Know Your Enemy
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The Life & Crimes of Roy Cohn (w/ In Bed with the Right)
🕑 Added 2025-05-02 10:30:02 +0000 UTCRecently Matt joined Moira Donegan and Adrian Daub of the excellent In Bed with the Right podcast to record what turned out to be two episodes about Roy Cohn—the "lawyer, closet case and ratfucker extraordinaire," as they describe him. These days Cohn is perhaps most infamous for being Donald Trump's lawyer and mentor, but this first episode focuses on Cohn's childhood and family life, his decisive role in the Rosenberg trial (especially their execution), and his time working with Sen. Joe McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. After you listen, please head over to In Bed with the Right to check out the second episode on Cohn and hear the rest of his story.
Sources:
Nicholas von Hoffman, Citizen Cohn: The Life and Times of Roy Cohn (1988)
Christopher M. Elias, Gossip Men: J. Edgar Hoover, Joe McCarthy, Roy Cohn, and the Politics of Insinuation (2021)
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet (1990)
Ivy Meeropol (dir.), Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn (2019)
Matt Tyrnauer (dir.), Where's My Roy Cohn? (2019)
Comments
Veronica Aristeguieta
I’d be really interested in an episode or series of episodes from you guys and/or In Bed with the Right on the gender conservativism of some of those early church figures especially Paul as was mentioned. I’m Jewish by choice but was raised with some Unitarian Universalism in my childhood and Christianity especially Catholicism has fascinated me a lot, I attempted an ethnography of a parish in Galesburg before dropping out of Knox College because of my initial interest in St. Crescentius who’s crypt is in the very beautiful Corpus Christi church in Galesburg; https://mythsandmateriality.knoxabolitionlab.org/exhibits/show/galesburg-saint-relic
Know Your Enemy
Ha! Well, it is excellent—the reporting, especially the incredible number of interviews he did for the book, makes it worth it. (Matt)
Tim Combes
I’ve gotten better over the years at not impulse buying the books you mentioned on this podcast but goddamnit I just bought Citizen Cohn
