Christopher Hitchens

For the November 1993 issue of Washingtonian, Andy Ferguson profiled Christopher Hitchens:

Also available here. 

In February 2009, Christopher Hitchens got into a fight with fascists in Beirut. Visiting the country as part of a delegation of foreign journalists hosted by Lebanon’s pro-democracy March 14 movement, Hitchens was walking through the Hamra district with two colleagues when he saw a plaque commemorating a martyr from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. The organization’s symbol is a variation on the swastika, the sight of which prompted Hitchens to pull out a pen and deface the placard. Suddenly a gang of SSNP thugs materialized and set upon Hitchens and the others, who were barely able to make their safe escape in a passing taxi.

"One way of describing him, as well as of valuing him, would be to say that he was a man at war.”

(Hitchens on Orwell, 
Grand Street, Winter 1984)

...I highly recommend starting with this Vanity Fair piece where Hitchens confronts the consequences of his support for the Iraq War, and in the process pens a moving tribute to a fallen soldier:

I wasn’t a close friend of Christopher Hitchens—more like a friendly acquaintance—but he was so outsized a presence, had so fertile a mind, was gifted with such a bold personality, and was altogether so much larger than life that I already feel his loss deeply.

Christopher Hitchens, arguably one of the most rhetorically gifted writers in the English language and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, has passed away at age 62. I say "arguably," because if there's one thing he was good at, it was provoking arguments over his very public opinions on everything from atheism to whether women could be as funny as men.

You know, for all the Soros money shoveled at Media Matters for America, it's really quite a monument to what a bunch of hapless ideologues run the place that they have absolutely nothing to show for it.

"Up to 4,947 non-citizens may have voted in Colorado in November 2010"

Two scathing must reads today on the Libya situation are out today from two eminent journalists. Here's Christopher Hitchens:

Ever since then-CNN president Jon Klein declared himself “firmly in the Jon Stewart camp” after the comedian's bombastic appearance on Crossfire in 2004, something like an anti-cult has formed around that very camp—including as it does The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and the many books and franchises of its hosts. When the CNN anchor Rick Sanchez exploded against Stewart recently on the radio, he became only the latest public figure to join this anti-cult, and not the first to do so in a slightly deranged manner that ended up costing his job.

Classic Hitchens:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

Read the whole thing.

Classic Hitchens:

Chávez, in other words, is very close to the climactic moment when he will announce that he is a poached egg and that he requires a very large piece of buttered toast so that he can lie down and take a soothing nap.

Read the whole thing.

The Rage Against God