General Discussion

joeybee12

(56,177 posts) Sun Jul 22, 2012, 05:53 AM Jul 2012

Alexander Cockburn Has Died

Alexander Cockburn, the radical and acerbic journalist who had written longtime columns in both the conservative Wall Street Journal and the leftist outlet the Nation, died Friday in Germany. He was 71.

The influential writer had been fighting cancer, according to his editor, Katrina vanden Heuvel.

Unlike another prominent writer, Christopher Hitchens, with whom he had often been compared, Cockburn did not share the story of his illness. It was a rare quiet move in a career characterized by a thirst for public debate.

For 28 years, Cockburn wrote the Beat the Devil column in the Nation. His last column for the publication will appear July 30.

"Alexander reveled in being a troublemaker, and his provocative, polemical, elegant style usually engaged us and his reporting and analysis opened windows onto under-unreported news," Vanden Heuvel, the Nation's editor and publisher, said in an email to The Times. "I often felt I wasn't doing my job right if we didn't get a dozen or so subscription cancellations as a result of some Cockburn column."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-0722-alexander-cockburn-20120722,0,1547586.story

Didn't seem like a favorite here at DU, but he did lead an interesting career. RIP

8 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Alexander Cockburn Has Died (Original Post) joeybee12 Jul 2012 OP

No R.I.P. for Alex Cockburn eridani Jul 2012 #1

Agreed. No R.I.P. The world's a better place without him. n/t shira Jul 2012 #2

I think you are confused. Luminous Animal Jul 2012 #4

Not at all... shira Jul 2012 #6

My apologies... I assumed that you mistook the essay in Eridani's link for criticism when Luminous Animal Jul 2012 #8

I always found him thought-provoking even when I hifiguy Jul 2012 #3

I disagreed with him a lot but always found him thought provoking. GoneOffShore Jul 2012 #5

RIP dionysus Jul 2012 #7

eridani

(51,907 posts)

1. No R.I.P. for Alex Cockburn

Reply to joeybee12 (Original post)

Mon Jul 23, 2012, 04:24 AM

Jul 2012

http://www.nationofchange.org/no-rip-alex-cockburn-1342970838

Alex was a scourge of the capitalist elites and their fawning apologists in the corporate media, of course, but he also played an important role as a merciless critic of those so-called progressive journalists who lost their courage, sold out or were simply wrong on an issue. If it was just a matter of disagreeing about a specific issue -- say climate change, where Alex remained a skeptic -- he could be courteous and respectful in his dismissal of an argument, but woe to those, like the late Christopher Hitchens, or even his own editors at the Nation magazine, whom Alex concluded had sold out their own leftist principles.

<snip>

As a journalist who once wrote that his early Catholic school education had effectively “inoculated” him against religion, I’m sure Alex is not “resting in peace” and idling about in some heavenly Eden, but in the event that both he and I are wrong and there is an afterlife, I’m equally sure that Alex isn't just ambling around in a toga there. As he demonstrated with his scathing demolition of the banking industry and the LIBOR scandal (penned on his deathbed and published shortly before he died, but conveniently ignored by the New York Times in its Sunday obit) he'd more likely be busy continuing to fire off his always devastatingly witty editorial fusillades at the powerful and their journalistic enablers here on this mortal coil.

shira

(30,109 posts)

2. Agreed. No R.I.P. The world's a better place without him. n/t

Reply to eridani (Reply #1)

Mon Jul 23, 2012, 05:11 PM

Jul 2012

Luminous Animal

(27,310 posts)

4. I think you are confused.

Reply to shira (Reply #2)

Mon Jul 23, 2012, 05:31 PM

Jul 2012

shira

(30,109 posts)

6. Not at all...

Reply to Luminous Animal (Reply #4)

Mon Jul 23, 2012, 05:53 PM

Jul 2012

Alexander Cockburn was, until yesterday, the living embodiment of the bridge between the far Right – in particular, the Jew-baiting far Right – and the far Left.

With his friend, Lindi Jeffrey St Clair, he founded a pretty revolting online web-zine called Counterpunch. Here, Bob from Brockley reproduced a comment which, sums that venture up nicely:

Excuse me, running “journalism” by the Holocaust-denier (and apparent collaborationist with the Lukashenko dictatorship) Israel Shamir is not vile? Making a cause celebre of fellow Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel is not vile? Providing a soapbox for Bosnia genocide denial is not vile? Cheering on Ahmadinejad’s electoral fraud is not vile? Cheering on the mass-murdering jihadis in Iraq is not vile? Engaging in vulgar Jew-baiting of public officials is not vile? Xenophobic talk about how Washington is “occupied” by Israel is not vile? Running fraudulent interviews without bothering to check them out first is not vile? How about denying climate change? Is that vile enough for you?

Counterpunch was also the happy home to Eric Walburg, a neo Nazi, and a regular publisher of the Holocaust denier, Gilad Atzmon.

more...
http://hurryupharry.org/2012/07/22/alexander-cockburn-of-far-right-left-website-counterpunch-dead/