Dick Cohen -- turning the dial up -- past "11" even -- to "13" on the wrongness amp

Michael Bérubé is relieved to know that Post columnist Richard Cohen has broken through the barrier of the twelve kinds of wrongness Aristotle describes in the Nicodeman Ethics and ventured into the final frontier of wrongness to which few columnists have gone before.

Well, for once we have good news, people. Richard Cohen has found yet another way to be wrong! The final frontier! There are no more lands to conquer!

No, it's not about Stephen Colbert qua Stephen Colbert. Reasonable people can disagree about Colbert's performance at the White House Correspondents'? Dinner. I personally thought it was a thing of beauty, a joy forever, like that Keats fellow once said. But chacun á son goût, as we epistemological relativists say in our Frenchified "?English"? departments. Rather, what makes Richard Cohen'?s latest column so brilliantly, spectacularly wrong is its opening paragraph:

First, let me state my credentials: I am a funny guy. This is well known in certain circles, which is why, even back in elementary school, I was sometimes asked by the teacher to "?say something funny" -- as if the deed could be done on demand.

Monsieur Bérubé then goes on to paint a psychological portrait of Cohen that leaves little doubt as to the source of his inveterate wrongness. Bravo, professor, bravo.