This was Christopher Hitchens’s question a year after the death of Princess Diana, which brought forth a “frightful binging and gorging of sentimentality” from the British populace, odd in a nation stoic by reputation. The people of a stiff upper lip had quavered. Hitchens is hardly averse to sentimentality, some of his best writing causes a catch in the throat; it is bogus sentimentality that be abhors. The death of a “hyperactive debutante” didn’t merit the wall-to-wall coverage, acres of flowers, and very public, very group-therapyesque bereavement that it had inspired.
Sounds just like the Hitch we all know and love, doesn't it? In his 1998 Salon piece Bogus emotion and mass credulity, he demonstrates in his inimitable style that he absolutely couldn't stomach why or how so many people — her "increasingly irritable and frayed groups of fans" — were so cut up about her sudden passing, despite all the obvious faults he could see in her that they were so stubbornly intent on remaining blind to.
It's interesting how what goes around often comes around, but with all the crass sentimentality (and begging James's pardon, it makes not a shred of difference whether it is bogus or sincere) being expressed by so many in the Hitch fanboy community these days, the Preening Popinjay is visibly morphing more into an atheist pantomime version of the People's Princess with each passing day. If this keeps up, I half expect Tony Blair to be reading the eulogy at Hitch's non-religious memorial service while Elton John cranks out that same old tune with yet another new set of words: "And it seems to me that you lived your life like a vandal with the wind..."* And can you imagine the flowers that are going to pile up on the sidewalk outside his apartment building if the following "get well!" video is anything to go by.
Guys and gals who contributed to the above video, it's great that reading Christopher Hitchens has opened up your intellectual horizons on the theism issue. But in another way its deeply sad because if you needed his particular brand of eyewash to open them then they must have been very gummed up indeed before you happened to come across him. Now your eyes are wide open, you are young and there are plenty of fun distractions you can occupy yourselves with for many years to come. And if after serious consideration you are determined to head dow the scientific materialist road, well the very best of luck to you. But if you take GING as your BIble, then given enough time I rather suspect you will eventually find yourself at the end of a cul de sac in a deserted wasteland spending more and more mental energy on trying to blot out the pointlessness of your existence.
But all that's beside the point, as your own spiritual salvation is your own affair. It's none of my business what faith you follow or what metaphysical speculations you indulge in. The point is that your beloved Hitchens, your idol, hero, guru, teacher, map reader to his fellow travelers or what ever, just happens to be a genocidal, warmongering, logic-chopping, narcissistic, self-seeking, hypocritical, Chaucerian intellectual fraud with terrible manners, no sense of loyalty, and a bloated sense of his own smug superiority. It beats me how any bunch of reasonable, decent-with-a-small-d people could possibly bear to stand shoulder to shoulder with this monstrous manipulator of middlebrow minds, let alone give him a free pass for his role as poster boy for born-again George W. Bush's crusade.
Is a hyperactive demagogue any more worthy of an outpouring of syrupy sentiment than a hyperactive debutante is? Think what you like about Diana - and who doesn't? — but at least she tried to do something to stop innocent people being blown to bits by land mines. Contrariwise, Hitchens has been using his beautiful baritone warble to seduce and serenade people into accepting preemptive war (with all the horrors that come bundled with that package) as noble pursuit. And that, dearly beloved, the essential difference between the Princess and the Popinjay.
*Back in the nineties, I heard there was also a rather touching Mother Teresa version entitled Sandal in the Bin but a Google search reveals that somebody has dedicated that one to the Queen Mum..
“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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