[masonic]

  This is an Op-Ed piece by Roger Cohen. It's not an article.

But Cohen is a Times employee; an editor, in fact. This is not the work of some random partisan think tank writer merely carried by the Times.

These two elements go well beyond the pale of any sense of journalism:

1) "... his cavalier trashing of the alliance and union that ushered the the Continent from its darkest hours..."

Um, what? When has he trashed (cavalierly or not) the USA-Britain alliance of WW2? Has the P.M. stated anything of the kind?

2) Cohen's piling-on of personal insults. He has no place diagnosing anyone with "narcissistic personality disorder", let alone claiming that Trump has a "lust for torture... and carnage".

[grzm]

I believe the references to World War II are due to the history of the phrase "America First", which goes back at least to the "America First Committee" which was pro-isolationist and against the US entering the war in Europe during WWII.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America_First_Committee

- https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-a...

[mcphage]

> This is an Op-Ed piece by Roger Cohen. It's not an article. But Cohen is a Times employee; an editor, in fact.

Why, it's almost like that would make this piece... an editorial!

[grzm]

Yup. And it's expressing an opinion, as opposed to being a more objective article. As I said above, this doesn't excuse any misrepresentation of fact, but it does allow for more lenient application of perspective and interpretation. And the op-ed pieces do sometimes express partisan or political leanings. This shouldn't be a surprise, or even controversial.