Christopher Hitchens, R.I.P.

Christopher Hitchens has died at age 62.

I started reading him in The Nation long ago while sitting in the university library. In the beginning, I only read Beat the Devil, Alexander Cockburn's column, then I added Minority Report which Hitchens wrote.

They were both pretty interesting. I vaguly remember when he started his attacks on Mother Theresa.

Mother Theresa died not long after Princess Diana's funeral had been shown on national television. A lot of people scoffed at Diana's death being treated this way. Who was Princess Diana? they demanded. What did she ever do to get her funeral televised? If Mother Theresa died, do you think they'd televise her funeral?

So, when Mother Theresa died, the networks had to carry her funeral. Hitchens was interviewed on TV and repeated his criticism of her. He didn't know that he was attacking her while they were showing live video of her lying in state.

There's a lovely YouTube clip of him in the wake of Jerry Falwell's death. He had written that they found his "carcass" lying on the floor of his "obscure office". He said at one point, perhaps in a different clip, that he didn't think Falwell was capable of reading the Bible "or any other long book."

http://youtu.be/doKkOSMaTk4

In that clip, Ralph Reed gives a strained smile as Hitchens says, "And why not a word now from the friend of Jack Abramoff...to give a kosher stamp to religious fraud. That's all it needs now, let's hear from the Abramoff faction [unintelligible] and the other religious rip-off artists. You should be ashamed of yourselves."

He also tended to lash out at his friends. He tried to put his pal, Sid Blumenthal, in prison for perjury after the Clinton impeachment hearings. He attacked Edward Said shortly before his death, and attacked him again in Said's obituary.

Atheism was his big come-back after his grim years as a Bush supporter.

To me, the atheism thing got old quick. I think I'd heard all the arguments by the time I was in high school. There's just not that much to say about it. For example, Hitchens pointed out that people knew that stealing and killing were wrong before The Ten Commandments were revealed. In one debate, a Christian responded that, yes, of course people knew it was wrong. The Bible didn't say otherwise. Look at the story of Cain and Abel.

Hitchens did the best TV interview of a Klansman I've ever seen. He interviewed the head the Ku Klux Klan. He started by asking that, since the Klan was known for its history if racism and violence---wasn't it rather stupid of him to present himself as its leader? The old Kluxer gave a fake chuckle and some sort of answer.

Interviews with Klansmen rarely go well. Some interviewers, like Larry King, let them say what they want and don't argue, and there are others like Sam Donaldson who would would be overly argumentative. Hitchens struck the right balance.

In the interview Hitchens did, the Klansman tried to claim that they weren't racist, they just believe that... I can't remember the specifics, but he tried to present the Klan as a group of moderate Republicans. Hitchens told him he didn't see the point of that. Why should there be a Ku Klux Klan if they're all middle-of-the-road Republicans?

The Klansman claimed they were nonviolent. Hitchens showed a video of some rioting Klansmen. The Klansman said that they could be anybody----anyone can call themselves Klansmen.

So how do we know you're really a Klansman, Hitchens said.


Hitchens' brother and others who've researched it have said that he overstated his Jewish ancestry. He claimed that, under Jewish law, he was technically Jewish. He was still pro-Palestinian. But it must have been a bit of a blow to him when, in a debate with George Galloway in front a largely Jewish, pro-Hitchens crowd, Galloway was booed when he said something in defense of Palestinians. He commented to Hitchens that his supporters didn't share his concerns for Palestinian people.

One thing you learn from Hitchens' appearances before Jewish audiences is that they will laugh if you start by saying, "Shalom".

I hear, though, that Hitchens attacked the people who risked their lives and in several cases gave their lives to run the blockade of Gaza. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in their obituary, praised him for this.

He wanted to abolish the monarchy. He called for this for the sake of William and Harry---he didn't want them to wind up like Charles and the rest of the grown-ups in that family.

Hitchens attacked Charles as a father, pointing out that he appeared on TV announcing that he never loved Diana, talking about their extramarital hi jinks, which had to have made things rather uncomfortable for the boys who were away in boarding school at the time.

One time, when William was having a big 21st birthday party or something, they brought Hitchens onto a talk show apparently hoping he would trash the prince. But no. Hitchens wished he were that age again. I don't remember if he called for the abolition of the monarchy on that occasion so William wouldn't spend the next forty years waiting for his father to die, the way Charles is still waiting for his mother's demise so he can move up in the world.

I think it's too late for the two Princes. They're both pretty worthless. They're both in the military, but so what. They're soldiers who can't be sent into war because they would make such good hostages if they were captured. Harry's tasteless girlfriend gave him a diamond encrusted wristwatch before he was to be shipped off to Afghanistan. Maybe she thought he could use it to bargain for his life if he was ever taken prisoner, although, I suppose, if they captured him they would have his watch anyway. Harry was disappointed when his deployment was canceled.

It's too bad Hitchens lost his gig on Crossfire on CNN. They wanted him as a host, but he refused to defend Bill Clinton even if he was representing "the left".

Robert Novak refused to go on TV with him because Hitchens wouldn't take any crap from him. When Hitchens appeared as a guest on Crossfire, he called Novak a "polecat" and a "McCarthyite bum". When Novak tried again, Hitchens said, "More musk from the polecat."

It's a shame. The show would have been much better. And Hitchens would have stood up to Jon Stewart.

And I remember him on The Phil Donahue show talking about the October Surprise.

There was a theory that, when Reagan was running against Jimmy Carter, his campaign made a deal with the Iranians. The Iranians would not release the hostages held at the U.S. embassy in Tehran until after the election. The election was very close, Reagan only won because John Anderson ran as an independent and took a lot of Carter's voters (even though Anderson had been a Republican). Had the hostages been released before the election, Carter would have won. As it happened, they were released as just Reagan was sworn into office. And secret U.S. arms shipments to Iran, then in a war with Iraq, soon began.

On Donahue, former Iranian president Banisadr, appeared on satellite with some information supporting the theory.

A Reagan supporter on the panel said he wouldn't believe that or anything any Iranian said. Predictably, the audience applauded.

Hitchens said rather forcefully that that was a racist thing to say and that the people who applauded should be ashamed.

Later, the guy put his hand on Hitchens' shoulder and he shouted that "THIS MAN" was responsible for spreading this---

"HANDS OFF!" Hitchens said. "DON'T TOUCH!"

The guy removed his hand slightly but it hovered a couple of inches from him as he tried to continue. "THIS MAN HAS---"

"JUST KEEP YOUR HANDS IN FRONT OF YOU. I WANT TO KNOW WHERE THEY ARE," Hitchen said.

What went wrong?

I heard one theory that this was just how you ended up when you were a "contrarian". You had to become more and more contrary until you ended up as Hitchens did, defending George Bush.

Others have argued that there was a consistency to his views----that he was always devoted to truth, or some sort of humanism, even though he was rejoicing at the bombing of Afghan villages.

Alexander Cockburn took sort of the same view----that Hitchens hadn't changed. But he had a different view on what it was that remained the same:

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.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/farewell-to-c-h/

Well. Dead after a long battle with cancer. I'm sorry he's gone.