Richard Cohen, tenured columnist at the Washington Post, is one of the worst. He recently blamed Miley Cyrus and twerking for the Steubenville rape, which he doesn’t think was a “classic rape”…and he thinks the two most important things you should know from it is that 1) there was no intercourse, and 2) only two men were involved. Really, the man is a world-class ignoramus. I rather enjoyed this beat-down.

But I’ve despised Cohen for years, ever since he wrote a column telling a young girl that she never needed to know algebra, because he’s so fucking stupid he’s never had to use it.

Unfortunately, as we all know, once a big-name newspaper hires some derpwad as a columnist, they’ve got a sinecure for life, and no matter how stupid their columns, nothing will evict them. Brooks, Douthat, Friedman, Cohen…awful writers, poor thinkers, and disgraceful human beings, all set up forever.

Steven Landsburg carries out three “thought experiments”. They’re all pretty bad — one suggests that we have no grounds to complain about environmental destruction in Alaska if we’re living somewhere else, to which I’d have to reply, “You mean like Mars?” — but the third one…jebus, Mr Creepy McLiberturd is masturbating publicly here.

Let’s suppose that you, or I, or someone we love, or someone we care about from afar, is raped while unconscious in a way that causes no direct physical harm — no injury, no pregnancy, no disease transmission. (Note: The Steubenville rape victim, according to all the accounts I’ve read, was not even aware that she’d been sexually assaulted until she learned about it from the Internet some days later.) Despite the lack of physical damage, we are shocked, appalled and horrified at the thought of being treated in this way, and suffer deep trauma as a result. Ought the law discourage such acts of rape? Should they be illegal?

He provides his Libertarian philosophical answer.

As long as I’m safely unconsious and therefore shielded from the costs of an assault, why shouldn’t the rest of the world (or more specifically my attackers) be allowed to reap the benefits? And if the thought of those benefits makes me shudder, why should my shuddering be accorded any more public policy weight than Bob’s or Granola’s? We’re still talking about strictly psychic harm, right?

Maybe we could even talk about a positive advantage. You go in to a hospital for some essential medical treatment that involves anesthetizing you, and while you’re unconscious, the hospital pays for its services by leasing out your body to anyone willing to pay. Free health care! It’s a benefit, right?

It’s a remarkable claim from a Libertarian. If we’re not using our property at some moment, do we forfeit our rights to it? When Landsburg is not driving his car, is it OK if someone takes a joyride in it as long as it’s returned when he needs it, with the gas consumed replaced?

Is there really no cost to a person if their body is abused while they are unconscious? He writes as if this “psychic harm” is meaningless nothing. Reputation, security, trust…these are mere “psychic” phenomena, so they have no significance to a person?

And what gives this hypothetical rapist the right to use someone else’s body? Flip it around and try to justify the rapist’s exploitation of another for his personal benefit — by what right does that person deserve to “reap the benefits” of someone else’s unconsciousness…or for that matter, reap the benefits of the Alaskan wilderness? Mr Landsburg seems to naturally take the side of the takers and looters.

We’ve got a convenient phrase for what Landsburg is doing: it’s called JAQing off. He’s clearly a master.

About 48 hours ago I posted a link to the Twitter feed of the egregious Michael Crook, who had used that fine microblogging service to share loathsome, horrible, explicitly pro-rape opinions regarding Steubenville.

Within minutes, this clown — in the very first comment on the thread — objected, saying that my calling attention to Crook was “feeding a troll.” Twenty minutes after that first comment, this other clown chimed in.

Both claimed that by calling out an egregious “troll” — not a rape advocate, but a “troll” — I had played right into Crook’s game of trollish 12-dimensional chess. Given him “what he wanted.” etc.

That’s manifestly not true, as it turns out. I don’t know what percentage of the attention Crook got came from my link. Perhaps it was a large amount, given the Pharyngula Phyrehose. Perhaps it was just a couple of percentage points. But Crook got a lot of unfavorable attention from all over the feminist and anti-rape sections of the Webonets. Should have made him utterly gleeful, right? As a ‘troll.”

Crook’s Twitter feed is gone. His website seems to be down. Is it reasonable to conclude that he decided there was too much attention being paid to him? Seems so to me. Though perhaps both Twitter and his web host decided to take him down against his will. Which seems less likely, given that the stuff Crook was saying was merely among the most egregious of the hundreds of rape supporters opining on Steubenville, most of whom seem not to have been censored.

I’m guessing he found the public response unpleasant.

Yes, forestalling further trollish objection, Crook is indeed entitled to freedom of speech. And so are we. It would seem sentiments like Crook’s in favor of rape don’t stand up to actual discussion. If people had decided not to “feed the troll,” Crook would very likely still be spreading his pro-rape views online at the moment. But enough people used their own rights to freedom of speech to let him know they found his views repugnant. If he’d been out to troll, he’d have relished that. If he’d had the courage of his convictions, he’d still be arguing.

But instead, that fearless defender of rapists seems to have shut the fuck up for the moment.

That tiny minority of commenters on that thread who scolded those of us who wanted to call Crook’s garbage out publicly: if we’d all listened to you, the world would be a slightly worse place than it is now. I suggest you go to your rooms and think about what you did.

And for those of you who think your voice doesn’t matter? It does. And thank you.