The canonization of
Christopher Hitchens.
For a fearless contrarian, he
took on easy targets: Kissinger, Mother Teresa, God. But he looked good and
sounded better, and with a cig in his mouth and Johnny Walker Black near at
hand, he didn’t need a trench coat, he personified Journalism. On America’s
invasion and occupation of Iraq -the key issue of our time - he was loudly and
enthusiastically wrong, and although he changed his mind on many things, he
doubled down on this. There were journalists and pundits who got Iraq right,
and got it right from the beginning. You never saw them on TV, and you never
will. You saw Hitch though, and often. With reason: he was a Brit, with the
gift of gab and all of literature at his command, he was never not entertaining.
“Charm kills,” Waugh wrote, and Hitch is the literal proof; the drinking, the
smoking, the long nights and writing-as-performance were very likely why he
died so young. Along the way, it seems also to have killed, if only
momentarily, the critical thinking of a great many smart media professionals,
who didn’t want to see this sad, slow-motion suicide for what it was.
7 comments:
Christopher Hitchens was disinclined to show mercy to others, let alone ask for it. Yet the hope remains that he knows it now.
keep putting the arguments
for argument's sake
for all of our sakes
Smoking is bad for you. Who knew?
From Hitch-22: bemoaning the depravation of age, Hitchens noted that his looks had degraded to the point where only women were willing to go to bed with him.
Voice of reason? Intellectual assassin? Giant? Dear lord, it really is true that an English accent makes Americans into credulous idiots.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum?
I am afraid I am going to disregard that bit of Roman wisdom too. The recently deceased Christopher Hitchens has been rather over-eulogized. His virulent hateful outpourings make it difficult for me to grant him any respect. Despite their many differences his brother Peter wrote a generous tribute. It showed that Peter lacked the hate that motivated him.
He was a thoroughly superficial man suited to become a minor celebrity in a period when so much of culture is as useful as a used Kleenex.
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