The Fugitive II: Richard Cohen runs away crying like a little girl.

Okay, Stephen Colbert did a journalist's job by drawing attention to the shortcomings of both the presidency and those who cover it at the WHCD. We all know this. Many of us have seen the videos. In response, some of the chided press responded by basically saying, "Well, that's not funny," forgetting that the denial defence didn't prevent them from getting their asses kicked in junior high, either. Leading the vanguard of the self-appointed humor elite was Richard Cohen.

In order to be taken seriously, Cohen informed his readership that he's known as "a funny guy" in "certain circles" , frequently being demanded to produce chuckle product on the spot by cruel elementary teachers who had no idea that their merciless tactics would backfire and convince Richard As A Boy he was actually funny. Cohen then responds to Colbert's address with a critique so unfunny that Lenny Bruce immediately took control of every medium in the country and demanded that someone slap the hell out of him.

Needless to say, the blogosphere (I'm never sure if that word has the second "O" or not) reacted. They were already hoisting Colbert on their digital shoulders and parading him around the Intraweb's equivalent of the town square. Colbert accepts the adulation and acrimony with equal grace. He can afford to, when the blogosphere and, evidently, anyone with email capability was forming a "digital lynch mob" to deal with Cohen and his ilk.

Now, as a funny guy, you would think Cohen would be used to jokes going bad and the tide of the room turning against him and know how to deal with it. Perhaps this is just more proof that Cohen is about as funny as an AIDS patient with Avian Flu and a firm belief in the Bush Medicaid plan.

Cohen was overwhelmed with nearly 3,500 emails. As Cohen is obviously capable of huge generalizations, he admits he only looked into a few of the emails, saw they were less than congratulatory and promptly decided that the Intraweb was out to string him from the limb of the nearest logic tree. Still, you can understand how upset Cohen was and probably excuse his fear of the email swarm (over 2,000 more than he got for an article on Gore a week before) since, every time he opened an email, he got "a bucket of raw, untreated and disease-laden verbal sewage right in the face." Sewage like "You wouldn't know funny if it slapped you in the face," from Patrick Manley or "Colbert ROCKS, you MURDER" from the mononomic Ron.

Wow, that, um...stings?

Now Cohen is hunted like an animal through the twists and turns of cyberspace, hiding out in rarely visted websites, just hoping to find an electronic equivalent of the Underground Railroad which will take him to safety where if people disagree with you they have the decency to not tell you about it.

Which, come to think of it, would have been pretty good advice for Cohen in the first place.

There was a time when people could take the heat. If you wanted to say something critical about someone, you did with the understanding that others could say something critical back and there was no need to go around flagrantly using words like "vituperation". Cohen was critical of a critique and, somehow, thinks that it should end with him, that no one then has a right to be critical of him in turn.

Actually, you know what? That IS pretty funny.

Even better, Cohen then uses the imagined cybermob calling for his head as an indictment of the Democratic party, warning that the anger so obviously felt by the entire party will lead to their demise in 2008. Indeed, his own flame fest is merely the pyre of the martyred seer, barbequed for simply telling the world of Colbert's "unfunniness" and "irrelevance".

This is, of course, the second funny point in Cohen's post, the idea of a WP columnist calling ANYONE else out on their numbers...

In the end, Richard, I am unconvinced. Unconvinced that 3500 emails expressing varying degrees of agreement and disagreement with your opinion of Colbert proves that a simmering hatered lurks just below the surface of the Democratic Left. Unconvinced that the blogosphere and emailers really care about you enough to invest the sort of time it takes to find a rope and a convenient tree limb. And yes, at the end, still utterly unconvinced you are funny.

See, Dick, someone who was funny would have said something snappy in response to all this vitriolic electricity. Something like, "I may not know funny, but since I've accepted Bush as my personal saviour, I do know your address and your movement patterns, so watch your ass." Instead, you chose to whine about it in a flustered attempt to retain your relevance and composure. Basically, you proved Colbert's point.

So, really, I guess the joke's on you.