CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

A Force for a Livable Planet: Mitchel Cohen’s Unwavering Sense of Direction

Mitchel Cohen and I knew each other for a quarter century, but we never met. That was my fault. With my usual blundering sense of direction, I got lost in Central Park and ended up on the wrong side of the park at the wrong end of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Bois de Manhattan from our planned rendezvous point. This was in 2000, before cellphones. Or at least a few years before I consented to having my every movement tracked by one. So we missed each other. Or rather, I missed him, because he was right where he was meant to be and I had probably walked right past him on my way to where I wasn’t meant to be. Mitchel Cohen never seemed to lack direction. He knew where he was going and he kept going that way right until the end, a few days ago.

I was in New York City that September week to inveigh against Al Gore. Our biography of the stiff neoliberal from Tennessee had just come out to reviews almost unanimous in their hostility. One reviewer wrote that the book was one of the most malicious and unflattering biographies ever written of an American politician. We took that as high praise. And so did Mitchel. He had that kind of mind, a little perverse in other words. I had a backpack of copies that I was going to unload on him.........

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