But the problem stems from some overblown and sloppy work by Media Matters. For example, Media Matters criticizes Cohen for:
Richard Cohen faulted "some of my colleagues" who "caricatured" former Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign "as a serial exaggerator, a fibber, a pretender . . . Cohen himself, however, contributed to this "caricature" of Gore in 2000, even after he acknowledged that the portrayal of Gore as dishonest was baseless.
At the time, however, Cohen himself frequently propagated the image of Gore as an "exaggerator." For example, in his October 12, 2000, Post column, Cohen wrote:
[S]ome of the same people and editorial organs now get the vapors when confronting one of Al Gore's exaggerations. Gore, for some reason, is a liar while Reagan was just a marvelous storyteller.
I am not going to sit here and defend Gore's exaggerations. I wish he wouldn't make them. I wish he did not say he had been to the Texas fires when he hadn't. . . . I wish he had not compared his dog's prescription plan to his mother-in-law's. I wish he had been a bit more modest about his role in developing the Internet or, way back, in describing his Vietnam War experience.
In fact, Gore never claimed that he "had been to the Texas fires" -- a reference to wildfires that broke out in Parker County, Texas, in 1998. Gore simply stated that he went "down to Texas" at the time the fires broke out -- not to the site of the actual fires, as Cohen implied.
Riiight. And Bush and Cheney never connected Saddam Husseim to Al Qaida. This is absurd from Media Matters. They can not be serious on this point. And in fact, Cohen never even mentions James Lee Witt. Wanker of the Day material? You gotta be kidding.
And the rest of the Media Matters post is similar overblown overreaction.
Media Matters is an essential organization and Atrios is an essential blogger. But they are better when they work on REAL problems in the Media, instead of overblowing nonissues.