{"id":2879,"date":"2012-07-22T12:14:42","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T12:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2025-09-28T19:41:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T19:41:23","slug":"alexander-cockburn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=2879","title":{"rendered":"Alexander Cockburn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The columnist – a true left wing socialist, quasi-communist. For several years he had a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. He used to remind me of the late Christopher Hitchens, who according to the article below, he didn't like. Not pure leftist enough, I guess.<\/p>\n

Like Hitchens, he was a clever writer but with no real depth.<\/p>\n

Alexander Cockburn, Left-Wing Writer, Is Dead at 71<\/a><\/p>\n

Mr. Cockburn had, at various times, regular columns in ideologically disparate publications like The Nation and The Wall Street Journal and became known as an unapologetic leftist, condemning what he saw as the outrages of the right but also castigating the American liberal establishment when he thought it was being timid.<\/p>\n

Wayne Barrett, who worked with Mr. Cockburn at The Village Voice in the 1980s, recalled him in a telephone interview as \u201ca punishing writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a remarkable mind and he could write so quickly,\u201d Mr. Barrett added.<\/p>\n

At The Voice, Mr. Cockburn (pronounced COE-burn) wrote, with James Ridgeway, a political column and another, called Press Clips, in which he critiqued the news media, and often mocked what he saw as the ethical failings of journalists.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Cockburn, an often-fierce critic in the columns of Israeli policies in the Middle East, was dismissed from The Voice in 1984 after The Boston Phoenix reported that he had accepted a $10,000 grant from a group that its critics called pro-Arab \u2014 David Schneiderman, The Voice editor at the time, suggested that the grant created a conflict of interest.<\/p>\n

Evidently a leftist happy to take money from whoever. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The columnist – a true left wing socialist, quasi-communist. For several years he had a weekly column in the Wall Street Journal. He used to remind me of the late Christopher Hitchens, who according to the article below, he didn't like. Not pure leftist enough, I guess. Like Hitchens, he was a clever writer but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2879"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5422,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2879\/revisions\/5422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}