A crowd of Beirut natives gather around to give Hitch moral support during his recent ordeal. Several kind people actually voulunteered to look after his jacket, wallet and Rolex.
First, here's a pathetic attempt at a joke made up of 75% Greywolf brain material, just to establish mood.
Why is Christopher Hitchens like a plate of fish and chips with a side order of scrambled eggs?
Because he's been assaulted, battered and beaten.
Now, for the main course, let me draw your attention to an interesting thread at Pharyngula, where a lot of people have been venting their opinions on Hitch following his set-to with the Leabano-Syrian Nazo-Baatho-Nationalist Anti-Zio-Non-Falangio-Fascist and Social Democrats. For those who can't be bothered to click the link, here are a few of my favorite comments.
From Helioprogenus What's to admire for Hitchen's being such a belligerent alcoholic? It's not so much that he has steel cajones, but more a typical alcoholic who spent the night with a mistress called gin. I'm sure he'd be fine with those Islamic extremists who practice Sharia Law spray painting anti-equality slogans on a billboard outside his home pub. He's a visitor to a place, and if he wants to use words in print, or spoken through a valid medium, that's acceptable, but when you deface things on other people's soil, there are repercussions to your actions.
From NickK Sometimes it's OK to blame the victim. A drunk driver wraps his car around a telephone pole and dies. It's OK to blame the victim. An idiot dives into shallow water and breaks his neck. It's OK to blame the victim. A belligerent Anglo Saxon visits a land that has fought civil wars on and off since Jimmy Carter was president, and defaces a poster of one of the combatant parties. I think some responsibility can lie with said Anglo Saxon. Stupidity needs to be called out for what it is.
From Dustin Exactly. Just because he's an atheist doesn't mean we have to defend the guy. He did something extremely stupid (you might say brave) and was lucky the punks who responded didn't kill him for it. His actions weren't for a "higher purpose" or as a political protest (to anyone but himself and his present associates), they were because he's an ass. Really, you don't need to feel obligated to defend him. Just be glad he survived the encounter and chalk it up on the "dumb things done by Christopher Hitchens" list.
From Tom This happened in Lebanon. Is there a person on the planet that doesn't know that there are thugs in Lebanon? One might as well say that by pulling Madonna's panties down, he revealed to the world that she is a woman. [Has anyone ever tried that trick with Ann Coulter's panties?]
From HP In some ways, I feel a certain kindred spirit with Hitch: we're both alcoholics, we're both nicotine addicts, and we're both unrepentant atheists. On the other hand, Hitch is ten times the writer I'll ever be, and ten times the asshole I would ever want to be. Unlike most people, I've been reading Hitchens since his columns were appearing in The Nation, so he wasn't an unknown quantity to me when he became the face of left-wing support for the invasion of Iraq.
But here's the real kicker: Hitchens is a coward. 9/11/01 scared the shit out of him. (And not out of me, thankyouverymuch. So I win that round.) He betrayed everything he ever represented, and he called me (and most of you) a coward and a "fifth columnist" for not supporting a stupid war that was doomed to failure, historically and strategically. Hitchens isn't ignorant; he knows about Alexander and the Assyrians and the Seljuks and the Ottomans and the British. He knows how the people of Mesopotamia have always dealt with foreign invaders, regardless of religion or ideology. Yet he willingly turned himself into a tool of the most irrational, anti-intellectual forces that have appeared in Western culture since the Enlightenment. (If Hitch were born Chinese, he would have been an architect of the Cultural Revolution, another anti-intellectual movement borne of fear.)
I drink rye whiskey; Hitch drinks a heady cocktail of arrogance, pride, and fear. He wasn't just wrong; he was colossally wrong on an epic scale that reduces everything he has said since then to a pallid parody of an otherwise interesting man.
The man has never apologized for his support for the invasion of Iraq to a degree commensurate with the damage he has done to the country I call home. He's a blowhard; he is foolhardy enough to get himself beat up for being insufferable, but lacks the courage of his convictions to tell the truth when the truth really matters. Hitchens knew that the invasion would be an unmitigated disaster. He knew it would fail. And he supported it anyway because he is, deep down, a chickenshit.
I'm a drunk -- I'm drunk right now, if you can't tell -- but Hitchen's "courage" is false courage. It's easy to get beat up for being an ass. But supporting the invasion of Iraq was an act of sheer cowardice. Christopher Hitchens is a dick.
From Joe Max Meh. It was a street-stupid thing to do.
I abhor the living hell that the street gangs of Oakland and East LA have created in their communities, but I'm not going down to the Flatlands or Compton after dark and start defacing Crips graffiti right in front of their faces. I'm just sayin'...
And lastly, just for a pretence of balance, from blueelm Poor Hitch, but I'll toast to him tonight (Scotch here too). Do you some of you guys honestly believe that people "deserve" violence? What he did was provocative, but people shouldn't have to be afraid. Some times I think the man is a belligerent ass, but I'm always glad he's there.
“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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