Voting Station

Alexander Cockburn

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Commentator

The Resume

    (June 6, 1941-July 21, 2012)
    Born in Scotland, United Kingdom
    Wrote the columns 'Press Clips' for the Village Voice (1973-83) and 'Beat the Devil' for the Nation (1984-2012)
    Co-founder and editor of the political newsletter 'Counterpunch' (1994-2012)
    Became a US citizen (2009)
    Uncle of actress Olivia Wilde

Why he might be annoying:

    He considered socialist Bernie Sanders too far to the right for his tastes.
    He was suspended from the Village Voice for accepting a $10,000 fee from an Arab educational foundation.
    He and former colleague Christopher Hitchens had a falling out and spent the last years of their lives feuding.
    He claimed FDR had advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
    He insisted that the greenhouse gases explanation for global warming violated the second law of thermodynamics.
    He wrote a series of columns arguing that Stalin was responsible for only 500,000 deaths instead of the usual estimates of 10-20 million.
    The editor of 'The Nation' said, '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.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    His 'Press Clips' column was one of the first analyses of political bias in press reporting.
    He took the name of his 'Beat the Devil' column from a novel written by his father.
    He was never afraid to speak his mind.
    He wrote, 'They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard.'
    He wrote about 9/11 conspiracy theorists, 'Like mad Inquisitors, they pounce on imagined clues in documents and photos, torturing the data ­- as the old joke goes about economists — till the data confess.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 17 Votes: 41.18% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 26 Votes: 92.31% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 13 Votes: 61.54% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 20 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 13 Votes: 53.85% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 80 Votes: 52.50% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 21 Votes: 57.14% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 20 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 108 Votes: 66.67% Annoying