I used to be skeptical of Roger Cohen because his NY Times columnist photo was a TOTAL rip-off of “The Moustache of Understanding’s” photo (see Fig. 1) and I just couldn’t believe he would step to Friedman like that, taking the hand-clasp right to his face, unless he wanted to be the same kind of wishy-washy, centrist, “sensible” person who winds up bringing a lot of ruin to our sweet earth thanks to a wide-eyed, fatally attractive optimism.

So I immediately told myself “Never read Roger Cohen, no matter what,” but then I unwittingly broke my vow when I came across an article about Gaza in the New York Review of Books by some guy named “Roger Cohen” — who I assumed was a different Roger Cohen than “Ol’ Mr. Hand-Clasp Biter” because the article was so sensible.

But it was the original Roger Cohen!

Now he’s calling out Jeff Goldberg for turning Ahmadinejad into Hitler:

Now here comes Netanyahu, in an interview with his faithful stenographer Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, spinning the latest iteration of Israel’s attempt to frame Iran as some Nazi-like incarnation of evil:

“You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

I must say when I read those words about “the wide-eyed believer” my mind wandered to a recently departed “decider.” But I’m not going there.

SSSSNAP. Dr. Go-Offsky, is that you? You’re stepping to Jeffrey Goldberg, the man with all the ponies?

Goldberg fires back, calling Cohen a blah blah blah … listen, I’m trying to wean myself off following these journalist vs. journalist fights — they’re fun, but in the end reading them doesn’t seem to improve my quality of life or even really deepen my understanding of the issues involved. I wind up feeling all negative and bitter and whatnot.

Just wanted to give a shout-out to Roger Cohen for “speaking truth to ponies.”

Also, I notice he’s changed his NY Times photo. I guess Friedman made him blink.