Christopher Hitchens is dead, but his annoying friends survive him. Since his death on December 15, I have read countless tributes from these friends.
Sally Quinn, the wife of retired Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, also contributes articles to the newspaper. Her piece, “Sleep in heavenly piece, dearest Christopher,” nauseated me the most. Indeed, the title alone would have induced the late Hitchens to vomit himself.
“Christopher was one of the most beguiling people I have ever known,” Quinn wrote. “I thought so from the first moment I met him at a party about 30 years ago in my home.” Rather than honoring his memory, she seemed more interested in advertising her social connection to him, as well as her Washington Post blog, “On Faith.” As she reminded her readers, “He wrote for ‘On Faith’ from the start and sat for two video interviews, one after he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer.”
“He was one of the most learned religion scholars I knew, which is why he was such a formidable debater,” Quinn continued. “He really knew the Bible. He really knew the Koran. He really had read all the theologians, thinkers and philosophers.” In the first place, any Hitch hen who misspells the Qur’an has probably read nothing about Islam besides God is Not Great. More importantly, respected theologians have little respect for Hitchens.
Beyond a superficial grasp of religion, Quinn shares Hitchens’s commitment to sloppy reporting, which characterized the final stage of his career. In the December 19, 1979 issue of The Washington Post, Quinn profiled Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor. She concluded her article this way:
“A reporter for a national magazine recently went to the White House to interview Brzezinski. The interview was very jolly. A great success. Not surprisingly Brzezinski was pleased with himself, exuberant. So exuberant, that as the reporter was leaving he began to joke around and flirt with her. Suddenly he unzipped his fly. The photographer who was with them took a picture of this unusual expression of playfulness. Shortly afterward the reporter received a photograph of the private moment they had shared, captured for eternity. It was inscribed, by Zbigniew Brzezinski.”
On December 20, 1979, The Washington Post published the following correction:
“In yesterday’s story about Zbigniew Brzezinski, it was stated that at the end of an interview with a reporter from a national magazine – as a joke – Brzezinski committed an offensive act, and that a photographer took a picture ‘of this unusual expression of playfulness.’ Brzezinski did not commit such an act, and there is no picture of him doing so. A photograph of Brzezinski and the reporter was made, and Brzezinski autographed it at the reporter’s request. The poses, shadows and background of this picture create an accidental ‘double entendre,’ which Brzezinski refers to in his caption. The magazine reporter states that nothing in the interview or the autographed picture offended her. The Washington Post sincerely regrets the error.”
Careful interviewing of the magazine reporter and the photographer would have prevented such an egregious error.
In addition to her journalism, Quinn is also an ambitious Washington hostess. Her 1998 book, The Party: A Guide to Adventurous Entertaining, almost surpassed Hitchens’s memoir Hitch 22 in its namedropping. Does it really benefit her readers to know that General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was a guest in her home?
“Aside from the people you invite, the most important aspect of entertaining with confidence is never to entertain beyond your means,” Quinn counseled her readers with apparent helpfulness, but her supporting example revealed her true purpose:
“Tom and Meredith Brokaw have an apartment in New York where they entertain elegantly. They also have a ranch in Montana with a couple of tiny log cabins and two modest cottages. When they entertain there, everyone wears jeans and it’s strictly homestyle, with simple, delicious food, buffalo steaks, bowls of vegetables, and potatoes passed around the table.”
A husband and wife who own an apartment in New York and a ranch in Montana are not economizing; they are luxuriating in their own wealth. Furthermore, I would recommend that social drinkers skip her chapter on cocktail parties:
“Speaking of the cocktail hour, it should be forty-five minutes long…No matter how scintillating your guests are, the very nature of the cocktail hour precludes any really serious conversation, and you can’t sustain polite, superficial chitchat for much longer than an hour…I’ve actually been to a private dinner in Washington where the President was over an hour late, and the cocktail party was interminable. Everyone was hungry, tired, bored, cross, and slightly boozed by the time he got there, and it was not a great start to the evening.”
You may agree that the cocktail hour should only last forty-five minutes, but I doubt that you will ever require the following advice:
“What if it’s the President and he’s late [for the cocktail hour]? The Secret Service will be there and will advise the host or hostess how much longer it will be. If the guests have been there since eight and it’s nearing ten, my advice would be to say to the Secret Service, ‘I’m sure the President would like us to go ahead and sit down.’”
Given her attacks on President Bill Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, it is unlikely that Quinn served many cocktails to him.
For the November 2, 1998 issue of The Washington Post, Quinn interviewed well-connected members of the Washington establishment. “He came in here and he trashed the place,” said David Broder, her colleague at the newspaper, “and it’s not his place.”
David Gergen, the political advisor and commentator, went further:
“We have our own set of village rules. Sex did not violate those rules. The deep and searing violation took place when he not only lied to the country, but co-opted his friends and lied to them. That is one on which people choke. We all live together, we have a sense of community, there’s a small town quality here. We all understand we do certain things, we make certain compromises. But when you have gone over the line, you won’t bring others into it. That is a cardinal rule of the village. You don’t foul the nest.”
Appearing on C-Span several days later, Quinn made it clear to a caller that she considered herself a member of this elite club:
“Well, I mean, certainly I live here and I’m part of the community. So, you’re right in that respect that I couldn’t have known that these people felt that way unless I were their friends and I saw them professionally and socially….I think that there’s a sense in Washington that something that people here cared about has been damaged or has been diminished in some way and that people take it personally and seriously because this is their community.” (43:00)
Quinn did not include the black residents of Southeast Washington in her envisioned community, but they must have differed with her on the issue. In fact, Quinn went so far as to support Hitchens in his betrayal of his friend, Sidney Blumenthal. Hitchens signed an affidavit claiming that the Clinton advisor had described Lewinsky as a stalker. “I like Christopher, I think he’s brilliant,” Quinn stated at the time. “Christopher did what he had to do, and I don’t have a problem with that.”
It is widely assumed that a social snub motivated Quinn’s animosity. According to Dee Dee Myers, Clinton’s former press secretary, 'The Clintons did not make her their guide.'
Quinn, of course, denied this to a C-Span viewer: “Being rebuffed by Mrs. Clinton just never happened. We’ve actually had quite a cordial relationship, and I’ve never been rebuffed by the Clintons, or Mrs. Clinton, so I think you have some false information there.” (37:00)
Relying only on my intuition, I cannot believe that Quinn would have turned against the Clintons had they regularly visited her home.
Like most of Hitchens’s self-promoting friends, Quinn is oblivious to the realities faced by ordinary people. When another caller, fearful of Clinton’s interventions abroad, contended that his son would have to fight in the event of war, but not hers, she explained that medical reasons would preclude her child from doing so. At the same time, however, she also exposed her own political and historical ignorance: “I don’t think that wealth keeps children out of the military.” (23:00)
Fortunately, subscribers to The Washington Post will no longer see her byline in print. Last year, Quinn used her social column, fittingly entitled “The Party”, to publicize her estrangement from her stepson’s family. In her response to complaints about her unprofessional behavior, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli terminated her column. Her blog, “On Faith”, can only be read in the on-line edition of the newspaper.
While reading Hitch's bio on Wikipedia, I was struck by the current size of it and thought that I'd compare the number of references with that of other notables. While John Lennon (252) got in trouble for claiming that The Beatles (343) were more popular than Jesus (538), it turns out that the only one who can give Him a run for His money (as far as I could figure out) is the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith! (474). Hitchens (197) is, however, bigger than Shakespeare (192). And Marx (172). And Darwin (181). And Freud (173). Read 'em and weep.
Jesus 538 Joseph Smith 474 George W. Bush 387 Hillary Rodham Clinton 367 Ronald Reagan 361 Adolf Hitler 341 L. Ron Hubbard 322 Stalin 308 Abraham Lincoln 294 Nikita Khrushchev 270 Muhammad 266 John Lennon 252 Richard Nixon 250 Paul McCartney 249 Margaret Thatcher 248 John Fitzgerald Kennedy 246 Rudy Giuliani 239 Alexander the Great 235 Winston Churchill 229 Martin Luther King, Jr. 222 Al Gore 221 Franklin Roosevelt 218 Napoleon Bonaparte 217 Bill Clinton 211 Thomas Jefferson 210 George Washington 200 Christopher Hitchens 197 Tony Blair 194 William Shakespeare 192 Ernest Hemingway 190 Ayn Rand 190 Vincent van Gogh 189 David Bowie 179 Aleister Crowley 178 Elizabeth II 177 Jimi Hendrix 176 Ulysses S. Grant 176 Geert Wilders 175 Richard Dawkins 175 Karl Marx 172 Jimmy Carter 148 Lenin 139 Noam Chomsky 137 John Maynard Keynes 136 Condoleezza Rice 127 Saint Augustine 124 Joseph McCarthy 124 Julius Caesar 123 Ayaan Hirsi Ali 119 Dwight David Eisenhower 118 Robert E. Lee 113 William F. Buckley, Jr. 113 George H. W. Bush 112 Theodore Roosevelt 112 John Cage 111 Frederick Nietzsche 110 Lyndon Baines Johnson 108 Mark Twain 107 Leonardo da Vinci 105 Alger Hiss 101 John Milton 101 George Bernard Shaw 96 Andy Warhol 94 Thomas Aquinas 93 Ludwig van Beethoven 91 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 90 Tom Cruise 89 Orson Welles 85 Aristotle 83 Stephen King 82 Salvador Dali 82 Babe Ruth 79 John Marshall 78 Pat Condell 78 Milton Friedman 76 Muhammad Ali 76 Gore Vidal 74 Bobby Kennedy 74 Sam Harris 72 Hunter S. Thompson 71 Hirohito 70 Henry VIII 69 Pamela Geller 68 Pablo Picasso 68 Andrew Jackson 67 Cleopatra VII 64 Mikhail Gorbachev 64 Genghis Khan 61 Buddha 60 Johann Sebastian Bach 57 Andrew Breitbart 57 Paul Newman 56 Martin Amis 54 Mary Baker Eddy 52 Leonard Bernstein 47 Truman Capote 40 Michelangelo 34 H. L. Mencken 32 Norman Mailer 32 Tom Wolfe 31
How did I miss this? An inspired tribute to The Great Man, from one of the most impressive and wonderful thinkers of our time. And a man who in many ways paved the way for the Hitch himself. Like Hitchypoo, David Horowitz began as a radical leftist before he saw the light and realised that he could make more money as a rightist Communism would only ever lead to constraints on America's ability to bomb brown and yellow people the Gulag. A discovery Hitchens made for himself only a few short decades later! In what was not at all a cliched move indicative of a tired, decaying mind, goodness no.
Anyway take it away David!
'I did my mourning for Christopher when he was given his death sentence last July and appeared in public as a punished shell of his former self. For those of us who knew him, it was hard to watch and painful to think about. Christopher was a great entertainer and everyone will miss him for that. He was also an outspoken if inconsistent moralist, and a fearless champion of the right to think and speak one’s mind, and he will be remembered gratefully for that....his wit and verbal bravura were irresistible and helped many to forgive him his transgressions. When he was struck with cancer, thousands of his targets directed prayers for him to heaven in the face of his ridicule....In his last decade he had held his comrades to account for their malicious support for the tyrant in Iraq and their equally disgraceful attacks on their country for its support for freedom......I have missed Christopher since the day he was given his death sentence. I have reflected more than once on the times I saw him early in the day with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and the look of a man who had been freshly mugged, and thought my friend is killing himself, knowing that there was nothing I could say or do to stop him. After his diagnosis, Christopher defended his reckless self-destruction saying it helped to make his life give off “a more lovely light.” I think it did for him, and am glad for that, though those of us who enjoyed its pleasures will wish he had found some other way to shine.'
Gets you right there doesn't it? Incidentally the drawing above is a tribute from Jerry Coyne's increasingly unhinged website Why Whatever I Believe at Any Given Moment is True. Whatever one thinks about Hitchens, it's a pretty remarkable drawing, I think you'll agree.
And about 20 minutes in, Chris does Christopher up like a kipper, noting that the New Atheists and the Christian Fundies are about as far apart in their modus operandi as Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Since the death of Christopher Hitchens, I have spent some time watching his final interviews. His appearance on Charlie Rose in August of 2010 particularly interested me. In the course of the interview, Rose asked Hitchens if he regretted his excessive consumption of alcohol and tobacco.
Hitchens answered:
“No, I think all the time I’ve felt that life is a wager, and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence, as a writer, than I would have if I didn’t…writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that, or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation is worth it to me. “
His response annoyed me intensely. There is nothing “bohemian” about alcohol and tobacco; they are the drugs of the establishment. Additionally, I can only imagine how much better the writings of an abstemious Hitchens would have been.
Hitchens killed himself with alcohol and tobacco. Because some questions about the end result of those addictions still lingered in my own mind, I had another conversation with my oncologist friend about esophageal cancer.
The journalist received his diagnosis in June of 2010, so I was curious when his cancer had begun to develop. “It is not possible to estimate,” the oncologist replied. “Generally, the cancer grows over a year before it spreads somewhere.” In some cases, it can begin to spread after six months.
Despite the fact that esophageal cancer remains an incurable disease, I asked the oncologist how long Hitchens would have lived without treatment. “It’s so variable,” he said. “Generally, if you don’t have any treatment, you don’t survive more than six months.”
According to The New York Times, Hitchens died of pneumonia. My friend explained that “any cancer patient will be susceptible to pneumonia,” but that sufferers of esophageal cancer are particularly so. “Their swallowing mechanism is disrupted, and they can sometimes aspirate their food during their sleep,” the oncologist said. Furthermore, a hole can form between the esophagus and the trachea if the cancer is in an advanced stage.
In his very last article for Vanity Fair magazine, Hitchens reported that “a vivid red radiation rash” extended from his chest to his abdomen. “This was the product of a month-long bombardment with protons which had burned away all of the cancer in my clavicular and paratracheal nodes, as well as the original tumor in the esophagus,” the journalist wrote.
Did the proton treatment really eliminate his cancer? “No,” the oncologist answered. Even though proton treatment is more effective than either electron treatment or the more conventional radiation therapy, it can only eliminate cancer that has not spread from local areas. Unfortunately for Hitchens, his cancer was in Stage 4, which meant that it had already metastasized. “Stage 4 is not curable,” my friend said. If the proton treatment eliminates the cancer in one area, “it will show up somewhere else.” The oncologist went on to say that the proton therapy was only meant for “local control” to alleviate symptoms. “It was not curative treatment,” the oncologist stated.
When I had first interviewed the oncologist in March of 2011, he predicted that Hitchens had less than six months to live. As it turns out, he almost lasted nine. Of course, the oncologist had never met Hitchens, and had only engaged in speculation. Still, I sought the oncologist’s retrospective reaction. Why did Hitchens last longer than expected? “It was his mental strength,” my friend reflected. “That’s all. He fought to stay alive.”
At the same time, the oncologist was not entirely uncritical.
“He was too optimistic about his own outcome and survival,” my friend concluded. “I am sure that his oncologist did not counsel him from the way he described things.”
Murdoch's rag dug a unused Xmas rant of Hitch's out of the crypt where he quoted Tom Lehrer's A Christmas Carol. In the Hitchwatch spirit, here are a couple of alternative ditties if you want something stronger to go with your scotch!
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I got ninety-nine problems but the Hitch ain't one.
The tributes continue to pour in, from sentimental poetry, to tears, to badly drawn effigies of the ex-Popinjay (who has ceased to be). But unlike in Hitchens' career they saved the best till last. So I give you....Hitchhop! Watch with awe.I guarantee you will never have seen anything like it. (Hat-tip FGFM for the title and the idea of Hitch-hop).
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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