. The supposedly religious right accept him and bend over pretzel-wise to find pseudo-biblical rationales for why it's ok for Trump to be evil, and why god is using such a tasteless, amoral thief, conman and liar. Hint: He's Not.
Every generation thinks they are infallibly correct and better than the last. The current internet-driven "morality?" is no better than anything that's come before it. People haven't changed that much. Just new reasons to feel superior to everything that came before.
What I'm saying is, human nature hasn't changed. People love to be shocked and twitter about the shockers. Hasn't ever been different. What is different is such a despicable person as Trump can be president, and 30-some percent of America supports that evil.
12
So was Roy the equivalent to Boris’ Dominic Cummings? Egad
1
We have President Trump, because of the people.
We aren't mindless robots who can be programmed and manipulated. The people made a decision.
NY and CA may not like it, but a lot of us do. We look on these states with the same attitude that they have towards us and our President.
These two states do not represent the feelings of the nation. In fact, they are utterly out of touch.
3
Please remember that Trump did not win the popular vote; the people, in fact, did not choose him, not in the literal sense.
8
Hello Montana! You only have Trump because of the Electoral
College, 2.3 million voters were
disenfranchised.
5
@LeslieM
Clinton won CA by about 4.3 million votes, and NY by 1.9million. Take these away and she lost by 3.4 million.
That's what I mean by them being out of touch with the rest of the nation.
1
This speaks to the deep decadence of celebrity culture.
They worship those that have what they want rather than those that contribute real value. Hard working teachers, parents, and social servants are ignored while con artists are celebrated. It is the antithesis of liberalism, in every sense. It is the antithesis of a sustainable social order.
Celebrity culture raises parasitism to a virtue. It feeds on our desire to be recognized; to avoid the searing pain of anonymity.
9
It is not the Trumps, or Cohns, or Epsteins, or Lewandowskis that scare me. It is my fellow citizens who celebrate them. It is the millions upon millions who choose willful ignorance over something bigger than themselves. This is what scares me to my core. We live in a country that made one of these men president.
1066
@Liberty
I look at those faces behind him at his rallies and think one day they will feel a sense of shame. And that shame will pass down for generations. History has a way of doing that.
51
@Liberty It’s difficult to judge whether somebody is willfully ignorant or truly deluded.
Willful ignorance means that individuals either recognize at some level of consciousness that their beliefs are false, or that they refuse to attend to the information that establishes their falsity. Usually they do this because it is useful in some way. Sometimes be pulled out of their willful ignorance with a measure of analysis, or with contradictory data.
In contrast to willful ignorance, self-deception is when people believe false things with absolute conviction. Because it occurs at the perceptual level, no amount of facts and evidence will convince them otherwise. Sometimes people are simply severely challenged in their capacity for rational analysis.
Willful ignorance is a cognitive strategy that people adopt to promote their emotional well-being, whereas self-deception is less controllable and more likely to be detrimental. Because the self-deceived person fully believes things that are patently untrue, they have fewer resources for correcting course when their erroneous beliefs lead them astray.
This is not a tidy area of psychology, but generally it’s more useful to pay attention to the motives that seem to drive people’s actions than it is to their own awareness of those motives, because they resist all reason, facts, logic, and evidence that counters their beliefs. This is where we are now, and I agree that it is ominous to the core.
59
@Liberty . That is what the article alludes to.... the elite likes to cozy up to people like #45 for the same reasons the fellow citizens you mention cozy up. They revel in someone able to break the rules and social norms that make a society that they in fact wish they themselves could break.
28
It's easy to personalize Trump and see his mentors like a Roy Cohn as the problem.
But Trump represents both a segment of disillusioned Americans and also a segment of the ruling elite who have their own agenda about maintaining power.
For all his boorish behavior and theatrics Trump's ideological approach to government has been completely embraced by the GOP.
Trump's core approach has been to rapidly deregulate all the health and safety rules accumulated over the last thirty years. Corporations have ben salivating for this moment.
His corporate tax cut is simply an extension of Reaganomics. Reagan sought to diminish the administrative reach of government by reducing its size. Trump has accomplished this gaol by cutting tax revenues and diminishing the revenue available to fund government.
And in keeping with that approach, defense spending is exempt. He has also pushed through the final stages of the project to turn the judiciary over to right wing judges to insulate these policies.
All this has set the stage for the next GOP attack on Medicare and Social Security, which is coming.
This is all unfolding as part of a wider ideological design and if we keep focusing on personalities we will miss it.
While it is true that evil people can do evil things, it's also true that there are systems designed to oppress and control and others designed to respond to the needs of the masses of people.
It is crucial to vote Trump out. But more important to reverse the GOP polices.
546
@Drspock This should be an NYT Pick, in my opinion.
32
@Drspock
The whole point of Trump is to personlize him. Thus you cannot spend any time on the things you should be.
14
@Drspock Trump does not truly represent anybody but himself. Others are just taking advantage of the chaos or latch on as a way of parking rage.
21
What in God's name is so elite about corruption?
1
What? Conflate groups of privileged people under the banner of “elite” and further the myths of the 70’s and 80’s. There were, and are many wealthy elites that shunned Trump, Cohn and Warhol then as they despise Trump now. Let’s talk about the wealthy people that do not want fame and do not want to flaunt their wealth. This is the group that has continually mocked Trump since he appeared on the front pages of the NY Post. Trump is so angry about not being loved and respected by these wealthy New Yorkers that he will do anything to settle the score now. These are the wealthy intellectuals in NY that have always known he is pathetic sham and they make up the majority of “elite” people.
The other elites are the part of the art and financial world where everything was and still is transactional. To these people “Art” is about the monetary value of the piece and being able to say you own a Warhol and know and call him a friend. It is not about your private, personal emotional connection with the work of art. Sex, money, and attainment of power have motivated grifters, politicians, Wall Street coke snorting “masters of the universe”, basically pathological narcissists of all types to always be part of the “scene”. The media lives promoting the idea at the time that if you are not part of the depraved party at Studio 54 you have not made it. FOMO gets people to read on, but make no mistake most people rich and poor were sleeping at 2 in the morning then, as they are now.
6
Ms Goldberg's "moral indignation" and accusations of "evil" remind me of the Moral Majority, just with a leftist bent. This new McCarthyism is getting out of hand. Trudeau is getting a Scarlet R unless he confessed his sins and repudiates satan. College campuses are unbearable with this PC prudery.
2
@mainliner
Happy with the status quo, are you? Unhappy that others don’t keep to their station in the world, as you prefer? Outraged enough to submit the standard Conservative jargon, “leftist,” “scarlet r,” “new McCarthyism?”
Cheering that Republican gerrymandering and voter suppression succeed in keeping the ruling class in power?
Maybe you’ll succeed in 2020. Maybe you won’t. All that Trump has done can as legitimately be undone, and if the little people win, it will be.
Your stereotyping of colleges is showing.
Yet, many so-called religious types accept Trump because of his autocratic religiosity. Trump, like Cohn, has no ethical compass.
3
For 3.5 years I’ve been saying to all who would listen, “All you need to know about Trump is that he learned how to operate from Roy Cohn.”
6
I’ve always said that the only thing anybody needs to know about Donald Trump is that his tactics and his world view were shaped by the likes of the despicable Roy Cohn. As far as I’m concerned, that alone disqualifies him for pretty much everything.
5
This column proves Trump supported gay men before it was socially acceptable. The majority of people in the USA in the age of Roy Cohn were afraid to hire a gay lawyer, not Trump.
3
@P & L
Our thief in chief would hire the devil if he could make a buck. Yuck.
3
That’s one interpretation. Another is that it shows just how transactional Trump is. He might well dislike homosexuals, but be willing to set that aside to make a buck.
1
It seems that Donald Trump has found his new Roy Cohn in Stephen Miller.
4
Why did the "elites" embrace Roy Cohn? Because the Roy Cohn's of this world have their uses, that's why. Did you really have to ask?
4
"Unable to practice law, his power evanesced." - really? He was disbarred on June 24, 1986 and he died on August 2, 1986. Not even 3 months of evanescence. And the article reporting the disbarment reports that "For much of the last two years, Mr. Cohn has been hospitalized with what he has described as liver cancer. " This seems like a sloppy re-telling of the story. Cohn got sick, he faced disbarment, and lost his hold on his friends - as morally awful as he was - because he no longer was able to perform, well before he was actually disbarred.
3
For heaven's sake, is there nothing in between a world that welcomes Roy Cohn and a world that condemns Al Franken? Give me a break!
3
People speak about Roy Cohn as a thing of the past. Trump already has his Roy Cohn and his name is Stephen Miller.
Trump is all ears when it comes to Miller's draconian beliefs in building a wall around our country, taking children from their parents at our borders and putting them in cages, and conducting an all out war on anyone who wants to come to this country who is not white and Christian.
Roy Cohn is not dead. He lives on every day in Stephen Miller. It was Miller who helped write Trump's dreadful speech at his inauguration slamming diversity and what America is supposed to stand for.
It is Miller who advises Trump on removing the accountability standards and guidelines Barack Obama's justice department set up with local police forces for their treatment of minorities.
It is Miller who is bringing out all the poison, all the vulgarity, all the meanness, and all the encouragement to destroy the diversity that has helped make America a wonderful mosaic of hundreds of different ethnicities and cultures.
Roy Cohn is not dead. He lives on in the White House and until Trump and his new Roy Cohn are removed from the Oval Office the vision of an America that builds bridges, that welcomes immigrants, that stands strong against persecution, bigotry, and oppression will be gone with the wind.
7
“From McCarthyism to the mob to Trump, Cohn enabled evil. Why did elites embrace him?”
Why? Because elites have always needed those on the underside of society to do their dirty work for them. And Roy Cohn was about as underside of society as one can get.
3
Ms Goldberg says Cohn, one of the most despicable characters of our history, shows how toxic New York used to be. Used to be ???!! Ivanka and Jared, Donald and Rudy, Epstein and Scaramuchi. Shall we go on?
5
@Neal
Yes, go on. DeBlasio, Sharpton, Cuomo.
Obama is how we got Trump
2
The Republican Party is how we got Roy Cohn and Donald Trump, both. With Rudy Giuliani, to boot.
3
Maybe the real message about Donald isn't his emulation of Cohn. It's in the last paragraph. After Cohn's fall from grace, Trump cut him off.
4
Roy Cohn has been the Trump family's guru for over sixty years. Lie, deny, attack. How and why Eisenhower let him get away with what he did is still a serious question today
2
How you can make such assertions when you yourself state you moved to New York City “almost 20 years ago” which if math serves means 1999. That’s 13 years after Cohn’s death and 15 years after the heyday you claim to know about. I was there. I worked at Studio 54 in the early 1980’s when it re-opened. ‘Warped values’? I’ll take that New York City any day over what it’s become today, and that goes for the rest of the world. If you want to talk about warped values look at New York today- $17 to cross the river, hate crimes up 66%, cost of living through the roof, rapes and sexual assaults skyrocketing, ungodly 3rd world blights, bedbugs, rodent explosion…
For all its debauchery, New York in the 1980’s overflowed with humanity- an almost non-existent resource today. And there was no alternate electronic virtual world to reinvent yourself (lie)- you were whatever you made of yourself.
I have a question for editors: what does it mean to dress up as a "male nurse" as opposed to just a nurse? When Cohn's did it, was it also some parody costume? Asking as one from that "xennial" generation prone to calling out sexism when I see it, but also sufficiently aware of casual "isms" of decades past...
3
According to the Oxford English dictionary a definition of elite:
"a group of people in a society, etc. who are powerful and have a lot of influence, because they are rich, intelligent, etc."
Nowhere does the expression "good people" appear. Many people equate elite with good. I always did. Ivy league schools are elite, ergo good. In sports elite players are the most accomplished, in short the best. In British medicine a Dr, doctor is one thing, a Mr, mister quite another, the most skilled. Becoming elite was something many sought.
While the likes of Cohn and those who catered to him may have shone a new light on our understanding of elite, Trump has taken the discourse to a new level. People used to strive for elitism, perhaps now not so much anymore. Yet money seems to be the deciding factor. The mass murder who killed the largest number of people would never be considered elite yet one billionaire shooting one person on 5th Avenue could be considered elite. Go figure.
What has become of the world in which we live? So sad!
@OldNCMan
When I was a child no one made the mistake of assuming elite meant good. We all knew to pay attention to context.
2
And throw in Newt and Mitch!
4
Very interesting article. She nailed that fascination with bad boys breaking the rules while being witty.
I have a little side note. Lou Reed was part of the Warhol scene when he first came into the public eye. He's always spoken in very positive ways about Warhol.
But when Warhol's diaries were published we learned that Warhol had come to hate Reed. I suspected it was envy, although it wasn't clear why Warhol would feel that about Reed.
Well, in 1989 Lou released the album New York, which showed a strong social conscience. Is that what turned Warhol off? He wanted to keep on with the pure glamour with no social thought.
2
Fascinating! Thank you, Ms. Goldberg, for this erudite commentary on Trump's unprincipled mentor, Roy Cohn (a man about whom I knew nothing) and how NYC's elites had, unwittingly perhaps, enabled both louts.
Extra credit: You sent me to the dictionary four (4) times! Demimonde? (Hedonistic, flagrant, conspicuous.) Yum. Delightful use of the English vocabulary.
Remember...(sigh)...intellect? Remember when we had a fiercely brilliant U.S. president? Someone who believed in science, reason, restraint, and sanity?
After President Obama's incumbency, it's so maddening to watch the "dumbing down" of our national discourse...
Your column today felt like a much-needed antidote. Keep up the good work!
6
It was, and is, about money. Trump gets it, which is why he can tell people that even if they hate him, they'll have to vote for him to protect their 401k plans.
4
I'm sorry but I won't comment on the content, it speaks for itself. Michelle Goldberg is such a wonderful writer and I have such a crush on her in every way. when I see her on MSNBC or read her writing she's so bright and such a lucent voice in this world thanks Ms Goldberg.
9
Towards the end of the 20th C, there was a large ad on the sides of numerous NYC buses, for Smith-Barney. The ad read: The rich aren't so filthy when you're one of them.
No one seemed to think there was anything distasteful about that. Even if an ad like that would likely not appear, today, due to political correctness, I sense that the sentiment is alive and well in the psyche's of many people. Judging by how many people continue to approve of Trumpian policies and allowing those with moneyed-interests to rule this land (not a phenomenon unique to the USA) - I sense an on-going connection to, and admiration for, the very sentiments and goals expressed by that NYC bus ad. An overview of human history has a similar ring to it. The orientation may not be plastered on the sides of NYC buses but that does not mean it's not thriving.
6
To read today's column one would think that so much has changed (for the better). But is Rudy so different from Roy? Are not developers still bankrolling the Mayor? (See today's NY Times). Okay, the rich now party at the Metropolitan Museum instead of Studio 54; they are probably still doing blow in the bathroom. On the other hand, back in the day, how many New Yorkers were actually part of the Studio 54 scene? Not many, I'll wager. There were neighborhoods in Manhattan still affordable, even if you were just starting out, and Brooklyn was home to immigrants beyond hipsters from the midwest. It is understandable that if your knowledge of New York history is limited to "the media" you might think that New York WAS Studio 54, but this native New Yorker was never there and I didn't read "Page 6" either. But I AM one who feels that "the way the left deploys its influence feels, to some [me], inquisitorial." But I think this lack of nuance will pass, as people age and grow and think and, with luck, grow wiser. Just look at all those now expressing regret for pouncing on Senator Al Franken after only a year or two of reflection. Real New Yorkers knew it all along.
9
The demagogue in DC and his cohorts, not only embrace those immoral tactics of Roy Cohen but also McCarthy with his endless lies, assaults on the press and fearmongering with immigrates as the target instead of the imaginary communist plot throughout the US government. My only hope is that this aberration ends sooner than later.
6
With Donald Trump, Americans who support him are just like Andy Warhol enraptured by Roy Cohn. I lived in New York in the late 70's when places like Plato's Retreat and Studio 54 dominated the social headlines. The decadence of that period is still present today but not necessarily out on the open. It's present in those who amass an enormous amount of wealth because of Trump's tax cut (which also enriched the president) and totally ignore Trump's lying and fascism. Those on the lower end of the income scale have a love-hate relationship with these elites and have designated Trump as the "good elite" leader of their tribe.
183
@Historical Facts
IDk about that. I always figured El Trumpo is accepted by working class folks because they sense his rejection by the old money elite's among us is similar to their own rejection by elites local to them. Frequently working people assume or give an elite label to their fellow working people whom they assume or know to be better off economically than them.
If you are a real elite in the US you never spend time among working people who are not working for you at the time.
16
@Historical Facts
Don't forget that trump also gave them a way to express their hatred of the other out in the open.
They don't want to be ashamed of their hate so they embrace someone who encourages and legitimizes their hate.
24
@Historical Facts . Thank you for pointing out what the article states about those such as Warhol. We have plenty of Americans with a similar mindset towards #45.
9
I can’t speak to the corrupt culture of wealthy New York—though it strikes me you’re ignoring principled figures like Leonard Bernstein and elevating the importance of Warhol in service to a simplified thesis. But I do assure you the civil rights and anti-war left didn’t curdle into violence and farce. Yes, there were deranged outliers, as there are in all powerful movements, but I and most of my cohort are still here working against poverty, racism, war and corporatism, standing in every way we know how for human rights and the environment, working for politicians who support our values, and filled with hope at the renewed activism we see all around us.
13
@Juliet Wittmanvery Ver
There was a powerful and effective public relations campaign that "curdled" perceptions of the civil rights and antiwar movements. That campaign helped elect Richard Nixon. It propelled the country to the right to the extent that some of the tenets of the John Birch Society are now mainstream.
The campaign is distributed among professional political strategists and people like the Koch network. The Murdock media empire is part of it. It is a powerful international force.
I sometimes have hope when I see young people taking up the causes of regulating guns and climate change. I worry because I know that kind of passion is hard to sustain.
8
"It was it's reminders of just how decadent, in every sense, New York society used to be."
Used to be? Has Goldberg looked at the Manhattan skyline recently?
10
I think Cohn has to be viewed within a historical legacy of right wing henchmen, in short, as part of an ongoing and increasingly pivotal part of republican party dark operations. Cohn was likely not the first - it would be interesting to find out who was - but has certainly earned the most conspicuous public profile. Others have followed such as Chuck Colson, Lee Atwater, Roger Stone, bringing us to into the present with Trump Administration figures like William Barr and Stephen Miller, though they're hardly the only ones. (I suspect Trump prefers his henchman come in squads).The issue isn't simply how Cohn became entrenched and tolerated in a decadent high society, but rather how this tradition of political henchmen became such an entrenched and significant part of of one of our major political parties.
10
One henchman keeps his eye on the other.
"... its [the documentary] reminders of just how decadent, in every sense, New York society used to be. "
Used to be??? I wish we had few snapshots when we ran into Roy & Co on vacation in the Caribbean with the Newhouse family. Those swimsuits showing ample man cheeks at the resort buffet. Parents were aghast yet fascinated recognizing him from the Mccarthy hearings.
2
I think the reason we "got Trump" was that liberals removed abortion from democratic control, and voting for a foul-mouthed fascistic idiot was the only way Americans could get their right to vote on important issues back.
As for how Trump regards government workers and lawyers, I think it's been obvious for a long time. He thinks government workers are the president's servants, and that the purpose of lawyers is to bail him out of trouble when he gets caught.
11
I now seriously regret having Roy Cohn on the WNET show “We Interrupt This Week”
1
What are we to think of Harvey Weinstein's Roy lawyers: long-admired litigatorDavid Boies, Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, and famed feminist Lisa Bloom? Just askin'.
8
This: "From McCarthyism to the mob to Trump, Cohn enabled evil. Why did elites embrace him?" is a clickbait format title. Proper writing in a news paper would be, "Why Roy Cohn was Embraced." One more reason I happily unsubscribed after 44 years reading here is the clickbait title.
3
It figures Trump admired Cohn. Birds of a feather.
4
Better to be with ‘em than agin’ ‘em—isn’t that an old mob saying?
New York society is how we got Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Try to be better, neighbors.
4
I always assumed that the only reason Cohn, who sent the Rosenbergs to the chair, was seemingly embraced by the liberal (or at least liberal-ish) and heavily Jewish Manhattan glitterati was that they knew he was mobbed to the hilt and they were scared to death of him. Michelle may not be wrong but this is the first time I've ever heard it asserted that anyone from that milieu ever really liked him.
4
Read Citizen Cohn by Nicholas Von Hoffman and be amazed...truly...
4
I came of age in that time of hypocrisy, when it was essentially illegal to be openly gay and one was suspect to blakmail by the likes of a Roy Cohn.
Apparently this is still true, for it appears that Falwell, Jr., and his wife are "swingers." What would Jesus say?
5
@Carl Ian Schwartz
In the case, as with many like him, Cohn was also the epitomy of hypocrisy when while he routed out and as you stated, blackmail those that were gay, he regularly "hung out" at Studio 54 in which a number of the attendees were gay including the owner of the club.
1
Roy Cohn is a product of NY politics. He was simply better at underhanded,double dealing,sleazy politics than most...as is Trump..now he's beating this questionable political cabal at their own game.
1
Early on Trump showed us his disdain for the rule of law when he excoriated Sessions for recusing himself and crying "where's my Roy Cohn?" Trump didn't quite get his Cohn but his current attorney general is doing just fine acting as his personal attorney.
4
I knew someone who had rented his pool hut (hardly a hut) on Midway Walk in Fire Island Pines to Cohn in the '70s, and "sybaritic" is a good adjective to describe him. Also hypocrite: He never came out of the closet, even as he was dying of AIDS.
As for Warhol', it's easy to misinterpret what he said because his comments were always so gnomic. In Warholese, "That was exciting, it was the best thing" is like a Southern woman's "Well, bless your heart" or "Aren't you special": damning with sarcastic praise.
3
Ever notice how these "opinion" articles are actually about a book, or a movie?
Hmmmm
1
are hyou suggesting we will see the same fate for Mr. Trump? yes, there is a limit of all elastci substances. if you extend it beyond limits it breaks. that is what happened to Mr. Cohns. I hope that applies to all the current elites and the corrupt elites of the white house - honest and patriotic people are being tested for the limit of their frustartions.
2
Roy Cohn was a self-loathing, closeted gay man who denied he was gay. He was a public basher of gay men and used his utter contempt of morality and the law to insinuate himself into positions that the so-called wise ones should have denied him. But Cohn was smart and ruthless. He had dirt on everyone. And what better way to save oneself from the turpitude of the likes of Cohn? Invite him into the inner circle of power, corruption, sleaze and bitter lament. There is nothing so sorry as a self-loathing gay man. Too well known at the time to come out. But ruining the lives of so many Americans, along with his pal McCarthy, through passing on guilt by association, or the sins of ones' father, or trying to even a score. This was Cohn's way. Remarkably, it is also Donald Trump's way. And the rest of that nest of scalawags who now run the United States: Small minded reprobates whose sense of entitlement reaches far beyond the most narcissistic millennial. Soon, Trump and his lot will reach too far and fall into the abyss and eventually end up in one of Dante's Circles of Hell.
12
This cannot happen soon enough
4
"Behind every great fortune is a crime."
Most often this rule proves itself true. Remember it, when hearing the names of people you're told to admire.
6
You have scratched the surface. There are so many elephants in this room. The suggestion that the New York culture and more broadly the American culture is less twisted now, is self serving. it has just evolved.
The language of the devil, with words like evil and malevolent, pass for a genuine look at what goes on in the private recesses of our lives, the life of our collective culture.
We struggle with demons because we are unable to unmask, to untangle the black box of human interaction, to look in the mirror. We exclaim, "Evil".
All of us, to one extent or another, are formed by how we are treated by one another. Donald Trump near twenty years younger, was colored by his relationship with Roy Cohn in ways that I shudder to think!
5
I envision a very long table set in a plush setting and Trump, after it all comes down, sits by himself yelling for his illegal immigrant workers for dinner that's never coming.
8
I don't need to see this movie. I see enough of what's wrong with our system just riding the bus past homeless vets encamped under bridges and overpasses. Scapegoating Roy Cohn won't change the fact that our political economy lacks a moral compass.
5
Decadent and cynical was how I viewed New York in the superficial 1980s-- a soulless and sooty slice of America (from my California POV). How ironic that the current product of that gilded decadence, the most shallow and soulless DJT, has been embraced by the flyover America of Southern Evangelicals and Midwestern values-- talk about cynical. At least the partying New Yorkers didn't pretend to have any morals or ideology.
12
Will Trump finally be cut off from the power and the glory he has achieved through his immoral behavior in the same manner that the dying Roy Cohn was treated by his former supporters? Wouldn't that be appropriate justice?
4
Boorish behavior starts
in small-minded people
bored by earnest decency.
4
Michelle: You write “the radical promise of the 1960’s curdled into violence and farce.” In your very next paragraph you say “the left has far more cultural power than in the past.” Excuse me? Anti-Vietnam war protests? Hippies, Woodstock, the Yippies? Women’s liberation? Earth Day? Stonewall? A tiny minority of 1960s protestors “curdled” into violence, the rest of us -counterculturalists and peace activists - had enormous influence on the present.
13
I find nothing “genius” about the likes of a Roy Cohn or Donald Trump as the press often intimates. What i have ascertained instead is that there has always been and always will be “marks” who continue to fall for these obvious conmen. Look at Trump with his droves of worshipers. He is a God to them! Whereas I have known Trump for the conman that he is since the 70s just as I knew Roy Cohn as a conman as well. These men aren't special. They are easy to spot conmen. Easy at least for me. I wish it were so simple for the people who gave us Trump.
10
Trump’s followers are needy. They are insufficient in themselves; they need direction and a compass to point the way.
One asks: what are they trying to find? It used to be Heaven. No more.
5
Perhaps those elites are contemptible and evil themselves? Alternatively thoughtless.
The most illuminating part of this essay is about Cohen teaching Trump how to deflect by changing the subject and behaving outrageously. It's not like I didn't know Mr. Trump is the grand deflector-in-chief, it is just interesting it was a carefully taught skill by Mr. Cohn. So, knowing that this is a very specific skill set, what would it take for the media, our conduit for all information,to stay silent at these times? What would it be for reporters to not ask questions about the deflecting behavior, to ignore statements Trump's dangles at his press gaggle on the White House lawn? What if they simply didn't take the bait? I would be very interested what Mr. Trump would do.
Stay focused reporters. Stay with the story at hand. Don't play the Trump game.
5
The only ones to blame are the deplorables who voted for him, lazy voters who didn’t vote at all, and those who voted a third party in protest.
6
New York City and society have always been a bastion of criminals - real estate criminals, stock market criminals and more. Why wouldn't they slobber over one of the vilest criminals of them all?
4
Thought provoking insight from Michelle Goldberg: [...To understand the milieu Cohn moved in is, I think, to understand at least some of the generation gap among elites over what’s sometimes called “cancel culture” or “call-out culture” or even just “political correctness” ...]
When SNL cancelled Shane Ellis over his blatant racist podcast rants about Chinese, not even in a comedy setting, several of the women on the daytime talk show the View expressed their distaste about "cancel culture." They share similar opinion about restoration of Billy Bush on network TV. Often such objection towards cancellation is couch behind "christian forgiveness" or similar sentiment about wrongful bans. Show leniency. Let the guilty go unpunished?
There is a rise of contempt for decency in USA led from the top, a legacy of Roy Cohn. At the same time there is a strong current of political correctness, often wading into the extreme end. Calling for senator Al Franklin to resign without a hearing is a prime example in the Me-Too movement.
There is no nuance between what kind of punishment is reasonable anymore. So the morality quagmire continues because there is a lack of morality education of the population. Curiously USA is the most "religious" country among the developed western countries. So it says a lot about religions in USA too, as so many evangelical Christians flock attend Trump's rallies. The immorality rut is hard to ignore.
1
Wrestling and The Apprentice helped get us Trump.
Saved Trump from financial ruin, gave him publicity and fostered the normalization of the thug leader, cruelty and dishonesty
4
Nonsense.
Donald Trump won the votes of 63 million Americans in 2016 including 58% of the white voting majority made up of 62% of white men and 54% of white women.
Donald Trump didn't run a covert stealthy subtle campaign. Every American knew who Donald Trump was and was not and voted accordingly.
Donald Trump is the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan without any of the acting, governing and political experience or talent. Trump is Reagan without the gift of white supremacist bigoted prejudiced rhetorical shrugging, smiling and soft racist euphemism.
Reagan began his rise to the Oval Office in Philadelphia Mississippi where three civil rights workers were lynched talking about state's rights. Reagan devolved into attacking a 'Cadillac driving Chicago welfare queen' then lower to castigate a 'strapping young buck standing in line at the grocery store with food stamps waiting to buy T-Bone Steak' then wondering if Dr. King were a communist.
There is no mystery behind nor beneath the rise of the likes of a Charles Kushner, Charlie Rangel, Adam Clayton Powell, Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Epstein, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer and Al Sharpton. New York City media really loves it's ignorant articulate and inarticulate bloviating mugging buffoons by nature and nurture.
Donald Trump's rise was aided and abetted by
3
Great piece, here’s another
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/frank-rich-roy-cohn-the-original-donald-trump.html
1
I cannot get it to add up, that novelist, Norman Mailer, a freedom loving artist, a writer of uncanny powers, the author of “Armies of the Night,” “Why We Are in Vietnam,” “Advertisements for Myself,” “The Executioner’s Song,” long essays and novels so jabbed with sentence energy, erudition, an Emerson like self-awareness, a reader’s mind constantly flips around as it seeks new platforms for quasi-equilibrium, needed a Roy Cohn. I guess the Mailer-Cohn gig was like Arthur Rimbaud needing his Verlaine and Ezra Pound his fascists and St. Petersburg society its Rasputin.
I suppose, in each of our backgrounds, there is that person who both violates our human principles and yet is somehow accepted by us, is welcomed inside our home as a good buddy and friend, like an aged father who is racist, a government worker who steals pencils from the office supply room, a Trump supporter who supports with wild-eyed enthusiasm, Trump.
There’s a Roy Cohn type floating around in all our lives.
2
The continuous thread running between 1950s Roy Cohn and today’s Donald Trump is not only racism and bigotry but also revenge.
Would Trump be destroying the environment if Obama hadn’t made such an effort to save it?
Would Trump be trying to destroy the main stream press if Obama hadn’t ridiculed and humiliated him at the Annual Press Club party?
Its worth remembering “The Godfather” and real life mobsters all live by the primitive “eye for an eye” code of conduct and that Don Trump had a mobster for a mentor.
7
Wow. I now understand what Trump sees in Steven Miller: the same soulless stare of bottomless contempt and hatred. He and Cohn could be father and son.
7
"From McCarthyism to the mob to Trump, Cohn enabled evil. Why did elites embrace him?"
Never punished sufficiently to stop his behaviors; therefore, that which gets rewarded gets done.
Remember, our Constitutional Founders twisted themselves into a 3/5th's "compromise" about the right of African Americans to vote.
It's the mindset. "THEY" had slavery (insert any other reprehensible thing) here once, and "THEY" liked it!
3
Roy Cohn brought his brand of disruptiveness to the elite of New York. The current White House occupant has repackaged it for reality TV and his audience loves it.
1
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
1
Roy Cohn's breakthrough was the 1951 trial of the Rosenbergs for spying for the USSR during WWII, a claim that they gave the Russians the key to the Atomic Bomb.
Cohn was an Assistant US Attorney and a main actor in the prosecution. He undertook several critical cross-examinations. He was the main advocate for the death penalty.
He was successful. The Rosenbergs were electrocuted at Sing Sing in June 1953.
In the America of 2016-2019, when even leading columnists of this paper throw around the word "traitor" to describe Trump, it is relevant to point out that the Constitution defines treason to be a wartime crime, only.
The Rosenberg case was the great treason trial of the postwar period. But, it couldn't be prosecuted as treason, since they were spying for an ally, Russia in WWII.
Thus they were convicted of Conspiracy to Commit Espionage, a gimme treason charge. Cohn was seldom part of a straight-forward effort.
There is a generally credited story that he would meet the judge in the case in private, thus engaging in ex parte contact, a serious breach of ethics.
He was recommended to Senator McCarthy by J. Edgar Hoover. He beat out Bobby Kennedy for the job.
This seems enough for now. Even though we haven't gotten to G. David Schine yet.
To see Cohn in action, don't miss the 1964 documentary "Point of Order":
"Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
3
I’m not a film maker but this is the one film I would like to have made.
It teaches the audience about real, not made up, depravity and is wonderfully instructive about what makes Trump tick.
When Trump asks where is his Roy Cohn he doesn’t realize that he has become Roy Cohn.
Donald Trump is Roy Cohn!
1
Sublime.
Having watched the recent hearings before which Corey Lewandowski appeared and now read your op-ed piece, it's clear that Lewandowski aspires to be Trump's Roy Cohn.
They both have the same flat, facial affect making disdain visually apparent and clearly Lewandowski has studied Cohn's playbook of verbal responses and truthfulness.
What a despicable group of people.
4
Cohn was an ugly, hateful misfit and he found a match in Trump another ugly, hateful misfit and Steven Miller -- Trump's evil adviser in the WH is cut from the same cloth. Trump has his "Roy Cohn" only he's not Trump's lawyer, he's Trump's misfit hate-filled advisor willing to do and encourage any misanthropic idea that pops into Trump's skull.
Misfits and haters have been tolerated and elevated throughout history -- Trump and Cohn weren't exclusive to NY or any "tolerance" that people had for them.
3
An excellent, thought-provoking piece. Cohn was a horrible human being.
The problem is with the line “how warped the city’s values used to be.” Perhaps the city’s values were “warped” but those values allowed for a rich, vibrant, artistic culture that is all but dead today. You cannot have the arts and moral purity. Art is about living in, exploring, celebrating, and trying to understand the many colors between black and white. Moral purity is good for fascism, socialism, and theocracy. It is bad for intellectual life, artistic life, and human freedom.
Trump is smitten with Steve Miller, who wants to be Trump's new "Roy Cohn" - there is even a physical resemblance between the two.
3
Who is Donald Trump's "Roy Cohn" today? We who remember Roy Cohn (in person and on TV) witnessed his boomer narcissism and depraved lack of political correctness.
His nastiness and amorality.
Jeff Sessions, president Trump's first AG, was no Cohn. Trump asked "where's my Roy Cohn?" in his first 2 years. Isn't Trump's present AG as helpful to him today as Roy Cohn was to the scoundrel businessman, DJT, during the 1980s and 90s?
Cohn was helpful to Joe McCarthy, one of America's most evil Senators, during the Army/McCarthy hearings of the mid- 1950s. Amoral values and contempt of others held sway then as they do today. Don't forget our 45th president was Roy Cohn's protege for years.
2
Having their reputations sullied after death is not enough. They need to pay the penalty today for their immoral and corrupt behavior. These types do not believe in life after death and live for today. Roy Cohn was just one evil guy who stood out from the others. When you're that successful at being evil you have to have lots of supporters behind you. We can see the results of his tutelage of Donald Trump in the corrupt way he is running our government and destroying our democracy bit by bit.
2
Wealth equals power, no matter how badly or questionably it was obtained. This is the Democratic Party’s establishment. Roy Cohn was exactly who he was: corrupt to his genes. Some say that from his grave, Cohn continues to exact influence. Of course, what they mean is that “certain behaviors” or value system continue to permeate our society, from Epstein to Weinstein to Dershowitz to, of course, Trump-Kushner
Mike Wallace interviewed him in a "60 Minutes" segment. As nearly as I can remember one exchange:
WALLACE: How can you justify paying no taxes whatever?
COHN (instantly, with snappish authority): Don't criticize me for your shortcomings.
4
Money and/or power corrupt. Put one or both together and you can get a Trump, Cohn, Epstein, Weinstein etc. Cities like Chicago had Capone, Boston had its share of Beacon Hill elites who catered to Whitey Bulger's brother who headed up the statehouse. Then there former Mayor Cianci of Providence, he spent as much time in jail as office.
New York was not unique in its moral corruption back then. Today wouldn't be much different if it weren't for this new wave of progressives paving the way for a better, more honest direction for our society.
3
He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with fleas.
1
How interesting that in the 1980s the amoral psychopath Roy Cohn was embraced by New York’s glitterati elite, and now the amoral psychopath he mentored is sitting in the Oval Office and is embraced, not by America’s coastal elites, but by its white working class Christian evangelicals.
Cohn taught Trump the ways of the successful white-collar psychopath. And for Trump’s base and his Republican enablers, there’s nothing wrong with having a psychopath as president. Thus has psychopathy been normalized.
Make Psychopathy Abnormal Again: Vote all Republicans out of office in 2020.
4
Nixon's Republicans and today's Trump's Republicans, they loved and love Roy Cohn. He was a master of dirty tricks, which have made possible for them to hold on to power for so long. People who have lived in New York City have seen first hand the machinations of businesses operated like mafias with the help of lawyers in the mold of Cohn. The problem for the United States and the world today is that Trump never understood the difference between running a business in New York and being the president of the model democracy in the world. Neither have the Republicans, it is sad to say.
2
Roy Cohn may have tutored Trump but it is hardly the reason for the current mess. Living vicariously through an anti-hero who acts out of self-interest and in ways that defy conventional ethical codes and morals seems to be an historically popular yet disastrous choice for humanity from all walks of life - drunk on the heady mix of fear and thrill history tells us that humanity often doesn't sober up until too late.
With the so called 'elite' compromising material could also be the tie that binds on top of the immature need to be cool, in with the in-crowd. And I read that Cohn could be quite the entertaining charmer and was a close friend of Hoover (the man who apparently knew everything) - that thrill/fear high again - knowing he would have no compunction in weaponizing the law or dark secrets to their advantage, or to their detriment.
2
It's not millennials who are leading any moral charge, it's the kids who came after them. The millenials I knew all aspired to Wall Street.
1
So you are dismissing Trump's father as an influence?
2
Celebrity culture loves fame. Trump has always been a con man but he was fawned over for decades because he was famous. Now all of us are paying the price.
4
Roy Cohn is 'an example of just how decadent New York USED to be?'
My God, Michelle...really?
2
Sorry, Ms. Goldberg. I was with you up to the point at which you gave millennials credit for a reawakening of moral outrage. Some of us boomers, who spent quite a bit of energy on moral activism -- from civil rights to women's rights, voting rights, ending the Vietnam war, poverty programs, and social justice, thank you very much -- never lost our moral compass, condoned the likes of Roy Cohn, or thought Andy Warhol's vacuous celebrity veneration was cool.
It was the values of people coming of age in the 80s and 90s, the greed and selfishness, along with the likes of Michael Millken, Bernie Maddoff, Roy Cohn, and, yes, Donald Trump that horrified us every bit as much then as they do now and were a direct challenge to the values we worked so hard for. Don't conflate the antics at Studio 54 with the decency of most people in NY or in the country.
14
Of course, the 40 yr. result of all this self-interest and in reality, evil, is Donald Trump himself and those that surround him. What is even more disturbing is the number of voters who continue to elect the people that go out of their way to allow this to happen, because, ultimately, even the politicians the "elites" buy start to act in a similar manner.
It has been stated countless times that the 2020 election will determine the ultimate "fate" of America and that cannot be underestimated. While the discussion focuses on the ideas of left vs. right or capitalism vs. socialism(most countries, including America are a combination of both), the real battle to be fought which will ultimately be determined in the next election is the Oligarchy elites vs. democracy.
The polarization in America and its deep divisions is a situation which the Oligarchy cherishes(divide and conquer)ultimately using this rancor as just a deflection away from the real evil of them buying politicians to serve their interest at the expense of everyone else thus gradually stripping away what is left of democracy in the country.
If Trump and Republicans somehow are able to hold on to power, it is clear then who won that battle and even in his grave, Roy Cohn will be smiling.
2
Two things apart came to my mind. One is about a possible crossing point between a part of progressivism as originated in the avant-garde (however much the term may sound nostalgic) and heavily questionable business of real estates transactions and investments in a heavenly profitable city for such a business. According to the opinion piece, Mr. Trump, in his root, does not seem to be very conservative. The other is about Warhol [and gay communities - my adding] in the era spoken of by Goldberg. For me, Warhol, Jean Michel Basquiat and NY City are one package in the Art World when an epic is talked about. Not to be radically critical, but I cannot help wondering whether the tolerance of depravity has been herited to today into different forms, less obviously as asserting rights of it under a political protection.
1
Show biz is how we got Trump.
Without “The Apprentice” he’d still be an unknown to his most fervent supporters.
Thanks a lot Hollywood!
5
@Melvin
Trump was a "fictional" character created for television and he is now a "fictional" President.
2
say NO to the prestige and money that sometimes comes with engaging with evil people. con men and fraudsters will not get far with anyone who is NOT ready, willing and seeking SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. many of the victims have only themselves to blame.
@john boeger
Yep, come to think of it, there were several of the "elite" themselves that fell for Bernie Madoff's scam. Along with Cohn, maybe that has something to say more about America itself.
History tells us, ALL Empires eventually fall, and when they do, it happens because of similar circumstances perpetrated by the existent of those involved in it all.
1
Isn't it funny how Stephen Miller looks so much like him?
I worked for an investment firm in the 80s whose clients held a big stake in Resorts Int'l. What Trump did to that company and the move to shut out any other investors with his tender offer was the first real public glimpse of his business "acumen" and chicanery. His deals always left the banks and other investors holding the bag. How do you think he was able to be placed under Russia's thumb? If Cohen hadn't died in '86, it's possible he could have kept Donnie boy out of Russia's clutches.
5
@stacey d
People sometimes forget that not only did Trump inherit a fortune from his father"s estate, but even more importantly his father left him something with that was invaluable in those people, i.e. the connections(accountants and lawyers AND politicians)who could bail Trump out when he ever got into trouble.
Trump sold his brand to some suckers, however, he never has really been a good businessman, he is P.T. Barnum with no conscience, his multiple bankruptcies and countless outside failed businesses in which he connected his name, just confirm it.
1
"if you came of age in a culture that celebrated transgression, norms that demand sensitivity can feel restrictive." Really nice encapsulation of how youth progressivism and call-out culture are anathema to us slightly older liberals. We spent a lifetime thickening our skin - and all of a sudden thin is in.
2
It is simple: Elites are attracted power and fame. Maybe even more than us non-elites. And it’s regardless of whether the power is evil.
I wonder. Growing up my parents defined evil as Roy Cohen. As for celebrity once being the only value what exactly do the Kardashians do?
5
Cohn was a quintessential narcissist. Donald Trump, who studied at Cohn's knee, is another. 62+ million American adults are ready to return the latter to office. Why would American elites have ethics and moral principles superior to 62 million Americans? That's not how money is made in the American capitalist system. A large portion of American elites were greedy to begin with or developed their taste for massive wealth during public service. Just look at the narcissists that Donald Trump has recruited and surrounded himself with. Mulvaney, Mnuchin, Pompeo and Ross to name four. Consider the international narcissists that Trump admires; Putin, Orban, Netanyahu, and Mohammad bin Salman to name another four. I don't hold out much hope for our political system until we can hold our leaders to high ethical bars, and that will have to wait until we see the last of Donald Trump.
4
Goodness, do read about the elites in any culture at any time (Byzantium, Chinese Emperor Courts, ancient Rome, European Courts, African kings). They are curiously similar across the ages and locations of Earth. If you can force yourself on others and no one can or will stop you, what might you do? I am currently considered part of the elite classes (I have a doctorate, I have done well in my profession, I am white). Throughout my graduate school work (2005-2012) I was told by my department's Professors I was better than anyone beneath me educationally but I am not now nor ever have been rich, I am a fairly attractive female, but due to the fact I was born into the middle class to hard-working parents, I don't have loads of cash or social connections. Those last three things have kept me in check, but unchecked, I could be this kind of cold, cruel person taking without giving, lying to fit in further and make loads of cash while currying many lucrative social connections. Humans can't handle power well. What are we going to do about this individually and socially?
1
Rather ironic associating McCarthy ( and Mccarthyism) with Trump rather than with the Hollywood and media blacklists against Trump supporters.
3
As a real time witness to Mr. Cohn's shennanigans and disorderly conduct, he was truly a despicable character. He also boasted that he never paid taxes and refused to pay income tax until he died. Unfortunately he was revered by Fred Trump and his son Donald, and after Fred died Roy became a replicant father figure and mentor for Donald, and DJT became a disciple, admirer and follower of Mr. Cohn and adopted all of his deceptive tactics, propensity for bullying, legal countersuits, and sensationalistic bombast to divert attention. The end result is what we have now.
8
The disingenuous nature of Cohn and Trump's personalities is best illustrated by the diamond cuff-link gift Trump gave Cohn for a birthday present. When Cohn died penniless, it seemed they were the only thing of monetary value left in his estate, until his long-time partner found out they were fake.
10
Another terrific Goldberg article.
Democracy needs an educated populace as guard rails for the likes of Roy Cohen and the vulnerable undeveloped selves who worship, him like Trump, who like others abandoned him when he got AIDS and couldn’t fulfill a warped needy fantasy.
“Sometimes I feel this nostalgia myself; if you came of age in a culture that celebrated transgression, norms that demand sensitivity can feel restrictive.”
The sixties demanded of some of us who dressed like it but were healthily repulsed by the frankly predatory aspects of “doing your own thing” at the expense of people around you; that we emphasize more spiritual development to break out of the restrictive pearl and cashmere elite college goals held up as the golden god.
It’s interesting that some of Trump’s wealthy New York peers, who looked down on him like the rest of us disgusted with the supermarket Inquirer documentation of his family, participated in a documentary I saw before he was elected; letting everyone know this guy should never be President of the United States.
But he was elected. Wasn’t he. Democracy needs it’s guard dogs and it’s us. Long live the New York Times and Independent Journalism of all kinds.
When it comes to evil and how it has affected the GOP, one cannot forget nor underestimate the effects of Lee Atwater who likely learned from his spiritual father, Roy Cohn. Lee Atwater, Bush 41's campaign manager in 1988, and a man so despicable that even God chose to take him out only slightly past 2 years into Bush 41's presidency so he could not repeat his evil in 1992. Nonetheless, the evil that men do lives after them and his protogé, Karl Rove, was an excellent student.
3
I agree with commenter Yank. I take exception to your depiction of New York elites as representing New Yorkers of that time or any time and using Warhol, Barbara Walters and Studio 54 as exemplars. I am a native New Yorker, born, raised, educated in public school. Most New Yorkers had distain for what these people were peddling and certainly anyone who lost their jobs, friends, and had their lives ruined by McCarthy/Cohen knew exactly who Cohen was and what he did. I venture to say that means most New Yorkers, most Americans. This article reflects a naiveté. Better to use the platform to educate the readers you refer to as too young to remember those times just how toxic and ruinous for many, many good people those times were. The same could be said of today. And frankly it’s the media that has an outsize role in turning the super rich into “elites” and celebrity idols that the media deems worthy of being worshipped. Just look at the NYTimes Sunday Realty section. No, no, no. Don’t call out New Yorkers for the “Cohen Effect.”
4
The show "Cabaret" comes to mind. Money does indeed make this world go 'round. Witness Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and that Facebook fellow (I can't immediately think of his name.)
We are in their thrall, whether we like it or not. And New York was enchanted by Roy Cohn then and Epstein more recently. It's the Benjamins as someone wisely pointed out.
Today the young are marching against climate change, while their elders are going to work thankful for their paycheck. And their check likely comes from an establishment that only cares about the bottom line.
Compliments to Michelle Goldberg for telling it like it is.
2
The influence of Roy Cohn on Trump is undisputed, but there is also Trump's father, Fred, and Trump himself, who by all accounts, was a bully as a child. The makings of Trump's sociopathy was set in motion by people and events, but at the end of the day, only Trump can blame himself for his cruelty, impatience, and deep sense of entitlement.
3
The puritanical woke crowd of today is at least as obnoxious as the decadence and hedonism of the 1970s. Most of the woke puritans are just putting on a public performance.
3
This is thoroughly believable, Michelle. Thank you for reminding us. If you missed it, Frank Rich did a piece last year on this very subject. It's an eye opener. Here's the link:
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/frank-rich-roy-cohn-the-original-donald-trump.html
1
I had lunch this week with two guys in the oil business in southern Louisiana. I've done business with these people for thirty years. They are friends as well as business clients. We don't talk politics. We talk business and hunting and kids. This week I took a chance and asked their opinion on assault rifles. The response was shocking.
1. "Are you telling me that you don't think the government is behind these mass shootings."
2. "If we let them take these guns away, it will just be the beginning."
These are not stupid people. In fact, I consider them smart! They are not well read or highly educated but SMART! Then he made the telling comment: "If it were not for the oil business we would have no way to make a living here. This would be a ghost town!" These people live in fear of the future. That fear is being fed by conservative media! Such fear makes "smart people" make emotional decisions. And Trump gives them an answer. They want an answer, any answer. When reason fails, we are left with emotion and its consequences.
1
It's the big-city cultural equivalent of the guy (always a guy) who keeps changing the tv channel with his remote, convinced that there is something better on that he might be missing. Cohn was attractive to people as long as his orbit offered something you might otherwise miss out on. Then it flamed out.
1
Yes, we must see this ugly political chart, the nefarious tracking of Ancestry DNA that throbs gene-like from Cohn to Trump. Trump represents the nefarious harvesting of Cohn. The lines of malignancy, of morality overtaken by the metastasizing evil are there to be drawn. We must see it, know its origins, its pathways, and its multiple manifestations. But, set aside the analogy. While we do not yet know how to cure cancer. But we can perform political surgery to cut out the tumor that is the Trump Presidency and its spread through the Republican Party. Bring on the Constitutionally endowed medicines!
1
Michelle, the movement towards ostracizing people, "canceling" them, is in no way, shape or form a "re-moraliz(ing) of the public square."
Rather, it is an infantile impulse based on the simple-minded (and wholly incorrect) view that people are either all good or all bad. It takes only making a thoughtless comment or a bad joke, and the call-out culture would like to see you stripped of your friends, family, livelihood, past achievements and future potential, even if you apologize, even if you didn't mean it the way it was interpreted and even if it happened decades ago. There's no discernment, at all, being employed by these self-appointed P.C. police, this mindless mob. You yourself can't even tell the difference between Roy Cohn, who actively sought to harm others over decades, and Sean Spicer, a hapless man who held an impossible job for what ... a single year?
A decent society does not regularly ostracize or shun other humans. That is an immoral act in and of itself, and an act of cruelty and arrogance. There's nothing virtuous at all about trying to cleanse society of those we disagree with, regardless of the strength of your belief that you're on the "right" side.
3
@Kristin
Thank you Kristin. Extremely well said. Our moral philosophy should guide our actions based on due process of law, not the Salem witch trials, scaled down to our individual level.
1
Many years ago, when the AIDS Quilt was stunningly laid out for viewing, stretching the entire length of the National Mall and beyond, I still remember the shock of encountering a panel that someone had made for Roy Cohn. I remember it being in shades of red, and it commenorated him, saying something along the lines of: "Roy Cohn. Cheat. Thief. Traitor". I wish I had a photo of that panel, now burned in my memory.
5
Before the 2016 election, Trump said in no uncertain terms that his supporters would "vote for me even if I shot someone right in the middle of 5th Avenue". That's what he said. That's what his SUPPORTERS HEARD HIM SAY and what happened? They voted for him, those mindless minions of his. That Cohn was filth is beyond argument but nothing and no one can excuse the fact that 40% of the American population STILL support Donald Trump. Cohn has been dead a long time. Trump won't last forever. Where is at 40% gonna go? Nowhere, ladies and gentlemen, they're gonna remain a part of the American electorate for the foreseeable future and there's no one to blame for that except the very people themselves. That 40% of the American electorate lacks any moral compass or sense of decency cannot be blamed on Roy Cohn. The mindless minions simply like Trump because he plays on their egos which have been starved by previous politicians and now someone's paying attention to them. That's why they'll never leave Trump. No one else will have them.
4
Cohn lives on in cities all over the world; his venality is as old as the lust for power and greed. I agree with many comments here about the elite still being willing to accept twisted people like Cohn because they can without any taint. They’re too rich, too connected, and can melt away easily from the side of people like Cohn. Moral compass? They don’t need it.
2
"If you are under 35 or 40, it’s probably hard to grasp just how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles, and, further, how tolerating it was itself taken as a sign of sophistication."
Hmm, let's see.
Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Les Moonves, Lori Loughlin, Felicity Huffman, John Edwards are just an off the top of my head list of less then honorable people who were and still are (some at least) are still in the fancy circles.
New York's own mayor is the subject of corruption charges and the NY Times repeatedly writes about how corrupt Democrat controlled Albany is.
Trump is hardly new or alone
8
@Norville T. Johnson "just how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles,"
Still is. Just because you do not hear about it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. The circles are smaller and tighter, there is far less money for investigative reporting, lawyers are more practiced, and people still do not speak out.
1
No. No. No. Hillary Clinton's incompetence is how we got Trump.
3
Frank Rich has the definitive piece on Roy Cohn.
2
Having lived in NYC during Trump time, everyone was bombarded by news of his escapades. Front page scandals, real estate litigations, society galas, divorces, and unethical behavior. One elite story after another with Cohn at his side.
The 2016 election saw Trump parading through the midwest and southwest pandering to the common man: rancher, farmer, factory worker, church-goer, unemployed. And not a word about his past with Cohn. Not a word abut his mentored past, criminal behavior, or immoral decisions in NYC in the media. It was as if he was the nice guy made rich with an honest handshake. None of the investigative NYT reporting on Trump and the Mafia resurfaced. Rancher friends embraced his simple slogans and appeal....and voted in the dark
4
The answer to all this is an extremely progressive tax system. The only way to stay connected to the world and maintain one's humanity is to have to always wash your own underwear.
"Why did elites embrace him?"
Seems like a naive question. The rich need someone to do their dirty work. "Plausible deniability" is their modus operandi.
4
Roy Cohn was very smart and phrased his thoughts better than anyone. He, like many obnoxious characters feed the need for those who need a vicarious thrill at someone who is detached from any moral restraint and hellbent on attaining a goal regardless of who suffers along the way. It's human nature.
Evil is the shortcut to power. Simple as that.
1
Trump surrounded himself with lawyers in the Cohn mold, first in his business and now in his presidency. He has placed some lawyers like that in key government positions, such as in the Department of Justice and on the Supreme Court. He also benefits from the aggressive tactics of some Republican lawyers in congress. He is counting on this bank of Cohn impersonators to save him from the disgrace of being booted out of the Oval Office.
1
So the religious right “hates the new cultural mores because it wanted to re-moralize America on its own terms”?
And just what terms would those be? The preservation of white “purity”—the evangelicals’ cause celebre ever since they broke off from mainstream protestantism on account of slavery? The marginalization of the LGBTQ community in the name of freedom of religion? The institutionalization of the marginalization of women by declaring abortion unconstitutional? And all in the name of someone who exhorted his followers to “Love thy neighbor as thyself”?
Isn’t that “re-moralization” just the other side of the Roy Cohn coin—equally contemptuous, equally imposing of its own rules on everyone else, just wearing the garb of Jesus? And isn’t Donald Trump just as titilating for the religious right as Roy Cohn was for a certain segment of New York society—embodying the “bad boy” while giving a certain legitimacy to their own dark thoughts through sheer brazenness?
I don’t pretend to know where America’s own re-moralization will come from—or if it will ever come at all. I just pray that if and when our long national nightmare is ever over, we will somehow find a way to reestablish truth, the rule of law, and dignity and respect for ALL Americans as the cornerstones of our new society. “Truth, justice and the American way” should not just be the stuff of comic book fiction.
1
The Republican Party, as an institution, is a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.
The problem is not just Donald Trump, it’s Republicans conscious decision to collaborate with him.
The best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers is to vote against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes.
2
What a stretch. It's much clearer to lay the blame closer to home: reality tv, Murdoch publications and Ronald Reagan.
1
Watch Angels In America
3
Roy Cohn is still with Trump, more active and more nasty. McCarthy is still in the senate occupying the seat of majority leader. The present Roy Cohn is on the top justice department. The evil souls never die. They pick and chose their type of people and stay with them.
3
Hopefully, Cohen’s present White House protégé has a similar end: His Presidency ended by an overwhelming defeat at the polls which also destroyed a Republican Party that he had so thoroughly hijacked, facing numerous indictments in both federal and state courts for his epidemic of criminality, completely abandoned by his purely transactional political sycophants who could no longer be benefited by their proximity to his power, humiliated by the sudden financial collapse of his Potemkin business “empire”, Don the Con quietly decamped to his now empty and forlorn Mar-a-Lago, alone with only his narcissistic delusions of times past but still entangled in his third divorce from a vengeful spouse seeking her pound of flesh from an unloving, neglectful sociopath.
3
Funny how the underbelly of society is like cream. It always rises to the top. And always brings with it its voyeuristic sycophants.
Who don’t always know when to say when.
Vote.
Pretending that the success of Donald Trump is because of his association with Roy Cohn is like pretending that the reason the Fourth of July is so wonderful is because the Chinese invented fireworks. It's stupid. Unthinking. Grasping at something, anything, to try and stain Mr. Trump. The reason Presient Trump is loved beyond anything Ms. Goldberg could ever understand, is that he has kept his promises, because he clearly loves this country, because he respects our valiant history, because he is, obvious to anyone whose eyes are even half open, the smartest guy in the room, because he has been preparing for this work his entire successful life.
2
@Len
Entire successful life?? Yes, 3 marriages and 6 bankruptcies make a real winner. He destroys everything he touches.
1
Surely you jest.......
Cohn and Steven Miller look like brothers one just has more hair than the other. On another note it amazes me how different we think from one coastline to the other in light of social media and what we see with our own eyes. Is social media including TV the total ruse to keep the same old same old in place, are we this dumb.
1
I am not a religious person but there is definitely good and evil in this world and there are definitely people who are born “bad seeds” with mental disorders such as Roy Cohn and his protege DJT. Now in my seventh decade, I have seen eras of good and bad. In the long run, good eventually always trumps (pun intended!) bad. Don’t look at a ballot name in Nov. 2020. Just vote for compassion, morality, intelligence and a return to normalcy.
3
Anyone notice how the picture of a young Cohen disturbingly resembles that of Trump's Stephen Miller. Perhaps Trump has found his Roy Cohen.
2
It's not hard to see why those would see power over everything would be attracted to such a repulsive person. Now that DC has become a big money fest, the people that hang their star on politics are too often willing to pursue power and money at any cost.
2
Is it just me or does Stephen Miller have that same evil look in his eyes?
@Kristi Faulkner YES!
NY Elites still have this fascination. Look how well attended Jeffrey Epstein’s parties were.
1
I think in a pinch I'd take Roy over, say, Jeffrey Epstein, but in any event depravity runs a wide line through human life and there is seldom anything new under the sun.
"The rich can afford morals" (George Bernard Shaw). Or., not...As Machiavelli observed...If you have the power, you can always write the narrative and include some nice morals...
2
Cohn's major weapon was fear. when people were
no longer afaid of him, he was disbarred and died
in disgrace
1
"Cancel culture" can only exist due to the internet. Imagine in 1980, a non-journalist trying to convince millions of people that Roy Cohn is evil and should be shunned. You can't tweet your argument. And even if you had to convince just one person, and show your sources? No web pages to link to. Go to the library and spend months hunting down microfiche newspaper clippings about him, then report back to the person you were trying to convince she shouldn't go to his party that she already went to by now. And Cohn's an easier case to prove than almost anyone.
We are just reading that Trump reportedly gave instructions to withhold millions from the Ukraine unless and until they gave him damming information about Beau Biden. Cohn would be pleased with his apprentice.
1
.. "show me who your friends are.." simple as that!
1
The elites embraced him because most of them are thieves and crooks just like he was.
Central to the place F. Scott Fitzgerald called "that slender riotous island" were the deep-jowled characters who broke heads on the waterfront and got shot outside of spaghetti joints. Daily News headline writers and filmmakers like Martin Scorsese feasted on the mob. "Guys and Dolls" made them lovable. Having "mob connections" was even more glamorous than being a member of Cosa Nostra. It's what made Gatsby and his parties so alluring. As it did for Roy Cohn.
1
The NYC ethos is still strange. Recently I learned in the pages of this newspaper that nobody cared about skateboarding so long as it’s “shoddy” practitioners were located primarily in “asinine” Southern California. It only made it to the big leagues when practiced in the urban jungle of New York, where it merged with and earned respectability from the fashion industry. The dude surfed off the shovel of a bulldozer in heavy traffic, which did not run him over! Only in New York!
From Walter C. Langer's psychological profile of Hitler (c. 1944): "His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."
From Henry A. Murray's psychological profile of Hitler (c. 1943): "Never to admit a fault or wrong; never to accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time; blame that enemy for everything that goes wrong; take advantage of every opportunity to raise a political whirlwind."
2
Everything that is wrong and immoral with America is encapsulated in people like Cohn, Trump and Epstein. Greed, hate, predation and narcissism. I never have, nor will I ever, celebrate them.
2
“Roy Cohn’s contempt for people, his contempt for the law, was so evident on his face that if you were in his presence, you knew you were in the presence of evil.”
Replace Roy Cohn with Stephen Miller (both in the statement above and for the picture). Two faces of evil.
1
Yes, Michelle, you are correct. It continues to amaze me that there are so many people incapable of resisting the viral evil of Roy Cohn. I remember him from the McCarthy era and he, along with McCarthy and their sycophants, used to ben the exemplars of American evil. Now it is Trump, his Republicans, and again Roy Cohn.
That so many can sink to such a low level of humanity in this country is a disgrace.
2
Sorry. It's not Roy Cohn who gave us Trump, it's the Electoral College combined with the ignorance of the average American voter.
3
Underlying all of this, the Elites, Trump, Barr, Cohn, Warhol, Cancel Culture, even the City, are two things that can make anyone very ugly when they unchecked.
Ego and Cynicism
1
Roy Cohn, with a severe psychological disorder, was the equally impaired Trump’s role model and that has never been more shockingly evident since he was elected. “What kind of son have I created?”, quote attributed to Trump’s mother. Michelle’s description of Cohn and the NY scene in Cohn’s day is so well written. PS: Al Pacino’s portrayal of Roy Cohn in the film “Angels in America” is absolutely brilliant.
3
In the photo of Roy Cohn, it offers a striking resemblance to the look Cory Lewandowski gave to Jerry Nadler's committee, all while telling the committee he was not bound to tell the truth because, he said, the media doesn't tell the truth either.
Then there is the stone-cold look from Steven Miller, Trump's in-house advisor and white supremacist.
But Trump has been surrounded by sociopaths since he first diaper change. So of course, he has become a sociopath himself. Don't take my word for it. This is the individual and collective opinions of 27 revered psychiatriasts in Dr. Bandy Lee's tome, "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump."
Trump became a mob boss and the description fits him well. He is devoid of any empathy or compassion for anyone. He has said in interviews that he avoids friendship because those people will likely betray him anyway.
Roy Cohn, the disbarred and digraces personal coach for the young-adult Trump, had the man-child at the potter's wheel, molding that lump of cold clay into the model of self-serving cruelty sitting in the Oval Office today.
We know Newt Gingrich started the GOP slide into the swamp. Little wonder then, the party's supine subservience to the worst president in our history, with leanings toward a facsist autocracy, and treating the Constitution as a meaningless contrivence that has outlived its original purpose of checks and balances, and Justice for All.
2020 is our last chance to save America, and the planet.
5
Great column Michelle. Very enlightening.
1
Interesting to me is the photo of Cohn and the evil look he portrays. You can tell he'd be trouble. Not unlike the look on some of the GOP during the Lewandowski testimony before Congress. Collins,Gaetz, Jordan etc.seem thrilled at being annoying and creating division. Same with McConnell and Barr. I don't understand how Barr got away with lying about Mueller and his Report. When you watch the Fox's News it's the same issue. Hannity,Tucker, Ingraham and their guests like Gorka and others generally look angry and menacing and seem to really enjoy being irritating ! They are all so good at it that the American Public for the most part have not read the Mueller Report ! There is a Nation of us that have become deluded by all this propaganda and stonewalling. An entire Fox Nation of us who support the current Administration's chaos and dysfunction !! It has been really difficult over the last few years for the voices of reason to be heard over the menacing voices of deception being spewed from all manner of media sources. Why? Because there are too many Americans who stand idly by thinking things will work out in the end. I'm not sure anymore. Too many of us are part of the Fox's Nation where rudeness and obnoxiousness and deception is considered a badge of honor !! These people Vote and they aren't going away anytime soon !! If you don't agree with these malevolent people you had better Vote and take as many like minded people to the polls with you as you can!
5
Micelle - Nothing has changed in the elite social circles since the days of Roy Cohn. That's why the Clintons were guests at Donald Trump's wedding, Obama vacationed with Richard Branson, David Koch was tolerated for many years on the boards of the Met and the AMNH. That's why we have buildings all over town named for the Sackler family. What do you think goes on at the Met gala every year? On and on it goes...
1
Why the sudden and urgent need to take a long hot , soapy shower?
3
How many of Trump's supporters have ever heard of Cohn? How many of the Dems? Wanna bet hardly any? Further, many of them, if they have heard his name, probably do not know what his attitudes or actions were, and maybe a few do and just don't care.
If you live with the attitude that getting and staying as rich as possible makes you somehow "better" (and a lot of people think that) then how you get rich doesn't matter, as long as you don't actually break a law and get caught. THAT is in full view right now today. Doesn't matter to the people who blindly keep electing him for all sorts of confused and self-harming reasons.
Trump has found in Barr his Cohn. In Kavanaugh and Gorsuch ditto his legacy. The playboy who thought it was cool to grope women had company. How about Hugh Hefner?
The greatest evil that overshadows us now is not just Trump but FOX and SINCLAIR. With their constant 24/7 brainwashing of millions of people they feed ignorance. Without FOX and SINCLAIR, where would Trump be? What is everyone read your columns and others in the NYT or only watched "liberal" TV? And, as long as most kids get their education in public schools and DeVos hates public schools, how are things going to improve? Guns for all anyone?
When Trump goes to war in the Middle East, and the consequences of that blow up, he will use the conflagration to win another term. Cohn would smile at his protege.
THANKS, Michelle.
1
"But the left has far more cultural power than in the past"
I suppose that depends on what you mean by left and cultural power.
The popular culture today is far more cynical and depraved than it was back in the sixties and seventies. There was no Jerry Springer or reality TV with people "famous for being famous", cell phone porn and sexting, narcissistic misogynistic gangster rap calling women all kinds of degrading names blasting out at every traffic light back in the sixties and seventies.
For me liberal culture means peace, love and understanding empathy, fairness, civic engagement and decency.
It seems the values of Trump and Cohn that were an anomaly back then are now the norm. How else could Trump have won unless the culture hadn't changed for the worse?
We need to bring back those liberal value to our popular culture.
1
Premise seems strange to me... No real evidence provided that the elite 'embraced' Cohn. Goldberg, other than a tenuous link to Warhol, fails to substantiate the idea that Cohn 'amorality' was every attractive to these mythical 'elites'. Also-- who made Michelle Goldberg the arbiter of morality?
1
As a liberal, I have come to the conclusion that I cannot stand establishment liberals.
Of course Cohn was disgusting. So was "I did not have sex with that woman", Harvey Weinstein, some of the antics of DiBlasio and Cuomo, and establishment Democrats' habit of allowing the right to roll over them like a steamroller over jello. The so called liberal media is a joke; it gave us Donald Trump.
Hilary spoke about a "vast right-wing conspiracy". Well, she was right, absolutely. The problem for the left, and for liberals, is that at least until now, the left hasn't fought back.
When McConnell refused to allow Merrick Garland consideration for SCOTUS, Democrats should have drawn a line. They should have been laying down in the street, in front of McConnell's tanks. Instead, what we got was fear from our liberal leaders, a tepid offer of a "Better Deal" from Schumer and Pelosi, and more garbage strewn across TV and films from our so called "Hollywood liberal elite".
No wonder Trump won the election.
2
If you had a dirty lawyer who could remove every obstacle between you and your desires, and who could place insurmountable obstacles between you and punishment for your crimes, and you have no conscience or sense of decency, then you, too, would love that lawyer.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.
2
This behavior wasn’t just limited to NYC. Let’s not forget the hypocrisy and mean spirited moves by the Reagans. While denying the aids crisis, they were assisting Roy Cohn’s HIV healthcare in the background through NIH. Despicable.
2
The controlling influence Roy held on his 'disciples' was 'classic mafia', and Trump excelled at it, cheating anybody that came too close to his real estate dealings and wheeling. That Trump is an inveterate liar and a crook may be what Roy Cohn celebrated, likely giving Trump a medal of honor for the feat of suing any and all that tried to obtain justice from his evil behavior. But from there to electing such a vulgar bully to the presidency is a long stretch, suggesting moral torpitude on the republican party...and the unwillingness of a gullible 'base' to think for themselves. Trump is a disgrace for these United States; and Roy Cohn, devil incarnate, is smiling.
2
I can see Jim Parsons playing Roy Cohn in a film.
Seems to me, America got the president it deserved.
At the end of his life Roy paid with AIDS, not many friends and walking alone on a beach at Fire Island. I was a part of this era as at 88 my life has been history only now revisited in today’s milieu.
1
It wasn’t until the intertwined ascents of social media and millennial progressives that the zeitgeist really turned, and jaded acceptance of the status quo fell from fashion. Younger people, scarred by the wreckage of the financial crisis, looked at the world they’d inherited and felt wide-ranging moral indignation. Unlike their elders, they hadn’t watched the radical promise of the late ’60s curdle into violence and farce, and so weren’t disillusioned with the left.
OK, OK, I'm one of those "jaded" sixties types. The Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, the blossoming of the Women's Liberation Movement, La Raza, AIM, Dump Johnson, Watergate, "Levitate the Pentagon" among much else.
That was no "turning of the zeitgeist" ? What kind of ahistorical nonsense is that?
May George McGovern rest in peace. He deserved the Presidency then as Bernie Sanders does now. Would you agree, Michelle?
Neither McGovern nor Sanders received a majority of votes for President. They didn’t “deserve” the presidency. The only candidates who deserved the presidency but didn’t get it were those who lost because it was taken from them by manipulation outside the electoral process: Hillary, because of James Comey’s interference; and Al Gore, because of a politicized Supreme Court’s flawed intervention. Bernie is a non-starter.
1
Interesting column. I look forward to seeing the documentary. I just finished re-reading Paul Maccabee's book "John Dillinger Slept Here," an account of gangster activity and corruption in Saint Paul, Minnesota in the 1920s and 1930s. Under a "system" created by Chief of Police John O'Connor, criminals were allowed safe harbor from law enforcement in the city so long as they committed no crimes here.
Shocking is not only the extent of the corruption that evolved from this system (when ill-gotten cash for bribes and pay-offs flowed as freely as bootleg liquor), but the extent to which it was tolerated by the law-abiding citizenry. Many elites enjoyed hobnobbing publicly with murderous criminals, and the fame and fortune these thugs acquired often drew admiration from the public at large.
A glimpse into the Prohibition era makes it easier to understand how a brazen, unethical figure such as Roy Cohn could later acquire power and status, and how his protege, the equally unethical grifter Donald Trump could ascend to high office.
Eventually, as Saint Paul attracted national attention as a cesspool of corruption and crime, the FBI and local reformers rooted out much of this criminality. Gangsters received their comeuppance in the form of prison sentences and, more often, violent death.
It took considerable courage to confront this system of criminality and corruption. One can only wonder whether such courage exists today given our feckless leadership and complacent citizenry.
2
Excellent analysis. The idealism of the 60's and the new wealth of people who were climbing socially from the Middle Class in the 70's and 80's merged with a new morality that wasn't held back by traditional mores. About the same time as Trump was making his mark in NYC, the phenomenon of "celebrity" and notoriety was promoted in film, television and music and became a cultural value in the 80's and 90's People who were ill mannered and cruel misogynists but had money and celebrity took center stage. The objectification of women became a cultural norm. It's what I hate about the 80's and 90's. But now, women are taking back their power and they will be Trump's undoing.
1
Why did elites embrace him? Well like all questions, the full answer is long, nuanced and while necessarily incomplete in the face of necessarily incomplete information, still worth taking the time to work through in the hopes of improving public understanding and possibly even correcting course.
But this is the internet so...
Let's just say that being an elite tends to compromise one ethically (and in most other ways), and very, very few are willing to do the constant, difficult work of resisting moral entropy.
No mention of the 40 years of conservative/Republican ideology that has utter contempt for government and governing; their only goal is to gain and maintain power. The current Republican politicians and donors are allowing
Trump to get away with it all. They are the "elites" of today.
2
The real story seems to be how we got Roy Cohn.
I wrote that Roy Cohn made Trump what he is many times in comments. Most were not printed here somehow. Delighted to see that Michelle Goldberg agrees and takes time to write about it.
A despicable person who injected his poison inside a young and impressionable Donald. Genetics is not the only way to create snakes from snakes it seems.
3
The elite’s embrace of Cohn shouldn’t be surprising. Look at how they now flocked to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Bernie Madoff, etc. When money, fame and power are concerned, self interest is more important to them than integrity and ethics.
554
@Lloyd Trufelman i agree. after 40 years of practicing criminal defense law in federal courts, it used to amaze me(as a young lawyer) how many members of the elite proper society sought advice from defense attorneys. years ago, many of the very large silk stocking firms did not have defense attorneys. those firms would have defense lawyers to advise their clients, etc always trying to make certain that their clients did not let the public know that a defense lawyer was involved.
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@Lloyd Trufelman
Many, if not most, of these people identify as Republicans. We see through history that many people simply flock to the powerful, not even caring how these powerful treat them, much less how they treat others or how they stack up morally. It's like insects drawn to bright light.
16
Politics aside, it makes one despair of human nature and of the human race. I don’t believe in hell, but sometimes I wish for it.
4
Well men like Cohn are what make a guy like me feel most lawyers are also liars. But I also realize they must represent their clients but.......
This is an excellent column, and shows the insight for which I respect Michelle Goldberg so much. She is correct that the last 20 or 30 years has shown a great swath of human depravity, once tolerated or unseen, brought out of the shadows and condemned. This is how humanity advances into a higher stage of moral development.
2
There's no law preventing the president from selling the White House. I looked it up.
Furthermore, the listing and buying realtors would be entitled to their commissions (are you listening Jared?).
I do believe the transaction must be closed while Trump is still in office, but I may be wrong about that.
3
"Still, it’s easy see why the way the left deploys its influence feels, to some, inquisitorial."
I'm a longtime liberal. I'm perfectly happy that it is slightly more possible to ostracize wealthy people who deserve it for doing genuinely awful things.
What feels inquisitorial and deeply troubling to me is the degree to which cancel culture targets people whose only transgression is to dissent from perfect compliance with the theological tenets of Wokeness Cult. Which these days includes such innocuous things as acknowledging that while gender may have a strong sociological component, sex rooted in biology is a nonetheless a reality. Among many other examples one can find of extreme ideology poisoning meaningful discussions of race, gender, and sexuality.
7
Wealth grants its holders a kind of Calvinist moral grandeur. The wealthy are wealthy because they are God's elect and so worthy of the highest social standing. Now, that's a ways from the decadence Ms. Goldberg speaks of, but it's a contributor to it, and it's still a thing. Epstein, Madoff, Ken Lay...they're all assumed to be upright because they have money. Money is our highest moral measure. Despite it all.
6
What Ms Goldberg is describing is the Cult of Celebrity and how it corrupts social norms and the rule of law by jamming the moral compass of all those drawn in, be they celebrities or their followers.
Western culture has been on this trajectory since the rapid development of mass media from 19th century printing presses to electronic devices.
The balance of good vs. evil influences of mass media has tilted many times but in this country has never before these last three years burrowed its way into the core functions of government on a national level.
3
Ah, the limited vision of Ms. Goldberg's youth.
The tolerance of the transgressive she describes among the elites in the 80s has been true of elites for generations.
But she is right about one thing - there was an outburst of radical idealism among a tiny fraction of deeply concerned individuals in the 1960s.
It was so radical that the elite - to put it mildly - freaked out. Corporate attorney Lewis Powell warned his financial overlords that, in essence, "There was perhaps for the first time a growing number of Americans who took seriously the idea that one does not need to accumulate possessions, power or privilege in order to be happy."
The far Right, enlisting unwitting fundamentalists, has been pushing against this for 4 decades.
Finally, it is clear they are failing.
A new generation is recognizing what the wise men and women of all cultures have observed - that true happiness comes from within, and it is in forgetting ourselves in giving, in care and compassion that such happiness is stabilized.
A wind is blowing that will ultimately obliterate the old ways and bring in something quite literally, in the most fundamental sense, unthinkable.
8
Warhol’s sensibility wasn’t all that different from Cohn’s; he just lacked an interest in politics. Do we get the art we deserve? The present canonization of AW as an American master is sad.
2
To put this in perspective, Martin Shkreli is to business and pharma as Trump is to business, real estate, entertainment and government. We were shkrelified and Shkreli found jail. We are trumpified and Trump is still acting like an unpunished 'genius'.
9
Cohn was a horrible person and Trump is cut from the same cloth, but both thrived in their chosen environment because they had and have supporters. I have heard it directly from some Trump supporters that they vehemently deny that Trump gas done anything wrong. The only way to combat this type of ignorance and bling support is to forcefully apply the law. The Republicans refuse to do this so the Democrats must. Even if it might blow back on them they must be the party of law or even a win in 2020 will be hollow.
The Cohns and Trumps of the world survive because people are afraid of them. Our Constitution and subsequent laws are supposed to protect us from people like them, but laws are only as good as they are enforced.
Impeachment is the only process left and it must be forcefully pursued. Even if Trump is reelectd this process must not stop if there's any chance of preserving our fragile democracy.
6
@VMG I agree. I applaud the disciplinary counsel who brought down Roy Cohn.
The initial premise here veers off-course: Call-out culture and intersectionality do not necessarily challenge old-school New York amoralism. That's the vulnerability at the heart of new york's parochial version of intersectionality: what is woke-washing, and what is social justice?
Cancelling rapists will only go so far when conversations around social justice --corruption, pluralism, and economic equality--are STILL taboo.
There are a lot of gross generalizations in this essay. I am increasingly wary of such generalizations, from folks of all stripes. Careful. Toleration of bad behavior? Perhaps in some circles. Clearly not in all.
3
Thank you Michelle for this column.. this is exactly what I often wonder about. How come decent, educated folks that ought to know better put up and enable these con men? The article doesn't mention Jeffrey Epstein, but it was amazing to me to read about this loathsome man "collecting brains". He was invited to MIT's media lab and he hobnobbed with some of the best minds in academia.
2
Columnist Goldberg: thank you for your informative article. Though, I believe you're in error in presenting your viewpoint. You state,
"It was its reminders of just how decadent, in every sense, New York society used to be." My qualm with you is with three words, "used to be." Trump is the living example that men and possibly woman exist who thrill in the exploitation of the masses. Trump is the perfect example that true sociopaths are still alive and well and reside at the highest levels of politics and social life. By answering just one question you learn that I'm correct: why do you believe that so many people in his administration bend backwards to hide Mr. Trump's nefarious activities? I know your response will be enough to depress even the strongest optimist. Hopefully, another gutter crawler with a more balanced social consciousness will arise and replace super ego Trump.
1
No, he isn't. It would be more accurate, and certainly more honest, to say we got Trump because of a remarkably degenerate class of elites who claim to be liberal but who have rather embraced an ever more egregiously authoritarian ideology themselves. An ideology that blindly expands the administrative state, accepts tyranny so long as it drapes itself in progressivism, and disdains the institutions of a free Republic. Don't sell yourself short. You had a hand in this.
3
Trump wasn’t the only depraved politician—-don’t forget Bill Clinton and his enabler, Hillary. With Trump the media decided to show some backbone and expose the lies and corruption. Hopefully a new era is upon us. The moneyed elite will destroys everything of genuine value. Let’s hope our democracy survives this culture of debauchery and depravity. But it took Trump for the elites to recognize how bad it it. Four more years of him will be an existential crisis.
Only 13 months to Nov 3, 2020. We all will find out.
1
Still avoiding the real issue? Institutions do not exist without people. Furthermore, good institutions flourish under the influence of good people and are destroyed by orange coloured red tied guys like trump. When everyone knows the game(institute) is fixed by spoiled NYC rich kids; they side with evil and cheer for it. People jumped on board with Bonnie And Clyde too. The more corrupt the society(institution), the more fans trump acquires. He is an anti-hero. He is an expert at harnessing the average person's disgust at the enormous corruption they are facing. trump tells them they are being ripped off every day and they agree.
Michelle - the headline is all wrong: Fred Trump begat Donald, literally and figuratively. Fred, and his world view, sent young Donald on his way in the world, including finding a mentor. Let’s not confuse the chicken with the egg.
2
Fascinating angle and probably spot on as being beguiling when in actuality just outright disgusting and profoundly wrong except the Cohn's end, which sounds so perfect. It reminds me of the adage I witnessed in my fraternity days that furthered the formula, "Lie, deny, switch the blame and implicate." I do however, offer a different take of what made Trump. Yes to the Ms. Goldberg's framing but there's so much more. What do you think caused the 2008 financial crises Ms. Goldberg? What didn't happen in the aftermath? What undergirds the post 9/11 in world in the shadow of Citizens United? I proffer this Ms. Goldberg. There is a toxic sewage that has underscored the power grift for decades that have run amok and make the Classic Cohn era look like a first run talkie in comparison to what we're in the midst of.
Gee, maybe elites generally don't much care about anything but their own power, and they thus amorally admire anyone who wields it effectively, especially if that person is deliciously audacious.
It's really not that hard to understand. Our masters pretend to be Just Like Us, to care about people Just Like Us, but if my limited interaction with billionaires and their professional-class poodles (along with a knowledge of human nature, history, etc) is any guide, they have nothing but contempt for the Great Unwashed.
Some notable exceptions, of course, and I welcome any class traitor with open arms.
But, yeah, they're just like us insofar as we'd be just like them in that institutional node. Statistically speaking. That's why we must change these structures. No ruling class has ever given much of a hoot, beyond mostly lip-service, about the teeming herd, which is there only to be controlled, lulled, bullied, or what-have-you.
What has changed-epstein.
Another great insight from Ms. Goldberg.
Michelle is wonderful but this editorial is off the mark.
She is writing about the NYC of NY Post's Page 6, not the one we lived in. For every Studio 54 there were many Studio Rivbeas, CBGBs, the Ontological Hysteric Theatre and the Riverside Church, for every Warhol there was a Richard Serra, a Guerrilla Girl, a Carolee Schneemann, a Susan Sontag, for every Roy Cohn there was the Center for Constitutional Rights, a Shirley Chisholm, a Larry Kramer, for every Trump there was a Gordon Matta Clarke, a Pete Seeger, a Tuli Kupferberg.
9
@timbo Yes!
1
Leads one to wonder why Andy Warhol became so trendy and lionized as an "artist."
2
Brilliant headline. says it all. bravo Michelle
1
I'll seek out the film, but in the meantime, bless Tony Kushner for the way he explores Cohn's hypocrisy in "Angels in America."
3
Come on, the depravity is just out of view now. Nothing has changed.
The Roy Cohn mentality exists not only with Trump but with those who are reaping the rewards of the Trump/Cohn regime. They may speak a more civilized language but they are cut from the same cloth.
1
Here trump goes again mimicking his mentor’s mantra, the Roy Cohn three-dimensional strategy, which is:
1. Never settle, never surrender, never apologize.
2. Counter-attack, counter-sue immediately.
3. No matter what happens, no matter how deeply into the muck you get, claim victory and never admit defeat.
Roy Cohn, McCarthy’s lawyer, was one of America's most destructive psychopaths, and so is trump.
2
When I briefly saw Cohn's picture at the top of this article I thought, just for a moment, "my goodness, Stephen Miller with hair".
5
A more decent society would have canceled Cohn?
True.
But today's cancel culture is Cohn.
A twitter version of McCarthy.
It's mean and vicious with no room humanity, forgiveness or growth.
Andrew Yang demonstrated decency in the face of cancel/Cohn culture this week.
How refreshing.
2
Goldberg's line in the first paragraph could just as well fit Trump. The presence of evil.
3
So the Left is re-moralizing the public square? Not hardly. What is being done with social media is to try to ban those from public life who are particularly disliked by the Left with no effort at political or social consistency at all. What really distresses Ms. Goldberg here is that instead of running away and hiding, targets of the Left are increasingly taking a page from Roy Cohn's book and refusing to truckle to their hate, be it dancing on a television show, proudly being a public face of her father's administration, or rubbing the House Judiciary Committee's collective nose in their own circus ring. So, even though Roy Cohn's career did run aground due to his own unethical behavior, the example he set of his public presence among the elites in New York is still of use today. (Apologies for my typo in my first submission, it should have been MS. Goldberg, of course.)
1
The elephant in the room!
1
Well, Roy Cohn at least did some good: I was a little kid when he was engineering McCarthy's reign of terror. Cohn taught me that Americans are hypocrites of the highest order. Without him, it would have required a lot longer to perceive the evils of Nixon.
2
Fine essay and review of the doc film.
One nitpick: Trump never really "thrived" in NYC during the 80s/90s, except as a NYPost gossip figure and as a suitably crass guest on Howard Stern's radio show.
His real estate ventures were on balance failures, boondoggles that his dad bailed out. He lost far more money than he made. Bankruptcy was his primary talent as a developer. By 2000 no respectable bank would lend him money.
And, as long-time NYers recall vividly, Trump significantly during those years was largely shunned by NY society as a vulgarian and transparent self-agrandizer. He was the very antithesis of an important figure. NYers were on to this guy decades ago, and they showed it by ostracizing him.
12
These creeps - the Jeffrey Epsteins, Donald Trumps, Roy Cohns, and Corey Lewandowskis - will always be amongst us. Let's stop thinking they're something special and elevating them to positions of powers, paying them huge amounts of money or giving them their own TV shows.
859
@furnmtz
I agree with your sentiments. And most NYT readers agree. But what about the millions who voted for Trump, elevating him to one of the most powerful positions in the world? Convince them, pull back the curtain. That's the challenge. Otherwise, we are spitting into the wind.
39
@furnmtz A BIG part of the problem is FoxNews and Rupert Murdoch. He uses his media outlets to push his agenda and keep the GOP in power. This is how the 1% get richer and keep the poor down.
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@furnmtz
Lock THEM up. Inmate trump has a swell ring to it. Tax returns Conald.
22
I have been saying forever-To understand Trump-look at Roy Cohn. As with Cohn or McCarthy, one hopes that it all catches up with Trump. It hasn't yet, but one hopes that decency will prevail.
But forget about acceptance by the Elites- I still question how good, decent Americans with supposedly good values, allow themselves to lavish praise and adulation on our totally amoral President. I ask the question all the time. It is a mystery to me.
4
For a minute with the election of Obama it looked like we were finally moving on and now we're back to all the old tired white men with mommy and daddy issues. Oy!
1
Michelle Goldberg asks the eternal question that goes far beyond one class of people, Why do we embrace and glamorize evil and those who glory in breaking the law? Well sometimes the law is an ass and needs to be broken, but where is the line that makes this choice necessary? Without some law breaking by good people like Martin Luther King Jr. we would have no civil rights legislation.
But I guess the question becomes in Roy Cohn's case why do people embrace the flaunting of laws just to show that they can do it and at what point does this become evil. Perhaps the answer lies at the point where people are grievously harmed and social order breaks down. The mafia Godfather is glorified and appears as sympathetic up holder of the family, but commits terrors on his enemies.
This is an important topic and I have gone on much oo long. But perhaps the first step to resolving this conundrum lies in self awareness, something that the truly evil just do not have.
1
"... hard to grasp just how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles, and, further, how tolerating it was itself taken as a sign of sophistication."
"used to be"?
This is a spot-on description of the Jeffrey Epstein -- and Trump -- dynamic. There has been lots of commentary about what others who had contact with him just "didn't see", which is laughable. They saw, and not only tolerated, but admired, colluded with, and advanced.
2
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton gave us Donald Trump. They deserve the blame and scorn.
Barack Obama deserves it because of his high-handedness: ruling with a phone and a pen to bypass congress, calling international treaties "executive agreements" to avoid ratification fights, reinterpreting settled law through "Dear Colleagues" letters, etc.
Hillary Clinton was the embodiment of mendacity and money grubbing. The list of particulars is too long to list here.
In short, they fouled the landscape so thoroughly that they allowed Donald Trump to opening. And the media aided and abetted him for ratings (See: Les Moonves of CBS).
Everything else in your article is deflection from the real source of blame for Donald Trump's presidency.
2
NYC continues to enable the rich and powerful. Both depravity (Epstein) and good old fashioned real estate greed. Its bi-partisan. The building of billionaires row and every other large development was approved under Giuliani, Bloomberg and De Blasio. Where are the new low and middle income developments built in the 40's and 50's?
Wrong! We got Trump because millions of smart, compassionate, God fearing, intelligent and constitutional folks voted for him to become our leader. Please do not conflate facts.
1
He won the Electoral College so he is president. That’s how it works.
He lost the popular vote because the majority of Americans aren’t like the unpleasant, and in many cases, hateful people you admire.
Note: Obama won the electoral college and the popular vote both times he ran.
1
Is it good to be “God fearing”?
1
As Bernard Shaw wrote in Heartbreak House: Money is not made in the light.
348
I don’t know if that is a universal truth. Shaw was a wit but let’s not quote him out of context. Warren Buffett for one is the proof of the opposite.
24
@Michael Manzi
"Some" money is not made in the light. Money, unto itself, is neither good nor evil - it's how one makes it and what one does with it.
Use Trump and his cabal as examples of what NOT to do and how NOT to make it.
29
@Michael Manzi
Shaw contradicted St. Timothy by saying it is the lack of money that is the root of all evil.
7
We live in a world now where everyone can be famous without having to be interesting.
So not having embarrassing yearbook photos or high school videos has become the great divider.
1
Friedrich Nietzsche celebrated the concept of the ubermensch, a man (and it's always men) that rejects the morality of society and who's demands that society adapt to his needs transforms civilization into a new paradigm of morality.
The Twentieth Century added an big red asterisks to the theory with the graves of over a hundred million. The ubermensch turned out not to be a philosopher with a grand moral insight elevating their vision of humanity and model of behavior over the rules of society, but rather just a thug and murderer who rejected the traditional morality because he simply did not care how getting what he wanted affected others.
Trump is a moral simpleton in the same vein as Josef Stalin. They both mouth the revolutionary rhetoric of their movement with an absolute disconnect between words and intentions. Stalin was never a Communist in the philosophical sense. He simply found it a convenient mechanism to steal the wealth of an entire nation and kill those that dared to challenge him. Similarly, Trump has no real moral connection to Conservationism or Christianity or the American Exceptionalism that he's used to forward his personal enrichment.
One further insight on this analogy. All of the men standing around Stalin clapping and nodding and feting the achievements of Uncle Joe while steadfastly ignoring the inconvenient atrocities occurring all around them. They believed in Communism as little as the men surrounding Trump believe in Conservatism.
15
So the Left is re-moralizing the public square? Not hardly. What is being done with social media is to try to ban those from public life who are particularly disliked by the Left with no effort at political or social consistency at all. What really distresses Mr. Goldberg here is that instead of running away and hiding, targets of the Left are increasingly taking a page from Roy Cohn's book and refusing to truckle to their hate, be it dancing on a television show, proudly being a public face of her father's administration, or rubbing the House Judiciary Committee's collective nose in their own circus ring. So, even though Roy Cohn's career did run aground due to his own unethical behavior, the example he set of his public presence among the elites in New York is still of use today.
2
What catapulted Trump to the Presidency? It was eight years of political correctness under President Obama. Middle America chose Trump's crass truth over Obama's eloquent lies. The Democrats have reacted to the Trump Presidency by lurching to the far left and engaging in countless, fruitless investigations. This strategy has only further solidified 45's base as well as causing many moderate Democrats to #walkaway from their party.
Blaming Roy Cohn completely misses the mark and is another example of the mass media failing to examine why and how Trump got elected. This lack of introspection by the media plays right into Trump's hands. It's a mistake that Trump will exploit and use to win re-election.
2
@William Aiken "Trump's truth..." If by "truth," you mean, "over 12,000 documented lies and counting..." As to Obama's "lies," the only supposed "lie" that the right trots out on every occasion is "you can keep your doctor"... which should have been, "you can keep your doctor if your health plan is a real health plan...." But thanks for playing!
Yes, but beware of Puritanism as a solution to laissez faire immorality. The excesses of Puritanism of the left (the worst of today's cancel culture and #MeToo movement), just like the excesses of Puritanism on the right (anti-abortion violence, the legislative agenda of the religious right) are deeply illiberal and soon become deeply unpopular with an American public that rightly distrusts earnest zealots. A culture that casts out Al Franken and Dave Chappelle for being insufficiently pure is one headed for isolation and self destruction. Its inability to accept criticism leads to hypocrisy that only those within the movement fail to see.
4
@Tom Meadowcroft This. A thousand times, this.
I lived in Greenwich, CT in the 1980s when Cohn also lived there. I saw him more than a few times in stores on Greenwich Avenue or the Post Road. I knew exactly who he was and what he had done over the years. Back then, I had fantasies of confronting him face to face to verbally spit at him. But, of course, that's not the "Greenwich way" - even Leona Helmsley, another Greenwich resident, was treated with a veneer of politeness. I loved the town, but hated how it attracted and effefctively protected some of the lowest vermin in American history. Even Boss Tweed had an estate there...
9
I grew up in Manhattan in the '60s all the way up to 2010. Ms. Goldberg gets a few things wrong: yes, genuine outrage was seen as uncool, but mostly as a reaction against the perpetually indignant 'when the revolution comes' talk from failed old hippies all around us. A few people went to the opposite extreme, and in the 1980s (not the financial crisis of 2008), the push for rectitude began on campuses everywhere, blossoming into the ugly nun-with-a-yardstick we have today. She is just as two-faced as Mr. Cohn, speaking of virtue but addicted to spite. The new old hippies are the far-right, who dream of a perfect world they can never deliver. Things haven't changed much.
3
I often wonder about the role of substance abuse in the craziness of the people around me. This abuse is widespread: young and old, rich and poor, literate and illiterate. The knee-jerk denial of the role comes so fast and is so common, there must be some truth to it.
Moreover, people do not read books anymore. As a result, they have cut themselves off from the past. At this moment I am reading Charles de Gaulle's The Enemy's House Divided, about Germany's collapse at the end of WWI. It gives an interesting point of view of the pettiness and stupidity of the rulers of Germany at that time. By reading history, one gets an interesting and soothing perspective on today's world, as one can compare and see the similarities and differences.
Craziness in society may be eternal. Al one can do is to try to shield oneself from it. Although one, of course, cannot shield oneself from the threatening and also generally denied climate change.
3
@What'sNew
I think Trump got his intoxication from the women wearing nothing but pearls.
How we got Trump and his sleaze is an important question. Why we keep the two is a more important one. And the answer to the more important question is very simple. We keep Trump and his sleaze because 53 Republican senators have Trump's back. It surprises me that Democrats don't call more attention this fact.
8
Sad for all, even our President. I’m not a perfect parent by far, but have you ever witnessed how rich kids have to grow up - I’m thinking of one family where the booze and charades ran non-stop, sunup to sundown. It can’t be good for any child, and I see it in our President. He needs attention and love.
@rebecca1048 Ummm, no. Too late. He's in his 70's, and has a big hole where his center should be - and at this point, there is no amount of attention or love that could fill that hole.... Just watch him at one of his "rallies."
A brief philosophical tangent, for a moment....
There is no such thing, truly, as "fame". Or power. Or memory. In the context of even 100 years most of the world is forgotten. Who do we remember, truly, from a century ago? Now extend the timeline to 200, or, dare I say, 2000 years.
Trump is an example of a "human" being fully obsessed with temporal fame and fortune. Roy Cohn was as well.
By comparison, our last President, Barack Obama, was far less interested in power and fame in my opinion. I think he understood that we are simply stewards. A wind through the trees.
I'm an architect by profession. The greatest architecture is made by architects who understand how tragic and delusional our profession is. This idea extends to all the professions.
Men and women who have some understanding that we are just brief moments in the eons, are more likely to demonstrate love and care and tolerance to others in our micro-flash of life in the cosmos. Those of us aware of beginnings and ends are more likely to care for the earth, and to help sustain vibrant oceans, clean forests, and benevolent governments.
Corruption begins with a delusion of the temporal, and of immediate gain.
Our President, currently, is immersed in the raw existential sewage of the Now, as Roy Cohn was. Hopefully, we will be able to rid ourselves of our Midas, and the current slate of possession and power-obsessed Republicans for the good of our country and the world, in 2020.
9
@David Kesler....thank you David...well put and self-evident truths they be.
1
@Russell C. Thx Russell!
@David Kesler
Yes, that is the human condition viewed large. But we live small. An architect who creates something functional and beautiful has served (living) humanity well. As does a good teacher, doctor, or candlestick maker. Or a good public prosecutor. The alternative is barbarism.
If you have trouble seeing that, get some help.
1
Years ago I consumed "Citizen Cohn," a highly-recommended biography of the man. How he died reflects upon the way he lived. A great read!
4
Thanks for explaining that the "good old days" were actually not so good.
1
My friend who lives in NYC and moves in some ‘elite’ circles says Ivanka and Jared will not be accepted back into ‘society’. I’m sure she’s wrong. Money still buys access and their time in DC has just made the Trumps and Kushners wealthier.
1
I have no quarrel with Michelle Goldberg’s piece about Roy Cohn and the New York elites of his era. But that world was a minuscule set—less than the 1% if you will—of the world of New Yorkers at the time. I was born and raised in New York City during that time and, just like today, people were law-abiding, trying to support their families, and hoping their children would have a better life. It was a postwar generation of veterans, immigrants, and first generation young people who obeyed the law, worked hard, and built this city.
My mother listened to the McCarthy hearings on the radio and everyone despised him and Roy Cohn, but their crimes did not filter down to the upstanding citizens of New York City. Let’s keep that in mind.
9
@Barbara
The cultural elite - Warhol, Capote, and the beautiful people who graced magazine covers, etc. were to be sure < 1%. But they influenced a huge number of people, perhaps college students the most. And those people became leaders and managers. Of course, there were other, less pernicious influences from the 1% as well. But society does get disproportionately influenced by by the glitterati. Even the avant-garde of the NYC scene leaves a wide wake.
I left New York City in 1975 to join the military. I was a very liberal Democrat and worked for George McGovern in 1972. My opinion of Trump in 1975 was very favorable. He was the guy who somehow managed to bring back the Wollman skating rink in Central Park to its former glory and create a fine hotel next to Grand Central Station, the Grand Hyatt. Now, I realize that my very favorable opinion of him was due to my innocence in not understanding the way Trump operated and the tremendous publicity machine that he employed. If I had known that he would become a pal of Roy Cohn, my world would have been shattered.
311
@Robert Lacks
How did you feel about in the 1990s when his first wife stated in a deposition that after being separated for quite some time, he stormed into the family residence where he no longer lived, beat her (punching her repeatedly and ripping out tufts of her hair), and raped her.
IF you haven't read about it,you can look up the Vanity Fair article on Google.
Wouldn't it be nice to have an informed electorate.
87
@Robert Lacks
Had you stayed a bit longer, or followed your roots, you would have seen the REAL TRUMP many times over. The only reason he has succeeded as a crooked grifter is his marketing. The propaganda and lies that he generates just keep getting worse, more vile and more dangerous to this nation. People in "fly over" States mostly never heard of his crimes, only his lame showmanship as a "Reality TV" host. That says much about their lack of critical thinking and that absence in many of your neighbors, especially on the panhandle.
54
@Robert Lacks
In the early 1970s the Trumps were accused (and eventually settled with a de facto admission) of anti-black discriminatory rental practices with their many apartments. Bad behavior was apparent if you were paying attention to the full story. You weren't.
43
Thanks. This is a much needed, insightful commentary on the high-life of New York (and much of our country).
I admire your capacity to see your own formative experiences, your cultural inclinations in context. And your ability to step back as ask us to see it with you.
Warhol’s description of Cohn’s anti-communist speeches being played at his birthday party as “exciting,” is revelatory. Warhol, in particular, has the privilege (not born with) and background to get the joke. In his own work he abstracts people into their beautiful bodily oddities (see his video portraits) so I’m completely unsurprised by his appreciation. Cohn’s anti-communist speeches are a performance, and taken in the abstract, seen from a certain angle, we can see them as beautiful, a man’s crazy rantings. Trump plays on this type of performance too, like a professional wrestling announcer. How many people thought Trump wouldn’t actually pursue the policies he espoused? Many. There was a lot of talk about that in 2016. The problem, and terror, which Warhol was only concerned with in the abstract, is the tangible, physical, concrete harm these men do. Warhol would not have thought Cohn’s speeches exciting if he had to deal with their real world consequences, so he had the privilege of musing over their aesthetic qualities. I’m not passing moral judgement on that. As a society we need to be able to process the beauty of destruction. As an artist myself, though, its relevant to consider how Art enables, legitimizes, otherwise unpalatable social movements (see Fascist propaganda, et al).
4
@Aaron: People like Roy Cohn battle their own demons for life.
Roy Cohn undoubtedly helped to create the Trump we are forced to deal with, but Cohn does not explain both the solid base of support among a third of the electorate or the virtually complete and craven surrender of the entire Republican Party to Trumpism. Those are different questions, entirely separate from whether Cohn was a monster who was acceptable to "polite" New York society.
10
@Jason Shapiro: There is no reality to the thinking of those who believe the US is "under God". Trump's entourage believes his miraculous election occurred by divine intervention.
I had experiential proof that NY society found Roy Cohen to be a form of entertainment for their ennui.
I became friendly with a couple in the 1980’s. The wife’s mother was Roy Cohn’s next door neighbor and found him to be an amusing curiosity as apparently her friends did.
At the time, I was appalled hearing Roy Cohen mentioned in anything less than disparaging terms from a liberal cohort. Perhaps we lost our moral compass more years ago than we’d like to admit. Shameful. Thanks for another fine opinion piece from Michelle Goldberg.
2
The root of the old French word “village” Is based on “villain” or “vile.” A dense collection of humans creates the caldron of bad or sometimes evil behavior. When we packed together in an area, we tend to fight, gamble, kill, have bars, drug use, etc. and their lots of strangers. The elite tend to have a fascination for this wicked stuff, maybe they are bored, and need entertainment.
This story shows that NYC had a large collection of villains; in some areas it still does. Thank goodness there are more good people in NYC to counterbalance theses villains.
Interesting piece. Thank you. Looking forward to seeing the movie. But, Ms. Goldberg, really I doubt if people have changed much. The boundaries of who is in and who is out may differ with time, but the unfortunate human desire? need? To put in those boundaries doesn’t seem to change. Clearly I am not part of elite New York society so I wouldn’t really know, but would an anti abortion evangelical have a place at the party? Imagine what decent humans are excluded now while some corrupt people are celebrated. Still happening I am sure. Just updated rules.
4
@Jk I would disagree with you to the extent that you are assuming that an anti-abortion evangelical is a "decent human."
I now happily live in the Raleigh, NC Triangle area after a career in big global cities. I loved that life and now am grateful to be in what sophistocates might call a 'slow middle-American' city. In my deepest heart, I will always be a New York City girl, even knowing its magnificence as well as sinister and carnal underbelly. But, NYC has no monopoly on greed, corruption or hypocrisy. These are rooted in the human condition and we manifest it in different permutations wherever we build, live and attempt socialization - even in heartlands like my lovely Raleigh. Kudos to Michelle Goldberg, though, for her revealing piece that intelligently peels back one of our cheap and shameful curtains that uniquely manifested in New York City.
2
Having lived in many places I can assure everyone that sleaze is sleaze, no matter how you package it or what city it is. It’s in every country. The only thing to do with sleaze is to flush it down the toilet.
The last line encapsulates the New York of every era- indeed- the upper strata of any major metropolis. Like New York City- these other, less grander cities weren't more forgiving back then (or now)- they are just more forgiving of certain people.
That is the perfect description of the elite society of any age and any place , in our history.
1
I think Cohn just broke the only rule that really mattered to them: Don't steal from rich folk.
We must acknowledge that If American politics sees , trump presidency is a very good thing to happen to our democracy and showed us exactly where we are so weak, we will become more stronger from this nightmare.
For that at this moment Congress must not squander the opportunity( they did well after Watergate), however signs for today is not hopeful.
We are all witnessing how Trump administration, render our laws and oversights and check and balances not functional. this requires serious re-structuring from federal government side.
Loosing this opportunity will only invite next Trump.
3
Put me down as a progressive who years for a revival of an appreciation for moral character.
6
Generally, people who are drawn to fame (or infamy), power, money, social climbing, are broken people with a lot of emptiness they are trying to fill. It does not seem surprising that Roy Cohn had so much appeal to them. And Bill Barr is apparently equally able to put principle and ethics aside.
What is surprising is how many people were convinced that Barr was a decent choice for AG. He was able to fool a lot of people.
34
I can see how certain people like Trump and Cohn became amoral, outrageously greedy and powerful during the wild times of the 60s and 70s when values and social norms were changing so rapidly that a Roy Cohn could get acceptance and social status within progressive circles. But
in my experience, as a person growing up in the idealism of the 60s and 70s, many of us retained and grew further into that idealism rather than devolving into chaotic amorality or uncaring greed and avarice. It is those with money, power and prestige who get all the attention and become emblematic of our whole generation. This has lead to a false, over- generalization, a sort of stereotype of hippie-turns-capitalist that seems to permeate the media.
Why don't reporters and media folks cover the many many people out here in the real, non media driven, non uber wealthy world who are doing good works, fighting for racial, climate and economic justice? And how about noticing all us unsung dedicated artists, musicians and writers who keep at their creativity without fame or money or any of the nonsense people like Warhol promoted?
We live modest, normal lives. We have helped pave the way for the younger generations to evolve further.
I believe what we are witnessing in Trump is the result of unfettered greed and amorality that those with money and power have perpetuated in our country. They are not us, we are not them.
43
@Ellen S.
Lovely response. Michelle is writing about the NYC of NY Post's Page 6, not the one we lived in. For every Studio 54 there were many Studio Rivbeas, CBGBs and the Riverside Church. for every Warhol there was Richard Foreman, Patti Smith and the Guerrilla Girls, for every Roy Cohn there was the Center for Constitutional Rights and Shirley Chisholm, for every Trump there was a Gordon Matta Clarke.
4
Very interesting. I have gotten to know this story better and better as it keeps popping up and for good reason. I really enjoyed this. Thanks!
5
This piece makes fine points about Roy Cohn; some of the best about Andy Warhol and the New York club scene.
It's no accident that Warhol described Cohn’s birthday party, with TV monitors showing Cohn’s anti-Communist speeches, as "exciting, it was the best thing". Warhol treated human beings as his "artistic" experiments. The only thing Warhol cared about was if his experiments died of an overdose, or committed suicide by jumping out a window at his loft, and he wasn't there to film it.
Where this piece runs into trouble is in justifying "outrage culture" and the intolerant left (where Warhol is still revered). Plenty of us are not old, yet not Millennials. As Gen-X, we missed most of the toxic radicalism at both ends.
There's no "generation gap" informed morality in "outrage culture". It's inherently immoral, and not used against elites.
"Outrage culture" is a radical Cultural Revolution style leftist movement protecting a new elite of highly educated and entitled who vilify and destroy average people.
"Outrage culture" and its inquisitors routinely destroy college professors who are neither celebrities nor elite, but simply dare to ask questions like whether in a liberal democracy strict codes of dress for Halloween college campus events violate the spirit of free speech. For this, they're mobbed, driven from their jobs, and blacklisted.
"Outrage culture" is something Roy Cohen would both recognize and laud. Its inquisitors operate no differently than he did.
13
Roy Cohn mentored Trump but he is not how we got Trump. The celebrity president is a direct consequence of America's inch-deep, media-obsessed culture. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Access Hollywood, etc. and in recent years Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It's a sad state of affairs when the sharpest political commentary is to be found on late night TV shows. Elites have always been eager to embrace or at least tolerate anything or anyone that amuses, enables and enriches them. So long as life remains good. Negative consequences be damned. The future of America now depends on purple state voters doing the right thing in 2020, which may be too much to hope for in a country where advertising-driven media outlets deftly push all the right buttons to keep viewers tuned in to what used to be referred to as the idiot box, which is ultimately what gave us the idiot president.
28
Every dog has his day. Cohn had a public contempt for gays. Then, he died of AIDS. Well played.
8
Elites, basically, mean money, which can lead to power, property, etc. Elites are pretty happy with their lot; particularly compared to the rest of us. So, why wouldn't the elite do all they can to change nothing for the 'greater good' and use their great resources to gain ever more treasure?
Of course, this world is lead by greed; which is not as bad and damning as the common people allowing it to happen (actually, even embracing and promoting it, for they too want the riches).
2
Essentially Roy Cohn was a momma's boy who never had to grow up.
3
Trump is a throwback to a previous age: Jazz, Broadway, Nathan Detroit, vaudeville, burlesque, Sky Masterson, floating crap games. Back in an era when gossip columnists wielded cutthroat social and political power in the tabloid press through manipulation and blackmail from their "office" at table 50 in the Stork Club where the clientele were the wildlife and the hunter was Walter Winchell.
That is the social milieu of Roy Cohn: gay hypocrite who equated homosexuality with communism during McCarthy's "Lavender Scare," manipulator, prevaricator - while he ate off your plate - who ruined reputations and wrecked lives as McCarthy's stooge.
Later, Cohn was a sought-after criminal lawyer with many political and law enforcement connections who represented such noble Gothamites as Carmine Galante, John Gotti, and another wannabe denizen of Broadway: Donald J. Trump.
9
I live in proximity to two of Trump's garish properties. The lure of celebrity draws otherwise decent people to be in the presence of this despicable scummy celebrity.
Is this a singular American phenomenon or does the attainment of fame wipe away your misdeeds?
3
I remember when The Rolling Stones gave Lee Atwater a guitar as a gift. I wish I didn't.
18
And Jerry Hall is married to Rupert Murdock.
2
Let's recall that George Steinbrenner and the Yankees were also part of this amoral clique that thought they ran New York. Yankee fans, look in the mirror and make your excuses as to how and why you support them, even to this day.
7
This was very interesting. I knew who Cohn was, as my parents explained all his despicable behavior, along with McCarthy’s witch hunts. (We lived in WI then and my Mom took around a petition against McCarthy). Do in the ‘80s, I was aware of Cohn being a celebrity and never could understand it. He ruined people’s lives. I still don’t get it; for my parents taught me well. Ethical behavior is everything, along with one’s good name.
33
Come to think of it, does Ms. Goldberg have any handle on American society at all?
"During Warhol’s heyday, the amoral celebration of fame was considered glamorous and edgy...It wasn’t until the intertwined ascents of social media and millennial progressives that the zeitgeist really turned."
Hmm...perhaps Ms. Goldberg has not heard of the Kardashians or Kanye West?
9
"Roy Cohn Is How We Got Trump"
No. Barack Obama is how we got Trump.
And Hillary Clinton sealed the deal by confirming that the cocktail circuit leftists literally despise more than half their fellow citizens.
Trump's election was an own goal by the radical left.
It had to happen.
The progressive left agenda iis intended to destroy American tradition and transform the country from a popular republic into a European style state-socialism entity - the polar opposite of American values.
4
@Objectivist
Could you ease on Commie fear , Roy Cohn has already quashed that in his hey days.
Could you wake up a bit.
The enemy is the decent republic with a strong democracy are.
1- The regimes which allows strong leaders to grab power ( Fascism, Communism).
2- Military junta
3- Banana republics.
Once in a while you should accept , America was , is and never will be better nation and country in every aspect of measurable standards than the Scandinavia and Switzerland and Benelux and yes they are socialist elements in their governing.
You are insisting like Dodge is a better car than Mercedes and it is not .
“Polar opposite” does not mean what you seem to think it means
@su
Perhaps so, but we can, at least, speak and write English coherently.
Your assertion that the European socialist countries are demonstrably bett erthan the US is proven to be hilariously incorrect by the fact that thousands of Americans are not lining up for permanent residence visas in Belgium.
And why would they, Americans don't like to eat horse meat.
That Cohen and Warhol were seen at parties was like having a gorilla or a giraffe at a party. Odd things to be seen as no one talked of Cohen as a freaky liar. And people talked as if what Warhol did was a kind of art when it was as empty as he was. They are both symbols of the American decline. That's been going on since we took on the mantle of savior of the world.
8
Are we still a popular republic when two of the last three presidents did not win the popular vote?
2
Michelle does not mention how the media often becomes the sycophants. They publicize, as if they were paid reps, these arrogant corrupt narcissistic people while denigrated others with far fewer “problems.” Their treatment of Hillary as a woman compared to Trump was classic. Morning Joe loved him in 2016. Every so-called “normal” network attacked the Hillary e-mails while ignoring Trump’s corrupt history. The media still glorifies the “bad boys” as they did Bonnie and Clyde a century ago. Al Franken got treated like Harvey Weinstein, George W Bush is forgiven for enabling a disastrous war and the killing of 100,000 Iraqis, the press was thrilled with “shock and awe”). Bush wrecked the lives of millions of Americans catering to the greedy and left a trillion dollar debt but Jimmy Carter still somehow is considered a failed president. Reagan is touted as a nice guy despite the evil his policies, breaking unions, eliminating the “fairness doctrine,”have caused to most Americans. Rupert Murdoch is not shunned as he should be. The press wants to be in the room with the bad and greedy ones too so they bend their knee, look the other way, please their sponsors and hope to be invited to the right parties.
51
Your views and research are always unique and inquisitively sum up the facts. Whenever I see your column I read it, or see you on MSNBC, I tune in. Thanks for your exceptional opinions and reporting.
3
Joe Pesci can play him in the movie.
2
Really great article Michelle! U grew up on the tail end of that NYC culture, and you’ve captured it so concisely!
Incredibly, it now pervades and lives on in a mutated lower class incarnation of rabid trump supporters.
4
“Today, wealth and power can still buy horrible people a degree of social acceptance. Sean Spicer lied to the American people for a living and is now on “Dancing With the Stars.” Ivanka Trump is still reportedly invited to celebrity weddings.”
To cite Sean Spicer and Ivanka Trump as “horrible people” who benefit from their proximity to power and wealth instead of say Jeffrey Epstein is both ridiculous and wholly inappropriate.
Spicer isn’t wealthy. He clumsily lied about crowd size and was treated shabbily by the President until he resigned. He is comical or pathetic - not “horrible”.
Ivanka defines privilege. If that is “horrible” then 1/5 of Ivy League grads fit that bill.
Its this type of unfair characterization that imperils the civility upon which our republic is built.
While the President is magnitudes worse in this respect, I expect more from the normally thoughtful columnists of the NYT.
2
“Clumsily lied?” Knowingly lied.
2
This is typical Michelle Goldberg. Our generation is pure; it's predecessors were evil. Where precisely are the accomplishments that justify this level of condescension.
2
A little wobbly, these neat dichotomies of when and where evil was tolerated, and by who. If memory serves, a wealthy, serial pedophile who penetrated into and was accepted, for years, by the very core of not only New York's elite society but also into pockets of the nations's political community and elite academic institutions, just hung himself in a jail cell. And whose final action to a life dedicated to evil was the cause of great relief among today's cultural power brokers. If Donald Trump has been elevated from a self-aggrandizing societal figure to the Presidency, and by the assent of 60 million of our fellow citizens, how does this fit into Ms. Goldberg's thesis that the bad old days have been washed clean by a new generation of those guided by a more urgent moral code?
4
I was just thinking earlier this evening that Trump's signature bully, bluster, stonewall and obstruct style was something he learned from Roy Cohn. The Lewandowski stonewalling of the Judiciary Committee and Justice Department disclosure obstruction of the intelligence whistle blower's charges are standard Cohn tactics from his post-McCarthy years in New York. Cohn's game was to avoid accountability for himself and smear his opponents while defying the rule of law.
5
Every tine wants to blame Trump on someone or something. Trump is the result of pretending that a little corruption is ok and ignoring the real needs of the people while dividing us is the way to win power and not by appealing to our better angles and actually making peoples lives better. The GOP has made a science of this king of slash and burn politics and Trump is their standard bearer and their big donors love it! Corruption is now cool. Cohn would be proud of his protege.
1
Have you no decency sir.
-Joseph Welch.
This meme sticks in my head after this article.
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@mpb, Decency was a weakness to Cohn.
1
The epiphany if it actually occurred, was merely an intermission between the acts of a never-ending opera.
After his conviction for sexually abusing a 14 year old girl, Hollywood and NYC continued to embrace Jeffery Epstein.
For example, guests at a party honoring Prince Andrew two years later included Katie Couric, Charlie Rose, Woody Allen, Chelsea Handler and George Stephanopoulos, while elite universities such as MIT and Harvard are still trying to justify the millions they accepted from him after the fact.
9
Hard to imagine how much depravity ‘used to be tolerated?’ America is not still tolerating it with this depraved regime? Yes it is. And tolerating open degradation, not even disguised.
“If you are under 35 or 40, it’s probably hard to grasp just how much depravity used to be tolerated in fancy circles, and, further, how tolerating it was itself taken as a sign of sophistication.”
4
Roy Cohn was a sadist right down to his fingertips. And when one looks at all the often not just cruel, but gratuitously cruel words and deeds emanating from Trump - the personal insults pertaining to people’s physical traits and the psychopathic lack of empathy even for children, the similarities to Roy Cohn are there for all to see.
Trump has always claimed (without proof) to have excelled in all his academic studies, but from what I can tell, what he really excelled at was an in depth study of Roy Cohn and his methods. He has got that down to a tee.
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"... just how decadent ... New York society used to be." USED to be?
Consider, if you will, Jeffrey Epstein. And, for that matter, Donald Trump. Or, if we're really being honest here, the Clintons.
No, elites are elites because they're rich and/or powerful. And power corrupts. Please spare me the faux outrage.
2
Each Goldberg column gives me another reason to despise the globalist press. It's the Goldbergs and Progressives who are the new McCarthys, a la Messing and McCormack's recent activity and the continuing boycott of Chick Fil A.
2
Evil begets evil.
Evil attracts evil.
Yet there is no honor among thieves.
Vote Blue. At least there is less evil on the left.
9
All the evil steps Trump has taken on behalf of the US power establishment are no worse than all the many warmongering, racist, ecocidal and corrupt things Hillary supporters insisted everyone look past because nobody’s perfect and “purity is bad.” The only difference is that his establishment politics have a slightly uglier face, usually expressed via his Twitter account. Clinton knew how to look into the camera and recite the right lines with the right Black Hole Sun grin plastered across her bloodthirsty neocon face, and Trump doesn’t. Neoliberal Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than ever win by promoting a progressive candidate as doing so would see an end to the DNC's corporate gravy train of donors - which post Clinton's abandonment of the working class c. 1992, have continuously filled the coffers of a corrupt organization.
2
Ms Goldberg, just because you were not living here it does not mean that inconvenient truths which vividly contradict your interpretations of New York at that time did not happen. During the worst years of the horror of AIDS, activists routinely risked their jobs, friends, family and sometimes their lives, to confront life threatening hypocrisy among the elite who held power.
It’s good that you now understand how Roy Cohn was enabled but please view another documentary - How to Survive a Plague.
2
MG should also be talking Nixon/Reagan/ Bush family, all of whom hired enablers like Cohen.
The Watergate crowd, the Iran-Contra conspirators, the Iraq war creators, if you need your memory refreshed.
Trump learned from the masters.
3
Rudy qualifies as a linear political descendent of Cohn. He has the ear of the president and has shown no restraint in aiding and abetting misprision of felonies. A likely runner-up as most favored corrupt lawyer is attorney general Barr who lacks the restraint of Jeff Sessions. There were moral, ethical and legal boundaries that Sessions would not breach. Barr has none.
Democrats lack a national leader who can give a singular voice to the outrage and danger. Trump feasts on this.
3
Republicans need to be removed and replaced with Democrats. Once and for all.
4
@Angel, And they will be as as corrupt as Republicans, in a different way.