Triangulations of Christopher Hitchens

[marmar]

from Consortium News:



Triangulations of Christopher Hitchens
January 2, 2012

The death of author Christopher Hitchens from cancer at 62 brought forth a flood of flattering remembrances about his wit and style, but largely missing was the other side of Hitchens, the ruthless opportunist who sold out to the neocons, betrayed friends and bullied the weak, as media critic Sam Husseini recalls.

By Sam Husseini


“Have you stopped vomiting yet, Christopher?” were the first words I ever said to Christopher Hitchens face-to-face. I’d bumped into him at some DC shindig, the type of thing I rarely went to and what he seemed at times to live off.

It was just after the deaths of both Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, and Hitchens seemed to be on Cloud 9. My comment stemmed from a recent quote of his on a chat show — I think “Meet the Press” — that the commemorations around Diana’s death were such that he “couldn’t stop vomiting.”

The adulation that followed Hitchens to his grave would be enough to induce serious regurgitation from the better demons of Hitchens’ past self, if that still exists somewhere, if it ever really did. As gushing flattery poured out from writer after writer who recounting with swagger their interactions with Hitchens — I’ve been left to figuring how to account for mine.

There have been a few serious pieces noting his stark contradictions, but they didn’t seem to account for how he was trusted by many who should have known better, and I certainly count myself among the guilty on this count, though with reason. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://consortiumnews.com/2012/01/02/triangulations-of-christopher-hitchens/

[xchrom]

1. interesting. nt

[bemildred]

2. Book Review: 'The Quotable Hitchens'

Through his Vanity Fair essays, his books and his television appearances, Christopher Hitchens has become one of our leading provocateurs, saying what many of us might be thinking (though he's more articulate) but are afraid to utter. Public intellectual, pundit, whatever, he is frequently thought-provoking and almost always entertaining, if occasionally offensive. So as he deals with a diagnosis of esophageal cancer, an admirer and fellow writer, Windsor Mann, has collected many of Hitchens' most piquant remarks and we have them now in "The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism."

This isn't a collection of his essays and other works but rather a book of quotations, many of them brief, and it makes for easy reading or perusing. Hitchens devotees will be most rewarded. But others, particularly curious types who haven't paid Hitchens much attention, can treat the book as a tip sheet (it kindly includes citations to the original essays and such) and track down an article or a relevant book.

Hitchens, depending on where one stands, is often either mean or brutally honest, as in these examples:

On George W. Bush: "He's unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things."

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/books/la-et-book-hitchens-20110707,0,4259966.story

[izquierdista]

4. Hitchens and Bush

For all their differences, two sots for whom the bottle does the talking.

[LeftishBrit]

6. But the big difference is that Bush was in charge of a country and of the world's biggest store of

WMD, and Hitchens was not, and probably didn't even want to be.

Hitchens was doubtless in many ways not a particularly nice person, or a particularly wise (as opposed to clever) one; but he didn't have real power, and did not *cause* the Iraq war.

[Loudmxr]

3. CH was insufferable... sometimes but that is part of the package.

Do you have friends that, at times, are just too much to stand?

I do.

They are much smarter than me and I learn to be competitive with them.

That is why I hang with them because it is soooo much fun!!!

I will miss Hitch he was an inspiration to me.

And now for something not so completely different: The Argument:

Some think I believe my self as smart... no just competitive.

[BeyondGeography]

5. The writer knows his subject...He was a total loon

<snip>In the end, I really wanted Hitchens to live long enough to face the full consequences of the wars he’d help wrought. After all, he did have moments of genius, though they were quickly forgotten, most likely, including by him.<snip>

[provis99]

7. Hitchens was nothing but a drunken, obscene boor.

I would take great delight in pissing on his grave.

[MisterP]

8. TL,DR version: he was a Frank Gaffney atheist