I have read Roger Cohen in The New York Times over the years but began reading him in earnest during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, some op-eds and most often his brilliant blog posts on the matches and the game of soccer. The pieces were elegant and learned, almost too much for the assignment.
The trouble, of course, is that he is published by The International Herald Tribune, not regularly by the Times.
It is a treasure to see him, if not in the pages of the Times, then at least on its website. Today’s piece by him is one of the most graceful I’ve read by him. I would quote him, except I would not know where to begin and Fair Use laws prevents me from plopping the whole piece here.
Let me offer one paragraph. You’ll have to go read the rest:
It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black “anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races.”
Leave a Reply