RIP Christopher Hitchens

[loveboof]

RIP Christopher Hitchens.

One of the greatest writer, orator, and intellectuals of our time.

"[Hitchens was a] valiant fighter against all tyrants including God" - Richard Dawkins

[braveheart0219]

He suffered greatly in the end and shared the experience in word just a few days ago. Sad.

[trish]

He put the lie to innumerable myths, the last being, "There are no atheists in foxholes.

Though, as an aside, one CAN find erections in foxholes and foxes in assholes :)

I'll miss reading his columns, agreeing and disagreeing with his prolific mind.

[Ecstatic]

RIP Christopher Hitchens, a great man and a great mind.

[Gillian]

Hitchens in full flow ...

Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIviufQ4APo)

[loveboof]

Hitchens in full flow ...

Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIviufQ4APo)
lol. Yeah he was a legend!

Here's a slightly more general video of him chatting about some things:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2H94dJm44&feature=related

[Prospero]

A great provocateur - always true to himself and prepared to abandon any rigid lines of thinking. He said in his last interview that the one thing he was consistently against was authoritarianism.

[Stavros]

Hitchens was an eloquent hypocrite, a man who wanted Kissinger put on trial for crimes against humanity, but who supported the violence of regime change in Iraq.

Some lives, it seems, are worth trashing -as long as its not his, or his friends and neighbours lives. Human rights, for Hitchens, are not universal, but a matter of selection -I think we are supposed to be grateful that this pompous, self-appointed judge of humanity decided, after 2001, that certain people only exist to be blown up by Hitchens and his friends.

That Hitchens should have believed that revolution from above, organised by elites - most of whom bear a not-so-startling resemblence to him- is preferable to popular revolutions from the base upwards is typical of someone whose politics was spawned in the sewer of Leninism -his hypocrisy was thus not exposed in his support for regime change in Iraq, but the attempt to prosecute Kissinger -intellectually, they became soul mates. This is a man who thinks Israel is a democratic state because its government is elected by the citizens of Israel, who then sees the occupation and brutalization of the Palestinians as a separate issue, because it is convenient that way -but it isn't convenient for the people who live under that particular regime, but mercifully for them, Hitchens was, and remains, an irelevance.

He suffered terribly from cancer, I would not wish that on anyone; he is now at rest.

[Prospero]

A counterblast and a half from Stavros - matched somewhat by the merciless critique offered on BBC radio today by former fellow traveller Tariq Ali.

[trish]

To be fair, we're all self-appointed judges. Moreover Hitchens had insufficient influence to have anyone or anything blown up. Kissinger did. But, yes, I was furious with Hitchens' perspective on the Iraq war and his cheerleading for the war on terror. I agree that on these issues Hitchens is irrelevant...unlike Kissinger, Hitchens did not have the ear of persons in power. On more individualistic issues, many found him and will continue to find his writings to be very relevant.

[BellaBellucci]

His politics aside, any day we lose another intellectual maverick is a bad day. RIP

~BB~

[trish]

His politics aside, any day we lose another intellectual maverick is a bad day. RIP

~BB~I'm not so sure about that.

[Prospero]

The point about his support for the invasion of iraq (which I strongly disagreed with as well) was that he was not afraid to change his previously held view - he was not afraid to nail his colours eloquently and publicly to the mast realising that this would infuriate many of those who had previously admired him. He did not toe any party lines. He was often hugely wrong but always had plenty of arguments at hand to justify his position. He was eloquent and argued rather than quietly held back or acquiesced.

[BellaBellucci]

I'm not so sure about that.

OK. Maybe you're right.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/john-mccain-snarling.jpg

But seriously, I'm down with anyone who challenges the establishment. Who would expect any different from me? :lol:

~BB~

[trish]

OK. Maybe you're right......

[loveboof]

Hitchens was an eloquent hypocrite, a man who wanted Kissinger put on trial for crimes against humanity, but who supported the violence of regime change in Iraq.

Some lives, it seems, are worth trashing -as long as its not his, or his friends and neighbours lives. Human rights, for Hitchens, are not universal, but a matter of selection -I think we are supposed to be grateful that this pompous, self-appointed judge of humanity decided, after 2001, that certain people only exist to be blown up by Hitchens and his friends.

That Hitchens should have believed that revolution from above, organised by elites - most of whom bear a not-so-startling resemblence to him- is preferable to popular revolutions from the base upwards is typical of someone whose politics was spawned in the sewer of Leninism -his hypocrisy was thus not exposed in his support for regime change in Iraq, but the attempt to prosecute Kissinger -intellectually, they became soul mates. [...] but mercifully for them, Hitchens was, and remains, an irelevance.


Hitchens' support for the regime change in Iraq was certainly one of his more contentious beliefs (especially in England), but I think it is quite contrary of you to compare his support in this matter to Kissinger whilst simultaneously speaking of his irrelevance. This assumes an acknowledgment of the differing levels of impact the two men could have, and as such it is not even close to a level playing field for hypocrisy. Can I support one war, whilst condemn another? Of course I can. Can I condemn violent actions, and still consider violence necessary on occassion? Yes.

I wholly disagree with your assessment of his selectivity in human rights too! He was not an apologist in the case of morality; and although his assertions on various individuals such as Kissinger or Mother Teresa can appear mean spirited or spiteful, he always argued from a position of morality (relative as that may be).

He could be accused of pomposity or superciliousness, and you are free to endorse such opinions, but he was at his heart a humanist - in all his beliefs.

Edit:

The point about his support for the invasion of iraq (which I strongly disagreed with as well) was that he was not afraid to change his previously held view - he was not afraid to nail his colours eloquently and publicly to the mast realising that this would infuriate many of those who had previously admired him. He did not toe any party lines. He was often hugely wrong but always had plenty of arguments at hand to justify his position. He was eloquent and argued rather than quietly held back or acquiesced.
This is very true Prospero.

[BellaBellucci]

He could be accused of pomposity or superciliousness, and you are free to endorse such opinions, but he was at his heart a humanist - in all his beliefs.


As someone who tends to be perceived in much the same way, I can't wrap my head around the fact that he wasn't an Aquarius. :lol:

http://zodiac-signs-astrology.com/zodiac-signs/aquarius.htm

Say what you will about astrology, but I always felt that my sign sums me (and him) up very well.

~BB~

[needsum]

you're an aquarius! No wonder I dig you so.... ;)

[BellaBellucci]

you're an aquarius! No wonder I dig you so.... ;)

Thanks. And it turns out he was an Aries, so that makes a bit more sense. ;)

~BB~

[loveboof]

As someone who tends to be perceived in much the same way, I can't wrap my head around the fact that he wasn't an Aquarius. :lol:

http://zodiac-signs-astrology.com/zodiac-signs/aquarius.htm

Say what you will about astrology, but I always felt that my sign sums me (and him) up very well.

~BB~

lol. I'm sure everyone is aware of how I feel about astrology from your other thread (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=61000) :)

[needsum]

isn't it crazy how that shit all works together? Always boggles my mind...

[BellaBellucci]

lol. I'm sure everyone is aware of how I feel about astrology from your other thread (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showthread.php?t=61000) :)

Yeah, well, I look for patterns. You can argue its absolute precision as much as you like, but in my experience, astrology has held up well in describing a LOT of people in my life.

~BB~

[GroobySteven]

He was a complete twat. Swam against the tide of current thinking. Refused to apologise for his twattiness - and he was awesome for it.

More people like him please!

[needsum]

:iagree::iagree::iagree:

[loveboof]

Yeah, well, I look for patterns. You can argue its absolute precision as much as you like, but in my experience, astrology has held up well in describing a LOT of people in my life.

Well, I would argue it is the fact that astrology is the exact opposite of precision that makes it appear to hold up for lots of people. You can never receive precision in astrology.

[BellaBellucci]

He was a complete twat. Swam against the tide of current thinking. Refused to apologise for his twattiness - and he was awesome for it.

More people like him please!

Seriously?! You can say this in a thread that you know I'm following? Are you looking for trouble? :lol:

Really. Grow up, you hypocrite. If he had criticized your company, you would have hated his guts, not respected him for it. I'm living proof.

~BB~

[GroobySteven]

Really. Grow up, you hypocrite. If he had criticized your company, you would have hated his guts, not respected him for it. I'm living proof.


Nah he was intelligent and had reasoning. Don't hijack another thread with your self-hatred deflected to my company.

[BellaBellucci]

Nah he was intelligent and had reasoning. Don't hijack another thread with your self-hatred deflected to my company.

Excuse me, but don't hijack another thread to laud a person with praise for doing the exact same thing that I do while you've spent the last two years trying to minimize my impact.

What makes Hitchens a genius and me 'self-hating?' The only real difference between our methods is that mine are directed at you! Besides, I'm right here. You didn't expect me to stay silent on this did you? :lol:

~BB~

[Ben]

He was pre-9/11 to the left -- politically. And then shifted to the right... and supported Bush (moreso his illicit invasion of Iraq) ... after 9/11.
I did like his book on Henry Kissinger... and calling him what he was and is: a war criminal.

[loveboof]

and supported Bush (moreso his illicit invasion of Iraq) ...
Yeah, to clarify - he supported that one decision from Bush. I don't think you could call him a Bush supporter...

[Ben]

Yeah, to clarify - he supported that one decision from Bush. I don't think you could call him a Bush supporter...

Yes! The invasion. Moreso than Bush. He wasn't very fond of any politician. Hated Bush. Hated Clinton. Said, on Dennis Miller's old show, "... (Clinton) should be taken downtown." He called Clinton: a serial rapist.
He knew what politicians were about. Most are opportunists. Most are disgusting characters. I mean, Hitchens had... Well, here's what he said about Falwell.

Christopher Hitchens on George Bush & Bill Clinton - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8aqx6e403g)

Christopher Hitchens on Jerry Falwell - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIviufQ4APo)

On Mother Teresa.... Not a Saint. But a sinister fraud:

Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa (2006) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZiKAeJ9mAU)

[onmyknees]

He was infuriating at times, maybe it was the accent....lol...but I always thought he was somewhat mad, ( as in a Beautiful Mind, Mad) even self destructive with his love of whiskey and Marlboroughs. Atheists cheered him for his views on faith and religion, Liberals recoiled at his views on The War on Terror. Conservatives furious with his views on Mother Theresa, which ultimately was the beauty of Hitchens. He was not to be boxed in...It occurs to me, anyone who can savage Mother Theresa, and slam Barrack Obama in the span of a few seconds is a tortured, yet brilliant soul. It would have been fascinating to see Hitches and William F. Buckley in a discussion.

Christopher Hitchens V Chris Matthews over Nobel Prize award. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvYvuZkApY)

[Jackal]

Mr. Hitchens will be missed by myself and readers across the globe and time. My condolences to his children, wife and family.

[loveboof]

On Mother Teresa.... Not a Saint. But a sinister fraud:

Christopher Hitchens on Mother Teresa (2006) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZiKAeJ9mAU)

Yeah fascinating stuff. Have you read his book The Missionary Position? (Such a great title)
_


Christopher Hitchens V Chris Matthews over Nobel Prize award. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvYvuZkApY)
Why is it that no American anchors can chair a debate without bias?! If you invite two 'expert' guests for a discussion then let them speak! So annoying.

[onmyknees]

I'm sure depending on one's politics, everyone who read or watched Hitchens has a fond memory....Here's mine.


Hitchens flips off Maher's morons - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECI4QK_mXA&feature=player_embedded)

[Stavros]

To be fair, what I enjoyed about reading Hitchens and watching some of his tv programmes was the clever way in which he wrote and presented, his provacative arguments, and his lack of fear. He was wrong about a lot of things, but that's his problem. If I want informed opinion on the Middle East, the US at home or abroad, and Mother Teresa, I would not turn to Hitchens anyway, I tend to think of him as a journalist, and have a low opinion of journalists. T

Loveboof says:
Can I support one war, whilst condemn another? Of course I can. Can I condemn violent actions, and still consider violence necessary on occassion? Yes.

This is so problematic a statement I know where to start, but I don't know where to end. It goes to the core of the theory and practice of human rights, and is one of the reasons I don't rate Hitchens intellectually.

The obvious problem with human rights is that if such rights exist, everyone has them. My human rights are the same as Saddam Hussein's, Osama bin Laden's, and Stalin's. And the same as John and Mary in Texas, Pablo and Maria in Mexico, and Mohammed and Ayesha in Jordan, and so on throughout the world.

It seems to me, that one cannot propose that citizens of the USA have human rights, but not the citizens of Iraq; the logical position for people like Hitchens is therefore to say, candidly: there are no human rights, and we cannot invent any, or codify any in law that are practicable for everyone in the world at the same time.

For Hitchens the problem of the Just War is that he likes it, but it it was a Christian concept, or more properly an excuse designed (initially by Augustine of Hippo) to enable Christians to kill other humans beings (they are supposed to love them). Ironically, given the life of Jesus and Hitchens' hostility to religion, he failed to grasp a signal fact, and a radical fact of these times, possible the most radical of all:

The most courageous political position to take is to be a pacifist.

He had the option, he chickened out. Great bloke, shame about the politics.

[Ben]

Yeah fascinating stuff. Have you read his book The Missionary Position? (Such a great title)

I did read it. When it was released. He does attack everyone. Including Lady Di. Well, why does anyone like the Royals???
I mean, the entire class system in England turns me off. I mean, that's the essence of the revolting/crass class system in England. (Hitchens is inspiring me today -- ha ha!)

From the CBC Archives: Christopher Hitchens - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl9b0sdf91s)

[loveboof]

I'm sure depending on one's politics, everyone who read or watched Hitchens has a fond memory....Here's mine.
Hitchens flips off Maher's morons - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECI4QK_mXA&feature=player_embedded)
It takes guts to so completely disregard audience approval like that. I've seen the same from Dawkins (although much more polite obviously lol).
_


I mean, the entire class system in England turns me off. I mean, that's the essence of the revolting/crass class system in England. (Hitchens is inspiring me today -- ha ha!)
From the CBC Archives: Christopher Hitchens - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl9b0sdf91s)
Again, what a great example of the balls of this guy. On a tv interview, and he still won't stand for some moron talking nonsense in a public park!

Btw, the class system in England has been dissolving quicker than a sugar cube in a hot posh teapot over the course of my life time - so whatever it is you dislike probably won't exist for much longer.
_
(I'll read your post later Stavros - don't have time now :) )

[Ben]

Weekend Edition December 16-18, 2011
31 (http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/farewell-to-c-h/#)
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/farewell-to-c-h/

CounterPunch Diary
Farewell to C.H. by ALEXANDER COCKBURN

I can’t count the times, down the years, that after some new outrage friends would call me and ask, “What happened to Christopher Hitchens?” – the inquiry premised on some supposed change in Hitchens, often presumed to have started in the period he tried to put his close friend Blumenthal behind bars for imputed perjury. My answer was that Christopher had been pretty much the same package since the beginning — always allowing for the ravages of entropy as the years passed.
As so often with friends and former friends, it’s a matter of what you’re prepared to put up with and for how long. I met him in New York in the early 1980s and all the long-term political and indeed personal traits were visible enough. I never thought of him as at all radical. He craved to be an insider, a trait which achieved ripest expression when he elected to be sworn in as a U.S. citizen by Bush’s director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff. In basic philosophical take he always seemed to me to hold as his central premise a profound belief in the therapeutic properties of capitalism and empire. He was an instinctive flagwagger and remained so. He wrote some really awful stuff in the early 90s about how indigenous peoples — Indians in the Americas — were inevitably going to be rolled over by the wheels of Progress and should not be mourned.
On the plane of weekly columns in the late eighties and nineties it mostly seemed to be a matter of what was currently obsessing him: for years in the 1980s he wrote scores of columns for The Nation, charging that the Republicans had stolen the 1980s election by the “October surprise”, denying Carter the advantage of a hostage release. He got rather boring. Then in the 90s he got a bee in his bonnet about Clinton which developed into full-blown obsessive megalomania: the dream that he, Hitchens, would be the one to seize the time and finish off Bill. Why did Bill — a zealous and fairly efficient executive of Empire – bother Hitchens so much? I’m not sure. He used to hint that Clinton had behaved abominably to some woman he, Hitchens, knew. Actually I think he’d got to that moment in life when he was asking himself if he could make a difference. He obviously thought he could, and so he sloshed his way across his own personal Rubicon and tried to topple Clinton via betrayal of his close friendship with Sid Blumenthal, whom he did his best to ruin financially (lawyers’ fees) and get sent to prison for perjury.
Since then it was all pretty predictable, down to his role as flagwagger for Bush. I guess the lowest of a number of low points was when he went to the White House to give a cheerleading speech on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. I think he knew long, long before that this is where he would end up, as a right-wing codger. He used to go on, back in the Eighties, about sodden old wrecks like John Braine, who’d ended up more or less where Hitchens got to, trumpeting away about “Islamo-fascism” like a Cheltenham colonel in some ancient Punch cartoon. I used to warn my friends at New Left Review and Verso in the early 90s who were happy to make money off Hitchens’ books on Mother Teresa and the like that they should watch out, but they didn’t and then kept asking ten years later, What happened?
Anyway, between the two of them, my sympathies were always with Mother Teresa. If you were sitting in rags in a gutter in Bombay, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup? You’d get one from Mother Teresa. Hitchens was always tight with beggars, just like the snotty Fabians who used to deprecate charity.
One awful piece of opportunism on Hitchens’ part was his decision to attack Edward Said just before his death, and then for good measure again in his obituary. With his attacks on Edward, especially the final post mortem, Hitchens couldn’t even claim the pretense of despising a corrupt presidency, a rapist and liar or any of the other things he called Clinton. That final attack on Said was purely for attention–which fuelled his other attacks but this one most starkly because of the absence of any high principle to invoke. Here he decided both to bask in his former friend’s fame, recalling the little moments that made it clear he was intimate with the man, and to put himself at the center of the spotlight by taking his old friend down a few notches. In a career of awful moves, that was one of the worst. He also rounded on Gore Vidal who had done so much to promote his career as dauphin of contrarianism.
He courted the label “contrarian”, but if the word is to have any muscle, it surely must imply the expression of dangerous opinions. Hitchens never wrote anything truly discommoding to respectable opinion and if he had he would never have enjoyed so long a billet at Vanity Fair. Attacking God? The big battles on that issue were fought one, two, even five hundred years ago when they burned Giordano Bruno at the stake in the Campo de’ Fiore. A contrarian these days would be someone who staunchly argued for the existence of a Supreme Being. He was for America’s wars. I thought he was relatively solid on Israel/Palestine, but there too he trimmed. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency put out a friendly obit, noting that “despite his rejection of religious precepts, Hitchens would make a point of telling interviewers that according to halacha, he was Jewish” and noting his suggestion that Walt and Mearsheimer might be anti-Semitic, also his sliming of a boatload of pro-Palestinian activists aiming to breach Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. (His brother Peter and other researchers used to say that in terms of blood lineage, the Hitchens boys’ Jewishness was pretty slim and fell far outside the definitions of the Nuremberg laws. I always liked Noam Chomsky’s crack to me when Christopher announced in Grand Street that he was a Jew: “From anti-Semite to self-hating Jew, all in one day.”)
As a writer his prose was limited in range. In extempore speeches and arguments he was quick on his feet. I remember affectionately many jovial sessions from years ago, in his early days at The Nation. I found the Hitchens cult of recent years entirely mystifying. He endured his final ordeal with pluck, sustained indomitably by his wife Carol.

[runningdownthatdream]

He was infuriating at times, maybe it was the accent....lol...but I always thought he was somewhat mad, ( as in a Beautiful Mind, Mad) even self destructive with his love of whiskey and Marlboroughs. Atheists cheered him for his views on faith and religion, Liberals recoiled at his views on The War on Terror. Conservatives furious with his views on Mother Theresa, which ultimately was the beauty of Hitchens. He was not to be boxed in...It occurs to me, anyone who can savage Mother Theresa, and slam Barrack Obama in the span of a few seconds is a tortured, yet brilliant soul. It would have been fascinating to see Hitches and William F. Buckley in a discussion.

Christopher Hitchens V Chris Matthews over Nobel Prize award. - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRvYvuZkApY)

Do you have any original thoughts independent of your political leanings?

[onmyknees]

Do you have any original thoughts independent of your political leanings?



Yes...actually I do and stated them in that post....take a moment to read it again, this time slowly. Are your feelings hurt because you're an Obama fan? Grow up. It's a thread about a complicated, contrary guy...one who in the same breath can dis a saint and a president....surely even you're sophisticated enough to understand that? You're post is frivolous and tells us more about your politics then mine. Got some thoughts on Mr. Hitchens ...or would you rather talk about me?

[Dino Velvet]

I'm sure depending on one's politics, everyone who read or watched Hitchens has a fond memory....Here's mine.


Hitchens flips off Maher's morons - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HECI4QK_mXA&feature=player_embedded)

Maher's audience is so bad I've seen Maher practically flip them off for being such trained seals also.

http://www.animalclipart.net/animal_clipart_images/trained_seal_balancing_a_ball_on_its_nose_0515-1006-2505-3916_SMU.jpg

[loveboof]

To be fair, what I enjoyed about reading Hitchens and watching some of his tv programmes was the clever way in which he wrote and presented, his provacative arguments, and his lack of fear. He was wrong about a lot of things, but that's his problem. If I want informed opinion on the Middle East, the US at home or abroad, and Mother Teresa, I would not turn to Hitchens anyway, I tend to think of him as a journalist, and have a low opinion of journalists. T

Loveboof says:
Can I support one war, whilst condemn another? Of course I can. Can I condemn violent actions, and still consider violence necessary on occassion? Yes.

This is so problematic a statement I know where to start, but I don't know where to end. It goes to the core of the theory and practice of human rights, and is one of the reasons I don't rate Hitchens intellectually.

The obvious problem with human rights is that if such rights exist, everyone has them. My human rights are the same as Saddam Hussein's, Osama bin Laden's, and Stalin's. And the same as John and Mary in Texas, Pablo and Maria in Mexico, and Mohammed and Ayesha in Jordan, and so on throughout the world.

It seems to me, that one cannot propose that citizens of the USA have human rights, but not the citizens of Iraq; the logical position for people like Hitchens is therefore to say, candidly: there are no human rights, and we cannot invent any, or codify any in law that are practicable for everyone in the world at the same time.

For Hitchens the problem of the Just War is that he likes it, but it it was a Christian concept, or more properly an excuse designed (initially by Augustine of Hippo) to enable Christians to kill other humans beings (they are supposed to love them). Ironically, given the life of Jesus and Hitchens' hostility to religion, he failed to grasp a signal fact, and a radical fact of these times, possible the most radical of all:

The most courageous political position to take is to be a pacifist.

He had the option, he chickened out. Great bloke, shame about the politics.

Well his opinion on the Middle East was certainly far more informed than most - simply because he had been to all the places he discussed multiple times! Similarly, it is hugely unfair to suggest he did not have an informed opinion about US politics... that is simply incorrect Stavros. And who would you turn to for an informed opinion of Mother Teresa? You would be hard pressed to find another author who has dedicated as much time into the study of her life and career.

"The obvious problem with human rights is that if such rights exist, everyone has them. My human rights are the same as Saddam Hussein's, Osama bin Laden's, and Stalin's." - Stavros

That is correct. However I believe that someone can so thoroughly undermine the basic human rights of another person (or mass group of people in those examples), so as to potentially forego whatever claim they can make for themselves.

It is true that it is very difficult to practically codify such a subjective and relative term as human rights into international law, and from that perspective can be argued to simply not exist. But when you start looking into Hitchens' reasons for supporting the war, it ultimately boils down to the welfare of the Iraqi people under a dictatorial rule. Whatever you want to call their 'rights', and regardless of any legalities, he obviously believed them deserving of liberation. I'm not sure many would/could argue for the virtues of Saddam Hussein, and it is from this moralistic standpoint that he made his stance for the war.

And of course justifying war and countless other atrocities can be attributed to Christianity. However the concept of the Just War is simply another label, whatever it's historical power. It's fairly glib to liken Hitchens to any religiosity to which he was so opposed, simply by coincidence of circumstance. You cannot take any position on war, or rape, or murder, or any number of horrible things which religion has not at some time or another defended/opposed (either by words or actions).

I will not defend the war itself, and I agree that pacifism takes courage - but I cannot agree that Hitchens 'chickened out' in any capacity. He steadfastly defended his beliefs against often overwhelming criticism (even threats) from people tirelessly advocating ignorance and stupidity.

[Stavros]

A fair riposte, I concede using the word informed was a mistake given his collaboration with Edward Said, he did indeed know more about the Middle East than many, but for personal reasons I prefer scholarship at a different level. It is a long running sore I have with journalism. I can be harsh at times; let us just agree that he was a brilliant commentator, but that a lot of what he produced leaves me unimpressed.

[Prospero]

Curious about your notion of scholarship on a different level, Stavros. Would you consider a journalist who has lived and worked in the Middle east for many decades (say Robert Fisk) as less well informed than a professor of Middle eastern studies at a UK university who occasionally visits the region?

[Ben]

Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths (http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_f igure_deaths/singleton)

By Glenn Greenwald (http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/)


http://media.salon.com/2011/12/AP050914039305-460x307.jpg FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2005 file photo, British essayist Christopher Hitchens speaks during a debate in New York. (AP Photo/Chad Rachman, File) (Credit: Associated Press)


One of the most intensely propagandistic weeks in the last several decades began on June 5, 2004, the day Ronald Reagan died at the age of 93 in Bel Air, California. For the next six days, his body was transported to, and his casket displayed in, multiple venues around the nation — first to a funeral home in Santa Monica; then to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, where it remained for two full days as over 100,000 people paid their respects; then onto the U.S. Capitol, where his casket was taken by horse-drawn caisson along Constitution Avenue, and then lay in state (http://www.uscapitolpolice.gov/pressreleases/2004/pr_06-11-04.php) under the dome for the next day-and-a-half; then to a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral presided over by President Bush and attended by dozens of past and present world leaders; and then back to the Presidential Library in California, where another service was held and his body finally interred. Few U.S. Presidents in history, if any, have received anything comparable upon their death; as CNN anchor Judy Woodruff observed (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/09/se.03.html) the day Reagan’s body arrived in the capital: “Washington has not seen the likes of this for more than 30 years.”
Each one of those mournful events was nationally televised and drenched in somber, intense pageantry. At the center of it all was the prominently displayed grief of his second wife, Nancy, to whom he was married for 52 years. The iconic moment of the week-long national funeral occurred on the last day, at the internment, when she broke down for the first time and famously hugged and kissed her husband’s casket, while holding a folded American flag, seemingly unwilling to let him go immediately before his body was lowered into the ground.
But the most notable aspect of that intense public ritual was the full-scale canonization of this deeply controversial, divisive and consequential political figure. Americans — including millions too young to remember his presidency — were bombarded with a full week of media discussions which completely whitewashed Reagan’s actions in office: that which made him an important enough historical figure to render his death worthy of such worldwide attention in the first place. There was a virtual media prohibition on expressing a single critical utterance about what he did as President and any harm that he caused. That’s not because the elegies to Reagan were apolitical — they were aggressively political — but because nothing undercutting his deification was permitted. Typifying the unbroken,week-long media tone of reverence was this from Woodruff at the start of CNN’s broadcast on the day Reagan’s casket arrived in Washington:
We are witnessing a moment in history, a moment when this city, which is hustle-bustle personified, a city where people fiercely protect their interests and lobby for the issues that matter most to them, all that is put aside, politics is put aside, while we pay respects and deep honor to this president, who literally changed a generation, if not more, of American students of politics.
I have talked to so many young people over the last few days who came up to me and said, I started paying attention to politics because of Ronald Reagan.
Just a little while ago, I was talking with Tom DeLay, the majority leader of the House. He, I got into politics. He said, I ran to be chairman of the my precinct. He said, I was a businessman. I was running an insects — he called it a bug business. It was insect removal. And he said, Ronald Reagan inspired me to get into politics. I’d been sitting around griping, and he was the one. He gave me reason to get involved and to think that we could make a difference.”
So he changed, he inspired, and we now have a chance today and through this whole week to take note of him.
The key claim there was that “politics is put aside.” That’s precisely what did not happen. The entire spectacle was political to its core. Following Woodruff’s proclamation were funeral speeches, all broadcast by CNN, by then-House Speaker Denny Hastert and Vice President Dick Cheney hailing the former President for gifting the nation with peace and prosperity, rejuvenating national greatness, and winning the Cold War. This scene repeated itself over and over during that week: extremely politicized tributes to the greatness of Ronald Reagan continuously broadcast to the nation without challenge and endorsed by its “neutral” media — all shielded from refutation or balance by the grief of a widow and social mores that bar one from speaking ill of the dead.
That week forever changed how Ronald Reagan — and his conservative ideology — were perceived. As Gallup put it in 2004 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoples-perspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx): Reagan had, at best, “routinely average ratings . . . while he served in office between 1981 and 1989.” Indeed, “the two presidents who followed Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, each had higher average ratings than Reagan, as did three earlier presidents — Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower.”
Though he became more popular after leaving office (like most Presidents), it was that week-long bombardment of hagiography that sealed Reagan’s status as Great and Cherished Leader. As media and political figures lavished him with politicized praise, there was virtually no mention of the brutal, civilian-extinguishing covert wars he waged in Central America, his funding of terrorists in Nicaragua, the pervasive illegality of the Iran-contra scandal perpetrated by his top aides and possibly himself, the explosion of wealth and income inequality ushered in by “Reagonmics” which persists today, his escalation of the racially disparate Drug War, his slashing of domestic programs for the poor accompanied by a deficit-causing build-up in the military budget, the racially-tinged (at least) attacks on welfare-queens-in-Cadillacs, the Savings & Loan crisis resulting from deregulation, his refusal even to acknowledge AIDS as tens of thousands of the Wrong People died, the training of Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and arming of the Iranian regime, the attempt to appoint the radical Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, or virtually anything else that would undermine the canonization. The country was drowned by a full, uninterrupted week of pure, leader-reverent propaganda.
This happened because of an unhealthy conflation of appropriate post-death etiquette for private persons and the etiquette governing deaths of public figures. They are not and should not be the same. We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both good and bad acts. That’s more or less what it means to be human. And — when it comes to private individuals — it’s entirely appropriate to emphasize the positives of someone’s life and avoid criticisms upon their death: it comforts their grieving loved ones and honors their memory. In that context, there’s just no reason, no benefit, to highlight their flaws.
But that is completely inapplicable to the death of a public person, especially one who is political. When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts — like Ronald Reagan — discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems — enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts — is not a matter of politeness; it’s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.
* * * * *
All of this was triggered for me by the death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions. Part of this is explained by the fact that Hitchens — like other long-time media figures, such as Tim Russert — had personal interactions with huge numbers of media figures who are shaping how he is remembered in death. That’s understandable: it’s difficult for any human being to ignore personal feelings, and it’s even more difficult in the face of the tragic death of a vibrant person at a much younger age than is normal.
But for the public at large, at least those who knew of him, Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writing but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent.
Corey Robin wrote that “on the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,” and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens’ post-9/11 writings (http://coreyrobin.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-the-most-provincial-spirit-of-all/). In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”
Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens’ heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/chapter5.html) about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time:
As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain.
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I’ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them. As Robin put it:
Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder—and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder—is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all.
Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary (http://gawker.com/5868761/christopher-hitchens-unforgivable-mistake) – detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUeMIYawBQ) the Dixie Chicks as being “sluts” and “fucking fat slags (http://books.google.com.br/books?id=t_pmdoRTuOwC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=%22and+I%27m+being+asked+to+worry+about+these+f ucking+fat+slags%22&source=bl&ots=eyWFzgnyKZ&sig=4E7lFRdJPEzIulXuFcpv5i4LRcA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-qDsTt8ow4O2B-W4zYsK&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22and%20I%27m%20being%20asked%20to%20worry%20ab out%20these%20fucking%20fat%20slags%22&f=false)” for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.”
Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. Dennis Perrin, a friend and former protégée of Hitchens, described (http://www.citypages.com/2003-07-09/news/obit-for-a-former-contrarian/3/) all the way back in 2003 how Hitchens’ virtues as a writer and thinker were fully swamped by his pulsating excitement over war and the Bush/Cheney imperial agenda:
I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he’s now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war.
In several pieces, including an incredibly condescending blast against Nelson Mandela, Hitch went on and on about WMD, chided readers with “Just you wait!” and other taunts, fully confident that once the U.S. took control of Iraq, tons of bio/chem weapons and labs would be all over the cable news nets–with him dancing a victory jig in the foreground. Now he says WMD were never a real concern, and that he’d always said so. It’s amazing that he’d dare state this while his earlier pieces can be read at his website. But then, when you side with massive state power and the cynical fucks who serve it, you can say pretty much anything and the People Who Matter won’t care.
Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the U.S. can be a “superpower for democracy,” and that Toms Jefferson [sic] and Paine would approve. He’s also slammed the “slut” Dixie Chicks as “fucking fat slags” for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn’t like it that Kerry ”exploits” his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers).
Sweet Jesus. What next? I’m afraid my old mentor is not the truth-telling Orwell he fancies himself to be. He’s becoming a coarser version of Norman Podhoretz (http://www.citypages.com/related/to/Norman+Podhoretz).
One of the last political essays he wrote in his life, for Slate, celebrated the virtues (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/in_defense_of_endless_war.html) of Endless War.
* * * * *
Nobody should have to silently watch someone with this history be converted into some sort of universally beloved literary saint. To enshrine him as worthy of unalloyed admiration is to insist that these actions were either themselves commendable or, at worst, insignificant. Nobody who writes about politics for decades will be entirely free of serious error, but how serious the error is, whether it reflects on their character, and whether they came to regret it, are all vital parts of honestly describing and assessing their work. To demand its exclusion is an act of dishonesty.
Nor should anyone be deterred by the manipulative, somewhat tyrannical use of sympathy: designed to render any post-death criticisms gauche and forbidden. Those hailing Hitchens’ greatness are engaged in a very public, affirmative, politically consequential effort to depict him as someone worthy of homage. That’s fine: Hitchens, like most people, did have admirable traits, impressive accomplishments, genuine talents and a periodic willingness to expose himself to danger to report on issues about which he was writing. But demanding in the name of politeness or civility that none of that be balanced or refuted by other facts is to demand a monopoly on how a consequential figure is remembered, to demand a license to propagandize — exactly what was done when the awful, power-worshipping TV host, Tim Russert, died, and we were all supposed to pretend that we had lost some Great Journalist, a pretense that had the distorting effect of equating Russert’s attributes of mindless subservience to the powerful with Good Journalism (ironically, Hitchens was the last person who would honor the etiquette rules being invoked on his behalf: he savaged (perfectly appropriately) Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, among others, upon their death, even as millions mourned them).
There’s one other aspect to the adulation of Hitchens that’s quite revealing. There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” — hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do. As Aaron Bady (http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/) put it to me by email yesterday:
I go back to something Judith Butler’s been saying for years; some lives are grievable and some are not. And in that context, publicly mourning someone like Hitchens in the way we are supposed to do — holding him up as someone who was “one of us,” even if we disagree with him — is also a way of quietly reinforcing the “we” that never seems to extend to the un-grievable Arab casualties of Hitch’s favorite wars. It’s also a “we” that has everything to do with being clever and literate and British (and nothing to do with a human universalism that stretches across the usual “us” and “them” categories). And when it is impolitic to mention that he was politically atrocious (in exactly the way of Kissinger, if not to the extent), we enshrine the same standard of human value as when the deaths of Iraqi children from cluster bombs are rendered politically meaningless by our lack of attention.
That’s precisely true. The blood on his hands — and on the hands of those who played an even greater, more direct role, in all of this totally unjustified killing of innocents — is supposed to be ignored because he was an accomplished member in good standing of our media and political class. It’s a way the political and media class protects and celebrates itself: our elite members are to be heralded and their victims forgotten. One is, of course, free to believe that. But what should not be tolerated are prohibitions on these types of discussions when highly misleading elegies are being publicly implanted, all in order to consecrate someone’s reputation for noble greatness even when their acts are squarely at odds with that effort.

[trish]

"blood on his hands"??? I'm not buying it. Has a cheerleader ever before been given credit for a tackle?

[onmyknees]

Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths (http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_f igure_deaths/singleton)

By Glenn Greenwald (http://www.salon.com/writer/glenn_greenwald/)


http://media.salon.com/2011/12/AP050914039305-460x307.jpg FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2005 file photo, British essayist Christopher Hitchens speaks during a debate in New York. (AP Photo/Chad Rachman, File) (Credit: Associated Press)


One of the most intensely propagandistic weeks in the last several decades began on June 5, 2004, the day Ronald Reagan died at the age of 93 in Bel Air, California. For the next six days, his body was transported to, and his casket displayed in, multiple venues around the nation — first to a funeral home in Santa Monica; then to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, where it remained for two full days as over 100,000 people paid their respects; then onto the U.S. Capitol, where his casket was taken by horse-drawn caisson along Constitution Avenue, and then lay in state (http://www.uscapitolpolice.gov/pressreleases/2004/pr_06-11-04.php) under the dome for the next day-and-a-half; then to a state funeral at Washington’s National Cathedral presided over by President Bush and attended by dozens of past and present world leaders; and then back to the Presidential Library in California, where another service was held and his body finally interred. Few U.S. Presidents in history, if any, have received anything comparable upon their death; as CNN anchor Judy Woodruff observed (http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0406/09/se.03.html) the day Reagan’s body arrived in the capital: “Washington has not seen the likes of this for more than 30 years.”
Each one of those mournful events was nationally televised and drenched in somber, intense pageantry. At the center of it all was the prominently displayed grief of his second wife, Nancy, to whom he was married for 52 years. The iconic moment of the week-long national funeral occurred on the last day, at the internment, when she broke down for the first time and famously hugged and kissed her husband’s casket, while holding a folded American flag, seemingly unwilling to let him go immediately before his body was lowered into the ground.
But the most notable aspect of that intense public ritual was the full-scale canonization of this deeply controversial, divisive and consequential political figure. Americans — including millions too young to remember his presidency — were bombarded with a full week of media discussions which completely whitewashed Reagan’s actions in office: that which made him an important enough historical figure to render his death worthy of such worldwide attention in the first place. There was a virtual media prohibition on expressing a single critical utterance about what he did as President and any harm that he caused. That’s not because the elegies to Reagan were apolitical — they were aggressively political — but because nothing undercutting his deification was permitted. Typifying the unbroken,week-long media tone of reverence was this from Woodruff at the start of CNN’s broadcast on the day Reagan’s casket arrived in Washington:

We are witnessing a moment in history, a moment when this city, which is hustle-bustle personified, a city where people fiercely protect their interests and lobby for the issues that matter most to them, all that is put aside, politics is put aside, while we pay respects and deep honor to this president, who literally changed a generation, if not more, of American students of politics.
I have talked to so many young people over the last few days who came up to me and said, I started paying attention to politics because of Ronald Reagan.
Just a little while ago, I was talking with Tom DeLay, the majority leader of the House. He, I got into politics. He said, I ran to be chairman of the my precinct. He said, I was a businessman. I was running an insects — he called it a bug business. It was insect removal. And he said, Ronald Reagan inspired me to get into politics. I’d been sitting around griping, and he was the one. He gave me reason to get involved and to think that we could make a difference.”
So he changed, he inspired, and we now have a chance today and through this whole week to take note of him.
The key claim there was that “politics is put aside.” That’s precisely what did not happen. The entire spectacle was political to its core. Following Woodruff’s proclamation were funeral speeches, all broadcast by CNN, by then-House Speaker Denny Hastert and Vice President Dick Cheney hailing the former President for gifting the nation with peace and prosperity, rejuvenating national greatness, and winning the Cold War. This scene repeated itself over and over during that week: extremely politicized tributes to the greatness of Ronald Reagan continuously broadcast to the nation without challenge and endorsed by its “neutral” media — all shielded from refutation or balance by the grief of a widow and social mores that bar one from speaking ill of the dead.
That week forever changed how Ronald Reagan — and his conservative ideology — were perceived. As Gallup put it in 2004 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/11887/ronald-reagan-from-peoples-perspective-gallup-poll-review.aspx): Reagan had, at best, “routinely average ratings . . . while he served in office between 1981 and 1989.” Indeed, “the two presidents who followed Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, each had higher average ratings than Reagan, as did three earlier presidents — Lyndon Johnson, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight Eisenhower.”
Though he became more popular after leaving office (like most Presidents), it was that week-long bombardment of hagiography that sealed Reagan’s status as Great and Cherished Leader. As media and political figures lavished him with politicized praise, there was virtually no mention of the brutal, civilian-extinguishing covert wars he waged in Central America, his funding of terrorists in Nicaragua, the pervasive illegality of the Iran-contra scandal perpetrated by his top aides and possibly himself, the explosion of wealth and income inequality ushered in by “Reagonmics” which persists today, his escalation of the racially disparate Drug War, his slashing of domestic programs for the poor accompanied by a deficit-causing build-up in the military budget, the racially-tinged (at least) attacks on welfare-queens-in-Cadillacs, the Savings & Loan crisis resulting from deregulation, his refusal even to acknowledge AIDS as tens of thousands of the Wrong People died, the training of Muslim radicals in Afghanistan and arming of the Iranian regime, the attempt to appoint the radical Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, or virtually anything else that would undermine the canonization. The country was drowned by a full, uninterrupted week of pure, leader-reverent propaganda.
This happened because of an unhealthy conflation of appropriate post-death etiquette for private persons and the etiquette governing deaths of public figures. They are not and should not be the same. We are all taught that it is impolite to speak ill of the dead, particularly in the immediate aftermath of someone’s death. For a private person, in a private setting, that makes perfect sense. Most human beings are complex and shaped by conflicting drives, defined by both good and bad acts. That’s more or less what it means to be human. And — when it comes to private individuals — it’s entirely appropriate to emphasize the positives of someone’s life and avoid criticisms upon their death: it comforts their grieving loved ones and honors their memory. In that context, there’s just no reason, no benefit, to highlight their flaws.
But that is completely inapplicable to the death of a public person, especially one who is political. When someone dies who is a public figure by virtue of their political acts — like Ronald Reagan — discussions of them upon death will be inherently politicized. How they are remembered is not strictly a matter of the sensitivities of their loved ones, but has substantial impact on the culture which discusses their lives. To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems — enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts — is not a matter of politeness; it’s deceitful and propagandistic. To exploit the sentiments of sympathy produced by death to enshrine a political figure as Great and Noble is to sanction, or at best minimize, their sins. Misapplying private death etiquette to public figures creates false history and glorifies the ignoble.
* * * * *
All of this was triggered for me by the death this week of Christopher Hitchens and the remarkably undiluted, intense praise lavished on him by media discussions. Part of this is explained by the fact that Hitchens — like other long-time media figures, such as Tim Russert — had personal interactions with huge numbers of media figures who are shaping how he is remembered in death. That’s understandable: it’s difficult for any human being to ignore personal feelings, and it’s even more difficult in the face of the tragic death of a vibrant person at a much younger age than is normal.
But for the public at large, at least those who knew of him, Hitchens was an extremely controversial, polarizing figure. And particularly over the last decade, he expressed views — not ancillary to his writing but central to them — that were nothing short of repellent.
Corey Robin wrote that “on the announcement of his death, I think it’s fair to allow Christopher Hitchens to do the things he loved to do most: speak for himself,” and then assembled two representative passages from Hitchens’ post-9/11 writings (http://coreyrobin.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-the-most-provincial-spirit-of-all/). In the first, Hitchens celebrated the ability of cluster bombs to penetrate through a Koran that a Muslim may be carrying in his coat pocket (“those steel pellets will go straight through somebody and out the other side and through somebody else. So they won’t be able to say, ‘Ah, I was bearing a Koran over my heart and guess what, the missile stopped halfway through.’ No way, ’cause it’ll go straight through that as well. They’ll be dead, in other words”), and in the second, Hitchens explained that his reaction to the 9/11 attack was “exhilaration” because it would unleash an exciting, sustained war against what he came addictively to call “Islamofascism”: “I realized that if the battle went on until the last day of my life, I would never get bored in prosecuting it to the utmost.”
Hitchens, of course, never “prosecuted” the “exhilarating” war by actually fighting in it, but confined his “prosecution” to cheering for it and persuading others to support it. As one of Hitchens’ heroes, George Orwell, put it perfectly in Homage to Catalonia (http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/chapter5.html) about the anti-fascist, tough-guy war writers of his time:

As late as October 1937 the New Statesman was treating us to tales of Fascist barricades made of the bodies of living children (a most unhandy thing to make barricades with), and Mr Arthur Bryant was declaring that ‘the sawing-off of a Conservative tradesman’s legs’ was ‘a commonplace’ in Loyalist Spain.
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
I rarely wrote about Hitchens because, at least for the time that I’ve been writing about politics (since late 2005), there was nothing particularly notable about him. When it came to the defining issues of the post-9/11 era, he was largely indistinguishable from the small army of neoconservative fanatics eager to unleash ever-greater violence against Muslims: driven by a toxic mix of barbarism, self-loving provincialism, a sense of personal inadequacy, and, most of all, a pity-inducing need to find glory and purpose in cheering on military adventures and vanquishing some foe of historically unprecedented evil even if it meant manufacturing them. As Robin put it:

Hitchens had a reputation for being an internationalist. Yet someone who gets excited by mass murder—and then invokes that excitement, to a waiting audience, as an explanation of his support for mass murder—is not an internationalist. He is a narcissist, the most provincial spirit of all.
Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary (http://gawker.com/5868761/christopher-hitchens-unforgivable-mistake) – detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUeMIYawBQ) the Dixie Chicks as being “sluts” and “fucking fat slags (http://books.google.com.br/books?id=t_pmdoRTuOwC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq=%22and+I%27m+being+asked+to+worry+about+these+f ucking+fat+slags%22&source=bl&ots=eyWFzgnyKZ&sig=4E7lFRdJPEzIulXuFcpv5i4LRcA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=-qDsTt8ow4O2B-W4zYsK&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22and%20I%27m%20being%20asked%20to%20worry%20ab out%20these%20fucking%20fat%20slags%22&f=false)” for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.”
Subordinating his brave and intellectually rigorous defense of atheism, Hitchens’ glee over violence, bloodshed, and perpetual war dominated the last decade of his life. Dennis Perrin, a friend and former protégée of Hitchens, described (http://www.citypages.com/2003-07-09/news/obit-for-a-former-contrarian/3/) all the way back in 2003 how Hitchens’ virtues as a writer and thinker were fully swamped by his pulsating excitement over war and the Bush/Cheney imperial agenda:

I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he’s now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war.
In several pieces, including an incredibly condescending blast against Nelson Mandela, Hitch went on and on about WMD, chided readers with “Just you wait!” and other taunts, fully confident that once the U.S. took control of Iraq, tons of bio/chem weapons and labs would be all over the cable news nets–with him dancing a victory jig in the foreground. Now he says WMD were never a real concern, and that he’d always said so. It’s amazing that he’d dare state this while his earlier pieces can be read at his website. But then, when you side with massive state power and the cynical fucks who serve it, you can say pretty much anything and the People Who Matter won’t care.
Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the U.S. can be a “superpower for democracy,” and that Toms Jefferson [sic] and Paine would approve. He’s also slammed the “slut” Dixie Chicks as “fucking fat slags” for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn’t like it that Kerry ”exploits” his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers).
Sweet Jesus. What next? I’m afraid my old mentor is not the truth-telling Orwell he fancies himself to be. He’s becoming a coarser version of Norman Podhoretz (http://www.citypages.com/related/to/Norman+Podhoretz).
One of the last political essays he wrote in his life, for Slate, celebrated the virtues (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/in_defense_of_endless_war.html) of Endless War.
* * * * *
Nobody should have to silently watch someone with this history be converted into some sort of universally beloved literary saint. To enshrine him as worthy of unalloyed admiration is to insist that these actions were either themselves commendable or, at worst, insignificant. Nobody who writes about politics for decades will be entirely free of serious error, but how serious the error is, whether it reflects on their character, and whether they came to regret it, are all vital parts of honestly describing and assessing their work. To demand its exclusion is an act of dishonesty.
Nor should anyone be deterred by the manipulative, somewhat tyrannical use of sympathy: designed to render any post-death criticisms gauche and forbidden. Those hailing Hitchens’ greatness are engaged in a very public, affirmative, politically consequential effort to depict him as someone worthy of homage. That’s fine: Hitchens, like most people, did have admirable traits, impressive accomplishments, genuine talents and a periodic willingness to expose himself to danger to report on issues about which he was writing. But demanding in the name of politeness or civility that none of that be balanced or refuted by other facts is to demand a monopoly on how a consequential figure is remembered, to demand a license to propagandize — exactly what was done when the awful, power-worshipping TV host, Tim Russert, died, and we were all supposed to pretend that we had lost some Great Journalist, a pretense that had the distorting effect of equating Russert’s attributes of mindless subservience to the powerful with Good Journalism (ironically, Hitchens was the last person who would honor the etiquette rules being invoked on his behalf: he savaged (perfectly appropriately) Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, among others, upon their death, even as millions mourned them).
There’s one other aspect to the adulation of Hitchens that’s quite revealing. There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” — hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do. As Aaron Bady (http://zunguzungu.wordpress.com/) put it to me by email yesterday:

I go back to something Judith Butler’s been saying for years; some lives are grievable and some are not. And in that context, publicly mourning someone like Hitchens in the way we are supposed to do — holding him up as someone who was “one of us,” even if we disagree with him — is also a way of quietly reinforcing the “we” that never seems to extend to the un-grievable Arab casualties of Hitch’s favorite wars. It’s also a “we” that has everything to do with being clever and literate and British (and nothing to do with a human universalism that stretches across the usual “us” and “them” categories). And when it is impolitic to mention that he was politically atrocious (in exactly the way of Kissinger, if not to the extent), we enshrine the same standard of human value as when the deaths of Iraqi children from cluster bombs are rendered politically meaningless by our lack of attention.
That’s precisely true. The blood on his hands — and on the hands of those who played an even greater, more direct role, in all of this totally unjustified killing of innocents — is supposed to be ignored because he was an accomplished member in good standing of our media and political class. It’s a way the political and media class protects and celebrates itself: our elite members are to be heralded and their victims forgotten. One is, of course, free to believe that. But what should not be tolerated are prohibitions on these types of discussions when highly misleading elegies are being publicly implanted, all in order to consecrate someone’s reputation for noble greatness even when their acts are squarely at odds with that effort.


What a bunch of dribble Ben. Let's you and me do a Google search and see how concerned Greenwald was when the Kurds were getting gassed. Sounds like Hitchens probably at some point told your buddy Greenwald to go fuck himself and this is Greenwald's Eulogy. Stop with the Glen Greenwald already. Mint, Lindsay, and Brittany probably would be far more gracious and informed than this guy.

[buckjohnson]

I loved his writings and but thought the support of the Iraq war was weird and unsettling, he hated tyrants and bullies,, (though he could intellectually be both) and I love his God book. Wishing his family and loved ones well.

[Ben]

In Defense of Endless War:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2011/09/in_defense_of_endless_war.html


Christopher Hitchens’ Unforgivable Mistake:

http://gawker.com/5868761/christopher-hitchens-unforgivable-mistake

[envivision]

Shalom, Chaver!

[Dino Velvet]

Just saw a piece on him from 9/10. Very sad seeing him bald hunched over a table. RIP to a complicated man. Even in death he had no use for God.

[Odelay]

It would have been fascinating to see Hitches and William F. Buckley in a discussion.

They were contemporaries and I recall reading in one of the eulogy pieces of some social interaction between the two... some wedding or anniversary or something like that. I'd bet there's a video or audio recording of a conversation somewhere online.

I have a loaned kindle version of his memoirs from the library. 555 pages total, which tells me that whoever acted as his editor was grossly overpaid. I've started it, and will read the first few chapters and then skim over what looks interesting in the rest of it.

[BluegrassCat]

What a bunch of dribble Ben. Let's you and me do a Google search and see how concerned Greenwald was when the Kurds were getting gassed.

Greenwald was in college during the Kurdish gas attacks, what did you expect him to say about it? Let's do a google search and see what you were saying about the JFK assassination. :roll:

Anyway, if you think what he says is dribble [sic] you believe we shouldn't be able to discuss any negatives about political figures on their death? I doubt you'll live up to it when Jimmy Carter passes. That's an extreme stance against honesty and the truth.

Hitchens was a brilliant writer and speaker, who, unfortunately got the biggest issue of his life completely wrong. That wrongness does not diminish the brilliance of his other contributions but neither does his brilliance excuse his eventual barbarism.

He will be missed. He burned the candle at both ends, and gave a lovely light.

A great Hitchens quote:

"If (Jerry) Falwell had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox."

[loveboof]

let us just agree that he was a brilliant commentator, but that a lot of what he produced leaves me unimpressed.

Yes ok.

[onmyknees]

Greenwald was in college during the Kurdish gas attacks, what did you expect him to say about it? Let's do a google search and see what you were saying about the JFK assassination. :roll:

Anyway, if you think what he says is dribble [sic] you believe we shouldn't be able to discuss any negatives about political figures on their death? I doubt you'll live up to it when Jimmy Carter passes. That's an extreme stance against honesty and the truth.

Hitchens was a brilliant writer and speaker, who, unfortunately got the biggest issue of his life completely wrong. That wrongness does not diminish the brilliance of his other contributions but neither does his brilliance excuse his eventual barbarism.

He will be missed. He burned the candle at both ends, and gave a lovely light.

A great Hitchens quote:

"If (Jerry) Falwell had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox."


There you go again....succeeding in shitting up what was a relatively interesting thread with your 9th grade version of liberalism and politics. I like Ben...but I wish he would tell us what he thinks on issues and stop running to Glen Greenwald to see what he thinks. Greenwald is not what I would consider a gifter writer or thinker, but you and Ben appearently disagree, and I found his piece overly one sided. When writing about the death of all those liberal members of Congress who voted for the use of force, will he sing the same tune? Or will he take a different road...one you would take...."Bush Lied to them" lmao

My problem with Greenwald, and many that come from his perspective is
he is utterly predictable, ( as are you) and he condenses the life of a complicated man into one issue.
I could have written that piece for him, or better still Ben could have. Now for the benefit of others, here's a little different take on Hitchens by someone who knew him, and is a counter balance to the Greenwald slam job. The thread was about Hitches...not Greenwald or me. Get it?




I have several recollections of Hitchens, who died yesterday at the age of 62.
The first is when I served in the George W. Bush White House (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​ and, in the first term, invited Christopher to speak to the White House staff. He spoke very well, of course, but what I most recall are a couple of things that occurred before the speech. The first is standing with him outside of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. He had gone out to smoke, which wasn’t unusual — and he confided to me that he was nervous, which was. The words “Christopher Hitchens” and “nervous” don’t usually belong in the same sentence. He also wore a tie, which he indicated to me he hadn’t done in years — and, he told me, he had gotten his shoes shined before the speech, which he didn’t recall ever having had done.

It wasn’t hard for me to fit the pieces together. Christopher felt it was an honor for him, a British citizen, to speak at the White House. For all his reputation for being a bon vivant, an iconoclast, and a man not known for his devotion to protocol, he was in fact quite moved to be a guest at one of the great symbols of American democracy. It was, I thought, something of a touching moment.
Memory number two is meeting Christopher for drinks at a hotel late one afternoon several years ago. We were joined by Michael Cromartie, now my colleague at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And among the topics (in this case a topic of my choice) was Malcolm Muggeridge (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​, who had a formative influence on my Christian pilgrimage. We discussed C.S. Lewis and related topics — and the conversation was fascinating, wide-ranging, and completely free of animus. What struck me was how Hitchens, for all his ferocious contempt for Christianity, was actually respectful in dealing with me and others of my faith.
My third memory is the last time I saw Hitchens, which was at a dinner with him, his brother Peter (they had spoken together at a forum earlier in the day), his wife Carol Blue (who joined us later in the dinner), and a few others. At that point, Christopher had been diagnosed with cancer and knew his days were numbered. The dinner itself was sheer delight. We spoke about American politics, the Scottish author John Buchan (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​, poetry and much else. Afterward I commented to a friend how impressive Hitchens was, in this sense: there was no sense of impending doom or self-pity. Life was good, he seemed to signal, and life went on. At the conclusion of the evening he did make a point to mention to me how much he appreciated a hand-written note President Bush had sent him after learning of Christopher’s illness. Then there was, at the end, a brief, and at least for me, a poignant farewell. I knew it was unlikely I would ever see him again. And I never did. (I did continue to communicate with him from time to time via e-mail.)
I disagreed with Christopher on many issues, from Henry Kissinger (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​ and Mother Teresa (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​ to the state of Israel and Christianity, and I never really understood his hatred for the Lord whom I had come to love. Still, I grew to admire him a great deal, not for his wit and brilliant writing, which are gifts but not virtues; but for his courage. He showed it in his solidarity with Salman Rushdie (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-rip/#)​, in breaking ranks with those on the Left over the Iraq war, and in how he dealt with his death sentence. In the end, pain which would have broken most of us didn’t break him. And he wrote — oh how he wrote — almost to his final hour.
Death, he said, was our common fate. True enough. But I wish it was a fate he could have avoided for much longer than he did.

[Stavros]

Curious about your notion of scholarship on a different level, Stavros. Would you consider a journalist who has lived and worked in the Middle east for many decades (say Robert Fisk) as less well informed than a professor of Middle eastern studies at a UK university who occasionally visits the region?

I don't think its about being less or more informed, but what is done with the material. It is the difference between being a journalist and an academic, which suggests one is short-term and the other long-term, but there are plenty of academics whose work is shall we say, 'disappointing'.

Fisk is a rare example, I think you will agree, but that is because The Independent allows him to be biased where, for example, the BBC tries to ensure that Jeremy Bowen and Jim Muir are 'objective', and both are outstanding journalists who understand the region. Journalists do a different job from historians and the academics who specialise in the region, so in a way its not a fair comparison, and often scholarship is not part of their brief, unless they write a book and do some reading. But if pressed, yes, I think the study of Amal and the Shi'a by Richard Augustus Norton is superior to what Fisk writes about that community, that Malcolm Yapp's narrative history is superior to Fisk, same with the Americans like William Quandt and Philip Khoury, even Eugene Rogan whose book on the Arabs is pretty good if repetitive in some places. There is a depth of analysis, a range of intellectual tools that journalists don't have and maybe are not expected to use.

We also suffer from the lack of translation of what Arabs think of their own history -I don't believe there has ever been a translation of Sadiq al-Azm's scorching denunciation of Nasser's hubris; there is plenty of interesting material in Hebrew too that hasn't been translated.

A more chilling fact is that when Blair was developing his argument to justify the invasion of Iraq, neither journalists nor academics 'informed' his policy. A small group (Charles Tripp, Toby Dodge and others) went to Downing St to brief Jack Straw for no practical reason. The briefing was sent to the PM's office and either buried under a pile of other unread papers or just tossed in the wastepaper basket. Straw then had the cheek to say some years later that 'we were surprised at the scale of the insurgency in Iraq'; which suggests he listened to the briefings from experts with his ears closed; or the words 'Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs' is just a name on a badge.

[Ben]

Greenwald was in college during the Kurdish gas attacks, what did you expect him to say about it? Let's do a google search and see what you were saying about the JFK assassination. :roll:

Anyway, if you think what he says is dribble [sic] you believe we shouldn't be able to discuss any negatives about political figures on their death? I doubt you'll live up to it when Jimmy Carter passes. That's an extreme stance against honesty and the truth.

Hitchens was a brilliant writer and speaker, who, unfortunately got the biggest issue of his life completely wrong. That wrongness does not diminish the brilliance of his other contributions but neither does his brilliance excuse his eventual barbarism.

He will be missed. He burned the candle at both ends, and gave a lovely light.

A great Hitchens quote:

"If (Jerry) Falwell had been given an enema, he could have been buried in a matchbox."

"What a bunch of dribble Ben. Let's you and me do a Google search and see how concerned Greenwald was when the Kurds were getting gassed."

Exactly when the Kurds were getting gassed was March of '88. Greenwald was 21 years of age. (He only started writing and blogging in 2005.)
That's more a question for Reagan (albeit now deceased) and Vice President Bush and George Shultz and Reagan's inner cabinet, as it were. Who supported Hussein after he committed his worst atrocities. (And, too, President Carter. Who gave Hussein the green light to invade Iran and backed him all the way. But we shouldn't focus on our crimes. We should focus on the crimes of others. The thing is: it's very difficult to look in the mirror. Ya know, other countries and leaders commit crimes. But golly gee we don't commit any crimes.
Well, Hitchens pointed that out with respect to our criminal act when we took out the elected President of Chile Salvador Allende. We bombed the presidential palace. Killed the President. Slaughtered upwards of 3,000 people in the process. And installed a military dictatorship. And Hitchens rightly said that Kissinger was and is a war criminal. As was President Nixon. He also called President Clinton a serial rapist. (Greenwald, rightly, said we have been inculcated to think that politicians ARE above the law. I think that's true.)

Christopher Hitchens on Henry Kissinger - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ant6tY-MOIk)

[BluegrassCat]

There you go again....succeeding in shitting up what was a relatively interesting thread with your 9th grade version of liberalism and politics. I like Ben...but I wish he would tell us what he thinks on issues and stop running to Glen Greenwald to see what he thinks. Greenwald is not what I would consider a gifter writer or thinker, but you and Ben appearently disagree, and I found his piece overly one sided. When writing about the death of all those liberal members of Congress who voted for the use of force, will he sing the same tune? Or will he take a different road...one you would take...."Bush Lied to them" lmao

My problem with Greenwald, and many that come from his perspective is
he is utterly predictable, ( as are you) and he condenses the life of a complicated man into one issue.
I could have written that piece for him, or better still Ben could have. Now for the benefit of others, here's a little different take on Hitchens by someone who knew him, and is a counter balance to the Greenwald slam job. The thread was about Hitches...not Greenwald or me. Get it?


These retorts are hilarious. It doesn't matter how many times you're busted for sidestepping substance to engage in character assassination, you just keep it up. Which of course signals your own lack of substance. Your insults sound like they come from a list that you apply randomly because they don't fit the situation. You get called on your bullshit and you lash out, because you know you don't have a leg to stand on.

So you admit you oppose honest speech and telling the truth about public figures.

You're the one who made this about Greenwald.

Talk about a predictable partisan hack, Ben has already provided links to pieces by people who actually knew the man but you post a bit by someone from the W. administration who met Hitchens a handful of times, didn't know him and had nothing interesting to say about him. Like Thom said, I don't know how you're not embarrassed by your posts.

[Ben]

Christopher Hitchens: Bah, Humbug on Christmas [Updated 12/19/2011] - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJ0mo0r3zs)

[onmyknees]

These retorts are hilarious. It doesn't matter how many times you're busted for sidestepping substance to engage in character assassination, you just keep it up. Which of course signals your own lack of substance. Your insults sound like they come from a list that you apply randomly because they don't fit the situation. You get called on your bullshit and you lash out, because you know you don't have a leg to stand on.

So you admit you oppose honest speech and telling the truth about public figures.

You're the one who made this about Greenwald.

Talk about a predictable partisan hack, Ben has already provided links to pieces by people who actually knew the man but you post a bit by someone from the W. administration who met Hitchens a handful of times, didn't know him and had nothing interesting to say about him. Like Thom said, I don't know how you're not embarrassed by your posts.


I must have missed this....You're doing comedy now too...in additional to writing political commentary for your high school newspaper ?

But I must tell you....it's not humor if you don't intend it to be funny....and in your case you try to be serious, as in the case of you single handedly deconstructing Gretchen Morgenstern's book, when no one else has been able to. Have you had your rebuttals published by the NY Times yet? What an useful idiot.
Since you're too dense to get it the first or second time....let's try one more time ...This was a thread about Hitchens...and what members of HA thought of him, and his positions, his writings and his thoughts...what Glen Greenwald thinks about him is not close to being relevent. If I want to know what Greensward thinks...I'll read some far left blog, or tune into the Political Boards to read you parrot the same thing .
But in the spirit of the season...............I do have a heart, so here's my stocking stuffer to you, and about you.





George Carlin Stupid People - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rh6qqsmxNs&feature=related)

[russtafa]

god knows why the western nations want any thing to do with people from 13th century countries except oil