WTF!? Christopher Hitchens endorses Kerry

[troublemaker]

Snide, as befitting a sloppy self-righteous drunk, but an endorsement just the same. Andrew Sullivan's nod was telegraphed for months but this one really surprises me.

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq...

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108714/

[RevolutionStartsNow]

1. Ick, I don't want his endorsement!

Bad juju!

[uhhuh]

2. The tumbler is empty on the chimp's boat

He's looking for the next good bar on Kerry's steamship.

[xray s]

3. as if...

...anyone gives a shit what that flesh bag of bad scotch says about anything...

[GRLMGC]

4. Ah

that guy is such a prick.

[desertalien]

13. What a load of arrogant garbage.

n/t

[Zhade]

5. Hitchens is a turncoat. FUCK his endorsement.

Kerry doesn't need scum like him.

[Steelangel]

6. Sorry for being 'ignorant' but who's Chris Hitchens exactly?

[troublemaker]

14. Nasty but sometimes talented anti-leftist leftist who loves the Iraq war

[ewagner]

24. More precisely

self-loathing liberal

[ekwhite]

19. Who was Hitchens, and Who is he now?

Back in the Reagan era, Hitchens was a fire-breathing leftist who was a regular columnist for The Nation and other left-wing magazines. Sometime after the fall of the Berlin Wall, he apparently went off the deep end and became a neocon.

What happened - beats me. Seems that he needs to be a "true believer." A lot of neocons are ex-Stalinists, and I seem to remember that Hitchens was once a Stalinist. Maybe someone else can enlighten us on what happened to Hitchens. It is sad, really - I used to like him many years ago.

[rooboy]

22. Next time you walk past a drunk sitting with a bottle in a doorway...

go up and ask him "are you Christopher Hitchens?". That'll be him.

[Awsi Dooger]

23. A smug pitchfork-up-his-ass writer for Vanity Fair

He usually goes by Christopher Hitchens. An accent. Always looks like he just drank one bottle of Scotch and washed his hair with another one. A professional apologist for Bush, the Al Qaeda/9-11 connection, and going to war. He's a pseudo-intellectual who's always more pompous than accurate.

I thrilled to watch Tim Russert on CNBC a week ago when they actually had his boss, the Vanity Fair editor, debating Hitchens. He trumped Hitchens on every response, and Hitchens was atypically reserved and respectful with his checkwriter scolding him from two feet away.

[Steelangel]

42. Thanks all for providing the information on Mr. Hitchens!

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Placebo]

7. I too am SHOCKED.

:wow: Truly. :wow:

[RevolutionStartsNow]

17. OT: That's a GREAT picture

Of our next vice president

[Placebo]

25. I thought so too!

:thumbsup: For Edwards, he photographs so well.

[NightOwwl]

8. His buddy Andrew Sullivan endorsed Kerry too.

"Kerry? I cannot know for sure. But in a democracy, you sometimes have to have faith that a new leader will be able to absorb the achievements of his predecessor and help mend his failures. Kerry has actually been much more impressive in the latter stages of this campaign than I expected. He has exuded a calm and a steadiness that reassures. He is right about our need for more allies, more prudence, and more tactical discrimination in the war we are waging. I cannot say I have perfect confidence in him, or that I support him without reservations. But not to support anyone in this dangerous time is a cop-out. So give him a chance. In picking the lesser of two risks, we can also do something less dispiriting. We can decide to pick the greater of two hopes. And even in these dour days, it is only American to hope."

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=express&s=sullivan102604

[speedoo]

9. Well, I never beleived Hitchens was stupid.

Wierd, definitely, but not stupid, and not crazy either.

And only stupid people, crazy people or people with an agenda (eg, McCain and other butt-kissing rethugs) are endorsing the shrub.

[Philostopher]

10. Aah -- Snitchens figures Teresa buys better scotch

than Laura, and he's hoping they'll spill a little into his glass before he passes out. He smells the tide going out and doesn't want to be left behind on the beach with an empty highball glass with a couple of half-melted ice cubes tinkling in the bottom.

[geek tragedy]

11. Even fat, drunken rats know when to get off a sinking ship. eom

[AmerDem]

34. lol

:D

[neoteric lefty]

12. Even Hitchens cannot let himself vote for Bush due to the complete

ineptitude of planning for the port-war Iraq. I ask that to Republicans all the time, "I know you agree with Bush and his vision, but how can you let a man continue in office who allows for such a disaster to occur in Iraq?"

[Placebo]

15. HA, One Of the FEW Bush Supporters SAYS...

David Bradley Kenner, Intern: Bush

I'm voting for Bush. I don't want, or find it necessary, to defend every piece of his record. The simple fact is that he is the only candidate who has had the courage to envision a long-term solution to the danger of terrorism—the liberalization and democratization of the Middle East. John Kerry, on the other hand, cannot manage to think beyond the next political obstacle. Only one candidate has the courage to keep America safe in these dangerous days. Four more years!

[Zhade]

27. It's really irnoic when a republican endorses "liberalizing" the ME.

After all I'd heard, wasn't anything "liberal" anathema to them?

Oh, sweet irony!

[yellowcanine]

16. Subjectively, Hitchens is an idiot. Objectively, Hitchens is an idiot.

Does Hitchens call that writing? Pathetic. Ironically, he doesn't even know it is pathetic.

[Bucky]

18. Wow. I thought sanctimonious turds were part of Bush's base

Talk about a melt down. What will Bush do if the pot-bellied irrelevent moralizers start defecting to Kerry next?

[candy331]

26. Disgusting, couldn't stand to hear his slobbering over the networks

for Bush, now he sees the ship is really sinking and is no joke,pull up the anchor, draw in the life boat let him drown.

[feistydem]

20. But Hitchens equivocates in The Nation and claims he's "slightly for Bush"

Article link: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=hitchens

"Should the electors decide for the President, as I would
slightly prefer, the excruciating personality of George Bush strikes me in the light of a second- or third-order consideration. If the worst that is said of him is true--that he is an idiotic and psychically damaged Sabbath-fanatic, with nothing between his large Texan ears--then these things were presumably just as true when he ran against Al Gore, and against nation-building and foreign intervention. It is Bush's conversion from isolationism that impresses me, just as it is the parallel lapse into isolationism on Kerry's part that makes me skeptical."

[troublemaker]

21. He will vote for himself n/t

[feistydem]

28. I'm thinking the Jack Daniels/Johnny Walker ticket is for Hitchens

[Robeson]

29. The Rats are abandoning the Ship...

...No one wants to be the cabin boy of the Titanic!

Advice to Kerry: Never trust this guy.

[dave123williams]

38. That's it EXACTLY!

Rats from a sinking ship; Hitchens is just that...a rat.

[timezoned]

41. Just noticed your post after

I had done mine, see below. Great memes arise on their own- which means that they're solid ones. Rats from a ship it is, I bet that's gonna spread quick

[wtmusic]

30. I thought we had heard the last of Hitch

but he's still blubbering on about confronting Sadaam blah blah blah

[umtalal]

31. It seems to me CH wants the war more than he wants Bush.

"Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq..."

As I see it, CH knows the current administration is a cult and not mainstream. LOL at the irony!!!!

[Wols]

32. Hitchens is a brilliant guy

I may not always agree with him but I love to read his stuff. He had some interesting things to say about Mother Teresa which the mainstream media never reported on. He wrote a book called The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. He was gonna call it Holy Cow but the publisher thought that was a little too much. I think he tries to be honest, which means he inevitably will piss off people.

[Placebo]

33. Honest? PUH-LEEZ!

[AmerDem]

36. get real

he is a self absorbed drunk!

[AliceWonderland]

35. I also did a "WTF??" on this one

Kind of makes you feel...dirty, doesn't it?

I wish someone would explain "fascism" to this bloviating buffoon. He can invoke Orwell all he likes, but Orwell he ain't.

I always held the unpopular opinion that he was never terribly talented, even when I agree with some of his views. I dislike frilly, self-important, pretentious writing. So did George Orwell.

[Demfromct]

37. Hitchens

He is the guy who laughs at his own joke before he tells it.

[alteredstate]

39. This is unbelievable!

Just saw him talking up Bush on cable last week!

[timezoned]

40. Typical blowhard coward

manages to jump ship just in time to hope to look less foolish (he hopes) as the HMS Shrub sinks out from under him in plain view- while still refusing to acknowledge that there was anything wrong with the moronic position of every having backed Shrub and bashed Kerry. Which he continues to do even in the endorsement.

Creep. Throw this one overboard, we have enough without him and it just stinks up the ship.

[cheshire]

43. WTF I don't believe this. LOL I hope he never lives this down.

[JSJ]

44. hey hitchens (you, too, andy) take your endorsement and cram it!

[fujiyama]

45. Hitchens is a Bush apologizing

fool, but a vote is a vote... I'm surprised, not only by him but Michey Kaus as well. I don't remember seeing any other person as obsessed about Kerry than Kaus...and not in a good way. He was extrmely snide about it.

Are these people lying? It's not as though they showed Kerry any support earlier. I'm surprised by these votes, and don't even know if I believe them. They just may say they're voting for Kerry, because they'd be ostracized as freaks at their own place. All but three were voting for Kerry at Slate.

[vs the introvore]

46. part of rove's plan to "underdog" bush

an image that slips.

[newyawker99]

47. Hi vs the introvore!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[demokatgurrl]

48. Please don't call me an idiot but who is he?? n/t