Christopher Hitchens RIP

[cantthinkofanything]

or he's burning in hell. One or the other.
Spurstalk will decide.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

[Blake]

Who is he?

[cantthinkofanything]

Who is he?

A more capable big than Matt Bonner.

[Blake]

A more capable big than Matt Bonner.

Doubtful he is relevant enough to wish hellfire on him the way the masses do Bonner.

[cantthinkofanything]

Doubtful he is relevant enough to wish hellfire on him the way the masses do Bonner.

Not sure if you're just fucking around now. Hitchens was a noted atheist.

[Capt Bringdown]

Not sure if you're just fucking around now. Hitchens was a noted atheist.

As well as a big GW and Iraq war supporter. May he rot in hell.

[Blake]

Not sure if you're just fucking around now. Hitchens was a noted atheist.

I really have never heard of this guy.

Still, I bet there are more posters that wish hellfire on Bonner

[Yonivore]

Not sure if you're just fucking around now. Hitchens was a noted atheist.
It's because Hitchens trended to the conservative/libertarian ideology. Most liberals can't get out of the "DemocraticUnderground" cesspool.

[RandomGuy]

Who is he?

A very outspoken person, an essayist.

He was quite the militant atheist, so I imagine the usual suspects will say the usual things about that.

Mostly because he was rather good at laying a lot of the worlds evil at the feet of religion, and was not shy about it. "The Nazi party was essentially the right wing of the Catholic church", and so forth.

9-11 truthers hated him too, it seems for similar reasons.

Regardless of one's opinion of him, he was intelligent and quite erudite, and made for some interesting speeches and essays.

I'm sure, since he was a fairly prolific public speaker, one can find some youtube videos.

[RandomGuy]

It's because Hitchens trended to the conservative/libertarian ideology. Most liberals can't get out of the "DemocraticUnderground" cesspool.

Seems about right.

XDBkB_0xdz4

You will probably both like and not like this bit.

[JoeChalupa]

He dissed Mother Teresa so :flipoff

[RandomGuy]

I was right. There is a ton of stuff on youtube.

5b1aIuoCq4w

[RandomGuy]

He didn't like Sarah Palin.

0nQmw_R48io

[JayTheClown]

Is this that guy that would be on Real Time with Bill Maher from time to time?

[101A]

CH would be laughing at the irony of you posting, "RIP". He is no more; just a collection of molecules; no resting to be done.

Always liked him.

[101A]

Who is he?


YOU don't know who Hitchens is?

I'm surprised.

[Yonivore]

YOU don't know who Hitchens is?

I'm surprised.
Really? I suspect Blake and Hitch swam in different intellectual pools.

[Yonivore]

CH would be laughing at the irony of you posting, "RIP". He is no more; just a collection of molecules; no resting to be done.

Always liked him.
Or, he's slapping his forehead and issuing a string of mea culpas to Mother Theresa and a few others...

[RandomGuy]

Is this that guy that would be on Real Time with Bill Maher from time to time?

hTrzZLM0Tm4

Have to fast forward a bit at the beginning.

[Winehole23]

CH would be laughing at the irony of you posting, "RIP". He is no more; just a collection of molecules; no resting to be done.the man cannot be denied the organic quiescence of his body, even if the man blew away like a puff of smoke at the moment of death.

his body is no longer his own but it is still his, and, atheist that he was, his body was him.

quien sabe, he might have been looking forward to it.

Always liked him.respected/disliked


(redacted)


Mr. Hitchens died a gruesome and painful death. I am sorry for his family and friends and well wishers.

by reputation he was a very charismatic and charming, if unruly, person. he stuck up for atheists and the Iraq war and a host of other unpopular causes. he will be missed. he was a very remarkable person.


(redacted)

[Winehole23]

his like will not be here again, they used to say in the sweet mother Gaelic

[Winehole23]

(Myles Na' Gopaleen level of veracity)

[Blake]

YOU don't know who Hitchens is?

I'm surprised.

I'm sure he'll be the main topic of conversation at my militant atheist winter solstice holiday party.

[Blake]

Really? I suspect Blake and Hitch swam in different intellectual pools.

I suspect you don't know how to swim.

[Yonivore]

I suspect you don't know how to swim.
Your suspicions are confirming mine.

[Blake]

Your suspicions are confirming mine.

Your stupid threads continue to keep me suspicious.

[baseline bum]

He dissed Mother Teresa so :flipoff

l8Z7AI1J9Z0

[Winehole23]

http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/7491508/hitch-never-pulled-his-punches.thtml

[Winehole23]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/12/postscript-christopher-hitchens.html

[Capt Bringdown]

When Hitch Was Wrong (http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/when_hitch_was_wrong/)

There was no more forceful intellectual voice in support of the Iraq War than Hitchens. There were others who were more prominent, more influential or more persuasive, but Hitchens was the perfect shill for an administration looking to cast its half-baked invasion plans as a morally righteous intervention, because only he could call upon a career of denunciations of totalitarianism and defenses of human rights. (The fact that the war was supposed to be justified by weapons Saddam was supposedly developing didn’t really matter to Hitchens.)

And to be honest, his post-9/11 conception of an epoch-defining clash of civilizations between the secular West and the jihadists is more than slightly ridiculous. The secular West faces any number of graver existential threats — like unaccountable too-big-to-fail financial institutions and climate change, to name two that immediately come to mind — than that posed by the less-than 1 percent of the world’s Muslim population that subscribes to Salafist jihadism. Hitchens, the old Orwell worshiper, clearly just wanted a great big generational threat to tackle fearlessly, with polemics attacking the sclerotic establishment liberals who failed to see that the world was at the brink of disaster. He was looking for his own Spanish Civil War. That’s why he insisted on arguing that “Bin Ladenism” was equivalent to fascism.

- more - (http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/when_hitch_was_wrong/)

[MannyIsGod]

Very smart man, but his inability to give an inch on certain subjects (religion and terrorism) turned me off. As was posted above, I respected him but I did not particularly like him. He seemed a very lonely intellectual who drank too much at times.

[Winehole23]

at times?

[Winehole23]

that's not what I heard

[MannyIsGod]

Well, I saw him drunk on live TV at times so its probably more of a most of the time.

[Capt Bringdown]

Hitchens whiffed on GWB, 9/11 and the War on Terror - this shows his seriousness as an intellectual.
An eloquent middle-brow entertainer and nothing more.

[cantthinkofanything]

(Myles Na' Gopaleen level of veracity)

what the fuck are you saying in your last few posts. im pretty smart but what the fuck pakistan.

[MaNuMaNiAc]

:lmao @ Yoni claiming Hitchens was conservative

[Wild Cobra]

Why all this trouble over an admitted alcoholic?

[MaNuMaNiAc]

Why all this trouble over an admitted alcoholic?

what does that have to do with anything?

[boutons_deux]

David Frum on Christopher Hitchens: A man of moral clarity

A friend of theirs once took Christopher Hitchens and his wife Carol Blue to dinner at Palm Beach’s Everglades Club, notorious for its exclusion of Jews.

“You will behave, won’t you?” Carol anxiously asked Christopher on the way into the club. No dice. When the headwaiter approached, Christopher demanded: “Do you have a kosher menu?”

Christopher was never a man to back away from a confrontation on behalf of what he considered basic decency. Yet it would be wrong to remember only the confrontational side. Christopher was also a man of exquisite sensitivity and courtesy, dispensed without regard to age or station.

On one of the last occasions I saw him, my wife and I came to drop some food–lamb tagine – to sustain a family with more on its mind than cooking. Christopher, though weary and sick, insisted on painfully lifting himself from his chair to perform the rites of hospitality. He might have cancer, but we were still guests – and as guests, we must have champagne.

I once had the honor of sharing a debating platform with Christopher, on the same side thank God. It was like going into battle alongside the U.S. Marine Corps. The audience was overwhelmingly hostile. The longer Christopher talked, the more subdued they became.

As the event broke up, a crowd of questioners formed around him. I created a diversion thinking it would help him escape for some needed rest. But Christopher declined the offer. He stood with them, as tired as I was, but ready to adjourn to a nearby bar and converse with total strangers till the bars closed.

Peter J. Thompson/National Post

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Christopher Hitchens pose for photographers prior to a debate on religion in Toronto 2010

Hitchens was not one of those romantics who fetishized “dialogue.” Far from suffering fools gladly, he delighted in making fools suffer. When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. “It’s not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories.”

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/12/16/david-frum-on-christopher-hitchens-a-man-of-moral-clarity/

[Wild Cobra]

what does that have to do with anything?
LOL... A man of moral clarity...

[boutons_deux]

because he's smeared as an anti-god atheist, he can have no moral clarity?

[Pelicans78]

what does that have to do with anything?

It was the alcohol that killed him. Esophageal cancer is usually seen in chronic drinkers and smokers. But no one is perfect so I shouldn't judge.

[ChumpDumper]

You don't believe it was an inside job.

[spursncowboys]

What does the fact that he died have anything to do with politics?

[Winehole23]

Passionate and polemical. Many say erudite. He liked long essays.

Propensity for pissing people off, yes, but Mr. Hitchens was also known for flamboyant attacks on his friends (according to Charles Glass, upstream.)

I bet Hitchens was cool to know personally; I wasn't a fan of his writing, but perhaps I should revisit...

[Winehole23]

I think he was still writing for The Nation when he first appeared on my radar screen in the mid 1980s

[Winehole23]

the shrill, hyperventilated wombat noises coming from his general direction during the Iraq War, did him no great credit. they made me wary. the shift from hard left to neocon has been a cliche since the late sixties, Hitch may be the latest.

[Winehole23]

but now he is done



RIP, Mr. Hitchens