Christopher's cancer has naturally been a wrench for the dude himself as well as all who love and care about him. But it's an ill wind that blows no one any good, and on the upside this trial has given the Godless one a superb opportunity to get in touch with his Father in Heaven after all these years of pretending He doesn't exist. And being such a high-profile case of a divisive if not polarizing figure cut down in his prime by what could reasonably described in traditional insurance company speak as an "act of God", it also gives all sorts of people with all sorts of agendas — from warning against blasphemy to harping on about the dangers of fags and booze — a perfect platform on which to strut their funky stuff.
Somewhat less productively, but rather appropriately given that Christopher's biggest single claim to fame has been as a crass pseudo-intellectual clown cum trapeze artist in the MSM circus of punditry who has never been known to miss the chance of a compassion-free putdown of an ideological enemy in distress, is that his current predicament is bringing uncontainable delight to a certain segment of the great mass of people who for one reason or another - mostly related in some way to the senses of taste or smell — simply can't stand the Popinjay's guts. For some reason, those of us whose ears and eyes are put off by that ghastly over-the-top faux-outrage delivered in or his best public schoolboy accent or by his general repulsiveness when doing his well-known impression of an Orang Utan in heat are genuinely saddened at his predicament. And while it is not generally appreciated, us here at this site are among the real victims, because once our man has shed his mortal coil, we won't have anyone half as interesting to watch. But, lamentably, certain other Hitchophobes and Mischristophs (fearers and haters of Arian* contrarian vulgarian) can't resist the urge to celebrate.
One such is Dr. Maxtor of Jamaica, whose unequivocal view of esophageal cancer is that "Hitchens Deserves it".
Who says bad things don't happen to bad people? The nocturnal regurgitation of undigested food got you down? Lets be clear on this, esophageal cancer is no laughing matter, and comes with a poor prognosis, and I would never wish it on anyone. Of course if you happen to be a war mongering trotskyist popinjay like Christopher Hitchens, pardon me for not giving a damn. This is the same neocon presstitute who was at Bush's side calling for the invasion of Iraq, WMD lies and all. For an atheist, he sure had no problem believing in the unseen. This is the same individual who was dancing on the graves of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, the same so called "free thinking-humanist" when challenged about the number of Iraqis casualties, couldn't resist but to mock the number advanced by two respected international academic organizations.
I know it's quasi sacrilegious for anyone with a human heart to criticize the atheist overweight sacred cow, but I don't care. I never liked Hitchens. You don't have to be a Christian to be disgusted at his attack on Mother Teresa, a humble woman who would have selflessly given care to the ailing Hitchens. Equally repulsive was his defense of Bush's negligence of Hurricane Katrina victims. Reading the child like praise many fools shower on Hitch one has to ponder how intellectually bankrupt the "new atheists" are. They'd have you believe that Hitch is a hardcore street fighting kind of guy, who took on Syrian "fascists" in a fist fight on the streets of Beirut. In reality, Hitch and two other neocons on a visit to Lebanon got the daylights beat out of them by one guy after they were caught defacing some political posters. The best part was when they all jumped into the same taxi to flee the scene. Now he is very good at bullying some mental midget on TV, but without a script and within an environment he cannot control, the papier-mâché tiger is harmless as an 8 track.....
Strong words indeed from the doctor and quite a lot to agree with. But I for one don't share his opinion that Hitchens deserves his cancer, neither as an act of cosmic justice nor despite the fact that medical opinion suggests he earned it through his lifelong devotion to the bottle and the filter tip.
On the other hand, it could be argued quite cogently that Hitchens doesn't deserve quite a lot of the benefits that have accrued to him either. All in all, the Goddess of Fortune has been inordinately generous to him over the years and he has not been exactly shy about taking credit for all his little triumphs and tributes as if they were no more than his due. In May, just a month before he was introduced to the big C, Hitchens was crowing about how well he had done in the Guardian.
"Well, I've done better than I thought I would. I've made more money than I ever thought I would. I've got more readers than I ever thought I would, and more esteem." He now earns "several hundred thousand dollars a year" – but claims his wealth hasn't influenced his opinions at all.
How much more attractive was the response of Jack Benny, who when being presented with an award said: "I don't deserve this, but I have arthritis, and I don't deserve that either"?
*Hitch's birthday is April 13.
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Hitchens in cringing apologies to the Pope and Mel Gibson
The Christian Defense League accepted on Wednesday Christopher Hitchens's apology over remarks he made in several interviews to the media earlier this week, in which he spoke out against what he saw as the negative influence of U.S. Christians on Washington's foreign policy and blamed Mel Gibson for declining moral values.
On Sunday, the famed DC-based contrarian journalist told the Catholic Herald that Christian control of the media was preventing an open discussion of the Crusades, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, abortion, homosexuality, feminism, and the sexual abuse of choirboys with candlesticks, adding that the U.S. Christian lobby has been controlling Washington's foreign policy for years.
Hitch saw the light after after the Pope intervened personally to promise that his highly popular Vanity Fair and Slate columns would be discontinued and he would never work the pundit circuit again if he refused to recant his views.
"I do agree that it was wrong of me to say that the Pope or the pro-Christian lobby is in control of the media or is to blame for America’s flawed foreign policy," Hitch said in a groveling, tear-stained statement released on Wednesday, adding that his comment was "not true and I apologize that my inappropriately glib remark has played into that negative stereotype."
Hitchens, who claims his father, both grandfathers and all four great grandfathers were practicing Christians, added that he was "categorically opposed to anti-Christianism and all other racist ideologies."
In addition, he made an unreserved apology to Mel Gibson for accusing him of being no more than an angry narcissist, having anger management issues, abandoning his wife and the mother of his firstborn children for a younger woman, getting mean and nasty when pissed, and being obsessed with all things Jewish. He also agreed that Mad Max II: The Road Warrior was among the best action adventures ever filmed. After being hung upside down by Mel from the living room window of his 12th floor apartment in DC, Hitch confessed that his previous attacks on Mel had been fits of projection in which he had looked in the mirror and then ascribed many of his own worst faults to the megastar, both because Mel is more handsome than Hitch is and because he gets a better class of groupie.
PZ Myers, the biologist and prominent Neoatheist blogger, has taken umbrage with this last post written by yours truly, and accused this lil' old blog of allegedly being "petty," "obsessive," and *gasp* even "demonizing everything" Hitchens does regardless whether he deserves it or not. Tough talk indeed. The link for his post is here.
And Myers is not some mindless apologist for Chris Hitchens, unlike many of the herd of independent minds that make up the New Atheist stampede. For instance he wrote, much to his credit, a scathing attack on Hitchens' crazed paroxysm at the 2007 Freedom From Religion Convention, where Hitch had been out of control and frothing at the mouth over Islam even more than usual. Myers must have been in front row or something and been soaked from all the spittle and foam. Understandably, he wasn't pleased.
I have a lot of respect for Myers, which is why I was rather disappointed to seem him completely avoid the substantive issue I raised (or rather that Douthat actually brought up and rightly found notable), pretend that there wasn't one, and then harp on some irrelevant question about whether the prayers Christians are offering to Hitchens are being made with good intentions or not. On top of that, he resorts to ad hominem and personal attacks against our poor, little site, while of course hypocritically accusing us of doing the very same thing to the Old Man. To demonize everything Hitchens Watch based on one post strikes me as rather glib and overreaching, even petty. And demonstrably false. Now I suppose that someone could argue that even having a site called "Hitchens Watch" is inherently obsessive, but they would be wrong. This site is clearly just a gimmick for an anti-war and far-Left blog that most of the contributors actually spend little time on. And to say that we're demonizing "everything" Chris does is of course just cheap and groundless hyperbole. There's no need to attack The Enemy on petty things, as with Hitch it's a "target-rich" environment of real issues to bombard, if you get my drift. In fact, I've even gone out of my way to defend him on occasion, from the boring discussion about Hitchens being a drunk (therefore the Iraq War is unjust!), to praising him for sharply speaking out against the appointment of Clinton as SoS after she had ran a disgustingly racist campaign against Obama in the primaries, amongst other examples. So Myers is just plain wrong on all this for starters.
But, let's return to the substantive issue of Hitchens collaborating with religious indoctrination that drew Mr. Myers ire, yet which he refused to actually properly address. Myers brings up an entirely different topic, one that I wasn't discussing, namely "what's going through the heads of Christians when they do this?" Not really relevant, but fine, let's take a look:
Prayer does absolutely nothing, but most of the people doing it mean well and are seriously hoping for the best for him. Strangers who have no part in his treatment aren't doing less because they're on their knees babbling to the sky (although they are promoting such useless nonsense as acceptable), so it neither picks his pocket nor breaks his leg for someone else to believe. It's when belief infiltrates professional practice or public policy that it becomes an evil to be uncompromisingly opposed.
This is very dubious on multiple levels. Though let's grant that every single prayer that our Christian brothers and sisters utter for The Fallen One is done with nothing but the purest and noblest of intentions. OK, sure. Therefore this then means... absolutely nothing. It doesn't refute my charge at all, as Hitchens can still be contemptibly encouraging and enabling a malignant practice by giving his imprimatur to it, one that's just being done with good intentions in the contorted minds of its perpetrators. So what if they supposedly are? And I'm highly skeptical of Myer's presupposition that the intentions of our Christian friends here in this odious Prayers For The Popinjay campaign are mostly noble. It appears that, as usual, most of these Christians are doing this out of a sort of self-publicizing vanity, to broadcast to all and sundry how kind and loving they are, being Christians of course, even though the Big Bad Hitch is so evil and wicked. The arrogance and self-righteousness that tacitly underlies these prayers is hardly honorable, even if the Christees think they're somehow being kind. I just don't get why Myers, who is usually a lot smarter than this, is pretending that this vulgar and chauvinistic publicity campaign by Christians here is somehow at heart commendable.
Myers also falsely claims that prayers do "absolutely nothing." If only that were true. As I said, they are an indisputably critical component in religious indoctrination, which further deludes and assimilates its victim into the Christian propaganda system, and cumulatively degrades their capacity for rational, intellectually-honest thinking. That's very harmful, for the person doing the prayers him or herself, and others who will be influenced by the practice further spreading, and new, more fanatic, adherents. Hitchens, and us all, are directly effected by the dominance of Christians whom have proliferated because of these very, highly-effective propaganda exercises. It's truly myopic not to recognize the long-term implications of these practices, so how can an Atheist seriously openly support them?
Well maybe Hitchens is just trying not to be rude to Christians, as Myers suggests. Seriously? Chris Hitchens? You mean the guy who called Jerry Falwell a piece of shit on national television right after he died, just to be extra mean (even if it was true)? Please, give me a break.
Again, it's simply contemptible for an Atheist, especially one as allegedly vociferious as Hitchens in his opposition to Christianity, to be approving and outright encouraging the most critical and dangerous techniques of religious indoctrination. This is not nitpicking or petty, in fact quite the opposite. If this were one isolated example it would no doubt be a different story, but as I said, this falls into an established pattern where Hitchens has continuously collaborated with the Parties of God for his own self-interested reasons since his Neocon-makeover. Even the most brainless Hitchens fanboy has to recognize that there is something fishy when Mr. Atheist with a capital A goes on about George Bush being objectively a Secularist doing more than all Atheists and Freethinkers combined for secularism by, you know, bombing the Middle East to smithereens and creating a whole new generation of jihadis.
Incidentally, what has Hitchens' position on prayers for the sick in that past been anyway? Good question, glad you asked. Here's a taste:
Well, it's flat-out unbelievable testimony. And it's been the basis of religious charlatanry all along... I'm very sorry if I sound callous, but I do know of a lot of children who have died horribly despite being prayed over with exreme fervency. And I think it's disgusting to suppose that those prayers were infererior to other people's.... There are such things as unexpected recoveries... [T]o claim that you have a personal line to God and that he'll intervene for your convenience is a disgracefeul thing to say, mind you. And an insult to those whose children continue to suffer despite agonies of prayer on their behalf. This is a conscious attempt to defraud people. It's the basis of a great deal of religious hucksterism. And besides being immoral, it's highly unattractive.
Update: I'd highly recommend the audio of the interview to really capture how hypocritical and inconsistent Hitchens has been on this question of prayers for the ill (at 22:00). He's indignant and self-righteous in his opposition here. Hitch starts by denouncing this case and Pastor in particular then generalizes about all prayer for the ill, saying "to claim that you have a personal line to God and that he'll intervene for your convenience is a disgraceful thing to say, in my view" which anyone with a grey cell functioning can plainly see is a general statement about any case of praying for the sick, i.e. the "in my view." Hitchens is quite right, to ask for prayers to heal the sick is incredibly solipsistic, arrogant, and disgraceful. And even if this particular line wasn't a generalized statement of principle, and merely about this one specific case, it changes nothing, as it would still be Chris denouncing someone praying for a person sick with cancer.
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Hitchens Collaborating In Religious Indoctrination?
There was an interesting blog post the other week by NY Times columnist Ross Douthat, one of The Thoughtful Reactionaries, where he highlighted an important and revealing point concerning Hitchens that I believe merits some attention:
I’m glad to see, though, that Hitchens himself — at least judging by his comments in this interview with Hugh Hewitt — is responding to the prayer campaign with forbearance, grace and even gratitude. It would be forgivable, I think, if he took the opportunity to raise one more middle finger to his longtime foes. But instead, we have this:
I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts … I wish it was more consoling. But I have to say there’s some extremely nice people, including people known to you, have said that I’m in their prayers, and I can only say that I’m touched by the thought.
Quite well said, I think. Let’s hope (and yes, pray — but quietly, quietly) that such graciousness is rewarded with many more years of life.
This is an important observation which further demonstrates what a contemptible fraud and charlatan Hitchens is as an Atheist. As many of you are aware, Christians have, in a typical display of nauseating self-righteousness, launched a Prayers For The Popinjay campaign that they mistakenly believe makes them look holier-than-us-all. You see, Chris is a bad, bad man and (ostensibly) one of Christianity's greatest foes, so it's apparently very impressive and moral for the religious to talk to themselves like lunatics even more, and then go out bragging smugly about it to anyone who will listen. But that's to be expected. What's egregious here is that not only is Hitchens giving his blessing to, and encouraging--largely out of vanity it seems--this vile display of pseudo-compassion, but he's in effect defending the practice of public Christian prayer in general, and pretending that there's nothing wrong with it. At least it would be risible if he were making an exception only in his own case.
Contrary to The Contrarian, and far from being "fine" and not "necessarily doing any harm," prayers are an incredibly harmful and wicked act. They're an absolutely essential performance in maintaining an indoctrinated and enslaved mind within the Christian ideological system. It is crucial to be continually deluding yourself, deeper-and-deeper into the nether regions of the Christian fantasy-world, by constantly praying to nothing and no one. Each time it degrades your capacity for rational thinking a little bit more, and facilitates the internalization of the whole religious propaganda apparatus. When something you prayed about happens, it reinforces your faith, and when it doesn't, it just means you need more faith. God always wins! Douthat is quite right to note how Jesus Christ instructed his slaves to pray by themselves, as this rite is more effective and far-reaching psychologically when done in isolation, amongst other advantages.
For Chris to be complicit in and tacitly supporting this very old and very despicable method of indoctrination is truly beneath contempt. But this is hardly surprising given Chris' record as a traitor to the Atheist cause, corrupting the movement and lavishing his earnest support for the most religious forces in politics like Bush, Giuliani, and even Sarah Palin when it counted, while passionately embracing policies in the Middle East that have incontrovertibly caused a rapid rise of Islamic and religious extremism. For instance, according to the RAND Corporation, the war in Iraq caused a seven-fold increase of jihadism.
Though this is just one more footnote in CH's voluminous career as the most prominent useful idiot of the Parties of God in the world, of course. He is like Ivan Karamazov in Brothers Karamazov, the brilliant polemicist whom while being widely known as an advanced Atheist thinker, reveals in his controversial article on Ecclesiastical Courts that he is in fact a power-worshiping apologist for the Church. A secular Ultramontanist, but even beyond the Alps.
And like Ivan, power and glory will never grant true peace nor happiness to Christopher.
Where's the Hitch when you need him? Languishing in a sick bed, God bless him, well I hope he gets well soon. Look at this:
"The Government has moved to prevent the possibility of an arrest warrant being issued against the Pope during his state visit this autumn.
Sky News understands that Whitehall officials have been "seriously concerned" that campaigners would use international criminal rules to try to detain the Pontiff while he is in the UK.
Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson QC were among those campaigners reported to be looking at the options for bringing a private prosecution in relation to the Pope's alleged cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Now Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has proposed changes to the rules on universal jurisdiction, a law that allows individuals to be prosecuted in the UK for serious offences such as war crimes, crimes against humanity and torture even if they were carried out abroad.
The plans would mean the Director of Public Prosecutions would need to give his consent to any arrest warrant issued under universal jurisdiction.
This would effectively mean taking that power out of the hands of the courts."
Some readers may think that all well and good, let's stop Hitch and Dawkins's jiggery popery you may say. Yes but knee-jerk legislation is never good. Never. We've had too much legislation passed on the sensationalism of one news item. In the UK, ably helped by the last government, we are drowning in legislation. So maybe a law should be changed. But should it be changed to give more power to the State, where is the debate? Does the UK public really have to rely on Hitchwatch? Well OK the Indy are also running this story:
"The Ministry of Justice is concerned that this situation is open to abuse, because the level of evidence needed to secure an arrest warrant is much lower than that used by the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether such a case should be proceeded with"
Hm. I wonder what The Ministry of Justice thinks about the CPS decision over Ian Tomlinson?
Our old friend Michael Weiss (“Squeaky”) has written a nauseating eulogy of his hero Hitchens. Anyone who can read the whole thing deserves a trophy. I tried; I really did. It’s alarmingly long and just absolutely painful. I suffered greatly, and you will too. Having made it almost to the end before skipping to the final graf, I will cite some examples of what I mean.
The Weiss method is characterized, in part, by the constant use of the obscure or the lesser used term over the straightforward one. For instance, Hitchens has “immolated bridges” with friends on the Left (rather than simply burned them). Hitch’s admiration for Jessica Mitford is a “mite” (rather than a bit) “overdetermined.” Related to this is his love of 10 dollar words, all of which are used without irony, and sometimes incorrectly. Just a few:
‘animadversions’ (‘criticisms’ being too simplistic a term for the Genius from Jewcy) ‘omerta’ ‘generalissimus’ (a Soviet term he invokes to describe Saddam Hussein) ‘epigones’, ‘thistles’ (both appearing in the same sentence; funny that Weiss should have the word epigone on his mind while writing about Hitchens) ‘preternatural’ (adjective used to describe - get this - Hitch’s ability to make a living after 9-11 and his fallout with people on the Left)
There are also the typical euphemisms: US wars in the 90’s in Bosnia and Kosovo are “bail-outs” and, of course, current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are “interventions.”
Such tendencies are not, however, the worst of Squeaky’s literary offenses. He gets away with writing mind-numbingly, long-winded and often incoherent sentences. For instance:
If a prohibition on warrantless wiretapping, the use of torture and censorship of the media constitute handicaps to the struggle against Al Qaeda and Islamofascism, then better they be defeated on our own terms.
I got over the pronoun confusion (“they” apparently refers to “Al Qaeda and Islamofascism”). But I still can’t make any goddamned sense of this. Can you?
And what’s with the 19th century diction here? The true jigsaw puzzle of the Hitch may never be solved, but herewith I offer my own attempt at reconstruction.
‘Herewith’? That alone invites a brutal physical beating. I suggest smashing an air conditioner on the author’s head.
Toward the end of this stinker, Weiss bravely asserts himself. Speaking of Hitchens, he goes:
This penchant for having it both ways...may seem a pose to Christopher’s more literal-minded and humorless detractors, but I assure you it is not.
Rest assured, fellow HWers: Hitch is not a terrible hypocrite and liar. Squeaky says so.
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Hitch on chemo says cancer has reached lymph nodes
In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt on July 13, Christopher Hitchens revealed a snippet of information that allows outsiders to determine the progress of his cancer and make a ballpark estimate of his chances of survival.
HH: Now Christopher, since we last spoke, your illness you disclosed on the web, and people will want to know off the bat how you are doing, and how your treatment is going.
CH: Oh well, I have, in case people are just tuning in, I have cancer in my esophagus, which has I think spread a little to my lymph nodes as well. And I’m two weeks into the chemotherapy course. So I feel pretty weak, and my voice isn’t what it was, but that’s supposed to be a good sign in that the amount of poison I’m taking is presumably working on the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. And this morning, I found that my hair was beginning to come out in the shower, which is a bit demoralizing, I have to say, even though it’s the least of it.
That the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes, even a little, is bad news for his prognosis. According to gilhealth.com, the stages of cancer of the esophagus are classified as follows:
Stage 0 (carcinoma in situ) This is a very early cancer. In fact, the cancer cells are found only in the top layer of the inner wall of the esophagus. The cancer has not invaded into the wall of the esophagus and has not spread to lymph nodes or other organs. Stage I The cancer has invaded into the wall of the esophagus, but has not penetrated the thick muscular layer which surrounds it. It has not spread to nearby tissues, lymph nodes, or other organs. Stage II There are two substages - IIA and IIB. In IIA, the cancer has penetrated the muscular layer and may have broken through the outer wall, but has not yet spread to nearby lymph nodes or any other organs. In IIB, the cancer may have spread to local lymph nodes, but has not spread to other tissues. Stage III The cancer has spread to tissues or lymph nodes near the esophagus, but has not spread to other parts of the body. Stage IV The cancer has entered the bloodstream and has spread to other parts of the body such as the liver or lung.
This means that at minimum, Hitch's cancer has reached Stage IIB, and it is possible that it has reached Stage III. gihealth.com also provides a a chart 5-year survival chances, which are very poor for either of these stages.
STAGE CHANCE OF SURVIVING 5 YEARS Stage 0 75% Stage I 60% Stage IIA 40% Stage IIB 20% Stage III 15% Stage IV LESS THAN 5%
Still, we British have always fought against the odds, haven't we?
This will be academic to Christopher, but for those of you who don't want to share his sad fate, you can reduce you risk of developing cancer of the esophagus by avoiding tobacco, moderating your alcohol consumption, and treating the symptoms of heartburn.
Those at highest risk are individuals who use tobacco in any form and drink regularly. Daily consumption of moderate to heavy alcohol increases the risk of esophageal cancer about 18 times above normal. Adding a pack or two of cigarettes a day, raise this risk to 44 times normal. These individuals can reduce their risk by stopping all tobacco, drinking in moderation, and aggressively evaluating and treating heartburn. Those that have heartburn more than twice a week or severe heartburn, should consult with their physician. Any one who has noted difficulty swallowing should be referred for a full evaluation.
Just in from The New Statesman, a bite-sized interview with the Hitch for people with short attention blah, blah, blah......
Among the goodies [with comments from Yours Truly in straight brackets]:
How is your campaign to have the Pope arrested progressing?
It's outrageous that people like myself, Richard Dawkins and Geoffrey Robertson are taking this on. What are law officers, and police departments, for? But we will do it if they won't.
[Sure thing Hitch, you and whose army? Just be careful that Opus Dei don't get you first. They do waterboardings in the church font and call it baptism!]
What can we expect from the book that you are currently writing on the Ten Commandments?
One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.
[It is absolutely fascinating to be able to listen to musings on the potential origins of morality from a man whose policy recommendations have and are continuing to kill innocent people by the truckload. But Hitch is confused here. His question doesn't get to the heart of the matter. A more appropriate question would be, do we get morality from nature or nurture? The best answer is a bit of both but much more from nurture than nature. And as for celestial dictation, that sounds far too much like astrology for comfort.]
Would you say you're a neo-conservative now?
I'm not a conservative of any kind. A faction willing to take the risks of making war on the ossified status quo in the Middle East can be described as many things, but not as conservative.
[Translation, I am not a conservative but I am a war-mongering cheerleader for some of the darkest and nastiest forces we've seen on planet earth for quite a long time. But if you saw my wine, whiskey and dry cleaning bills, you'd understand my predicament. I can't afford morals, guv, not on the wages the Nation paid, and neither could you if you was as poor as me.]
A lastly:
And what do you make of Obama's presidency?
It's quite clean. The people working for him are relatively straight and honest. But what he's finding out is that the power of the presidency is very slight. There are all kinds of things that are just not under his control.
[Still trying to get back into the White House and onto Michelle's dinner party guest list, I see.]
ADDENDUM Incidentally, George Eaton has also penned a very readable profile of Christopher Hitchens that manages to pack in a lot of salient facts and anecdotal information without being fawning, vindictive or boring. Please check it out here
Reviewing CH's review, we do grant that it does have some merits. Hitch aptly mentions that curiously candid line from C.S. Lewis about how Jesus was probably a madman if he wasn't divine. There's the obligatory shout-out to Jefferson and his redacted version of the Gospels. And we get to enjoy once again Hitchens' dubious distinction between Protestant Atheism and Catholic Atheism. But alas, there are some serious flaws.
For one, Hitchens does think it's a fool's errand to try to salvage Christ from Christianity, but apart from that he has given an almost entirely free pass to what looks like, based on the excerpts and reviews I've read of it at least, a God-awful and ridiculous book. Based on the excerpts that have come out, on purely aesthetic grounds alone this work is egregiously gimmicky, contrived, and quite frankly simply unreadable. Hitchens claims that the book "is an attempt by an experienced storyteller to show how even the best-plotted stories can get too far out of hand." A comment which well applies to Pullman's silly little composition itself. As a veteran reviewer of literature, Hitchens knows that you shouldn't fail to point out a book is bad just because you might agree with its politics, or its political effect.
Nevertheless, I'd argue that Pullman's miserable life should be spared even after publishing such contemptible piffle. While he appears to have been careful to not be too overtly offensive to Christians (to the point of garnering praise from some in the clerical establishment as Hitchens points out) the whole expedition here is ultimately a blasphemous one, mocking the personage and story of Jesus of Nazareth. Which we do applaud.
This kind of disrespect towards Christ has long been overdue, especially considering how even these big, bad New Atheists have been pulling their punches when it comes to the Messiah. Chris may claim that he takes umbrage with the moral teachings of Christ, but then why did he use in his secularist compendium Richard Dawkins' excruciatingly terrible "Atheists For Jesus" essay, maybe one of the worst things Dawkins has ever written? Contra to Dawkins, with Hitch's nod of approval, Jesus' doctrine was not one of "niceness." Rather Jesus was a hate-filled, protototalitarian sociopath and mountebank who spent his time self-righteously denouncing everyone, spreading wickedness and fanaticism everywhere, while sadistically fantasizing about how those who dare to refuse to become his slaves shall be murdered and tortured for all eternity. Doesn't sound like "niceness" to your humble scrivener here. Not only may Hitch be an Atheist For Jesus by including it in his reader, but it's queer how he never actually challenges Jefferson's claim to have made the Gospels "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals ever" by merely cleaving (only some of) the superstition and sorcery off. It doesn't fundamentally make much of difference to the alleged moral value of Jesus' rantings by trimming a little of the top, yet Hitchens seems to have no objection to TJ's conclusion, at least he's never said anything to the contrary on that.
While Hitch does have a chapter in GING claiming that the New Testament is even worse than the Old (that may or may not be true but which he fails to demonstrate), and he does quibble with Christ on a few points (most notably on hell), he seems to accept the widespread delusion that much of Christ's ethical pronouncements are valid, and his critique of Jesus himself is rather superficial in the potboiler, with Chris even claiming that only "perhaps" it is true that Jesus wouldn't be a moral figure if he was a fraud.
So I say: Woe unto you, scribes and popinjays, ye Hitchocrites!
"Well, opinions are like assholes", quipped Dirty Harry, "everybody has one." But then again, not everyone is equally asinine in their opinions, even though in the field of opinion journalism opinionated assholes are thicker on the ground than geysers at Yellowstone and just as likely to be spurting out hot steam.
When asked, I occasionally venture opinions on things I know little about, as befits my status as a sage, but even then I don't like to venture too far away from my particular fields of expertise, which virtually disqualifies me from punditry as a living. Our Christopher, by contrast, has never been one to let lack of familiarity with or experience in a subject dissuade him from pontificating on it.
And in his most recent Slate piece, he has once again honored that tradition by penning a whine list aimed at trying to convince President Obama and the Slate readership —including, if the ads are to be believed, Stephen King on his iPad — that "Gen. Stanley McChrystal should oversee the U.S. drawdown from Iraq."
For those who don't find distasteful the mere fact that Hitchens has elected to hold this opinion, let alone to give it, may I remind you that assigning senior military staff is not quite the same sort of thing as appointing a baseball or soccer coach or even electing a politician. It isn't something that every joe sixpack, sally housecoat or assclown columnist should feel qualified to comment on. There are numerous strategic, bureaucratic and other considerations involved in making such decisions that outsiders — even veteran 101st Fighting Keyboarders like our Christopher — could not possibly be expected to be aware of nor to appreciate. And if he does have enough inside knowledge to venture an opinion, then the US military is in an even worse state than it looks.
Nay, Hitchens should stick to what he does best — doing his well-known and much-loved impersonation of Old Faithful on live TV — and leave the details of military appointments to be made by the relevant responsible adults.
As I'm sure you've all heard by now, at this dark hour (and yes, it is sadly true), Hitchens Watch has been diagnosed with a likely terminal condition, and we will probably not survive it. It is very grim. Our overall 5 year survival rate is less than 5 percent.
We've appreciated though all your prayers and the beautiful flowers many of you have sent. And we shall continue to accept your kind words friends and your generous pecuniary donations while we are still alive and kicking. Bless you Comrades, and may Christ guide all your paths.
P.S. And in other less important news, some bloke named Chris Hitchens is sick or something.
Now I do love how every religious vulture in the planet's entire atmosphere is swooping in to peck at The Hitch and encircle him, with their beaks dripping over a potential feast. Could there be a deathbed conversion? Maybe he'll end up being an Oscar Wilde, or a Malcolm Muggeridge? Let's have a "debate" about it. Blah, blah, blah.
You know, I rather doubt it. And Hitchens is not dead yet. No, not quite yet.
He has stolen much from the purse of the proletariat over the years and so his riches and his bourgeois medicine may very well make him an elite Five Percenter. Please, since when has the Old Man not been an Elite, of course? The Top 5% cut he has to make you say? Hell, 1% would be enough for an arrogant, entitled aristocrat like His Hitchness.
And yes, while Hitchens was quite right to blurb what seems like a sensible book by Barbara Ehrenreich exposing the cottage industry that has grown up around "positive thinking" and other New Age tripe in medicine, there is no doubt a psychological component to health amenable to our free will that can play a significant role in recovery from life-threatening ailments. There's a reason why Stephen Hawking has one of the worst cases ever known of ALS yet has still lasted longer than anyone else in recorded history with that disease.
But since all the Christianists are swooping in to prey on our poor Hitch in his vulnerable state, we have been advised by our psychiatrists that we must undergo a course of offering some unsolicited therapy for the Hitch too. This advice seems persuasive to me.
It's not too late for our patient to sell-out those he sold-out to. How can a serial betrayer like our lad resist a double sell-out like that, doublecrossing them too? We pray that maybe his fight against cancer, whether he beats it or not, will finally force him to reconsider his decision to be remembered by posterity, if at all, as mainly a vulgar apologist for George Bush and crazed, failed wars in the Middle East.
Don't panic! Because after all, this is the Hitch Guide to the Galaxies. So please don't take any of the scientific facts or figures he reels off too seriously or literally. Just enjoy the beautiful baritone, share the man's faith in Big Bang theology and in his shocked, shocked incredulity that anybody could possibly believe the that the stories told in the Bible are literally true, and marvel at why in the 21st century anybody with more than half a brain could possibly consider this revelation worth lecturing about. Sagan, Bronowski and Feynman have nothing on this guy. Only Dawkins comes close.
Active discussion has been continuing as to the root cause of Christopher's cancer, with an army of detractors on the religious, temperance and health camps waving their fingers and many Hitch supporters and admirers seeking to exempt their man from culpability or disapprobation as the prime author of his own fate. Crass, cruel or tasteless though the effort to blame his disease on his lifestyle may well be, it has to be said that Christopher has brought such attention on himself by virtue of his having served for many years as a poster boy for the antithesis of good clean living both in his writing, his public appearances, and in some of his admittedly hilarious photographic self-parodies in Vanity Fair.
Now, into the mix, as if on cue, comes an article in the Huffington Post by "internationally renowned authority on nutrition" David Katz,that seeks to put the genetic component of disease into proportion. According to David, the mapping of the human genome has not resulted in the slew of root genetic causes, treatments or cures that was anticipated back in the Clinton years. Instead, we are left with behavior as a far more important determinant of health. In looking for causes and explanations of most diseases, heredity can only take us so far. I bring this article to the attention of Hitch-watchers, Hitch-fanboys and Hitch-hens alike in the hope that at least some of you will stop treating your bodies as if they were indestructible. Yes, you may get seriously or even terminally ill regardless of how health-conscious you are, but where's the sense in stacking the dice so heavily in favor of such an outcome?
Genomic research has led to basic biological insights, but it has failed to deliver thus far on the promise of real-world biomedical advance. Thus, while biologists and geneticists may still see the cup of genomic promise as half full, medical scientists and, apparently, New York Times reporters -- are starting to see it as half empty.
My view is that we are talking about the wrong cup. We have had another cup, overflowing with promise to advance the human condition, in our hands since 1993 at least.
In that year, a paper entitled "Actual Causes of Death in the United States" was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by Drs. William Foege and J. Michael McGinnis. McGinnis and Foege revealed the obvious we had all overlooked: when someone dies of, say, a heart attack, it is not very illuminating to cite the cause as disease of the cardiovascular system. What we all really want to know is: what caused that?
Such answers were readily available. Overwhelmingly, premature death and chronic disease were attributable to just ten behaviors each of us ostensibly has the capacity to control: tobacco use, dietary pattern, physical activity level, alcohol consumption, exposure to microbial agents, exposure to toxic agents, use of firearms, sexual behavior, motor vehicle crashes, and illicit use of drugs. That list of ten was, in turn, much dominated by the top three -- tobacco use, dietary pattern, and physical activity level -- which alone accounted for nearly 800,000 premature deaths in 1990....
In the summer of 2009, yet another paper was published by CDC scientists and their colleagues -- in the Archives of Internal Medicine this time -- examining lifestyle factors and health. The investigators surveyed over 23,000 German adults about four behaviors: smoking (yes or no); eating well (yes or no); getting regular physical activity (yes or no); and maintaining a recommended weight (yes or no). That weight is not a behavior is an important aside, but a topic for another day.
Those with all good answers -- not smoking, eating well, staying active, and being lean -- as compared to those with all bad answers -- had roughly an 80% lesser likelihood of experiencing any major chronic disease. Flipping the switch from bad to good on any one of the factors was associated with a 50% reduced probability of chronic disease. Any drug with a faction of such potential would be a blockbuster....
In a study reported in 2008 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 30 men with early stage prostate cancer received an intensive lifestyle intervention for three months: wholesome, plant-based nutrition, stress management, moderate exercise, and psychosocial support. Standard measures -- weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on -- all improved significantly, as one would expect. But what makes this study unique -- and ground-breaking -- is that it measured, using advanced laboratory techniques, the effects of the intervention on genes. Roughly 50 cancer suppressor genes became more active, and nearly 500 cancer promoter genes became less so.
This, and other studies like it, go so far as to indicate that the long-standing debate over the relative power of nature versus nurture is something of a boondoggle, for there is no true dichotomy. We can, in fact, nurture nature.
From a preventionist's perspective, the lesser shame is our failure, to date, to wrest much new knowledge of practical value from our genome. By far the greater shame -- measurable in years lost needlessly from life, and life lost needlessly from years -- is our failure to use the knowledge we already have -- and have had since 1993 at least -- about the overwhelming influence of lifestyle on health. Feet, forks, and fingers are, indeed, the master levers of medical destiny. This is unlikely to change, no matter what secrets our genomes ultimately reveal.
ABC News in the US has taken the occasion of Christopher's chemo announcement to report in some detail on the ins and outs of esophogeal cancer. In a five-page article on their website, Susan Donaldson James weaves Hitch's quotations and lifestyle into a piece examining the symptoms, potential causes and likely prognosis of a diagnosis that she says, "rarely has a happy ending".
But is the patient to blame for his symptoms or was it just bad luck? That's a vexed question. Yes indeedy! It should keep the doctors, philosophers and moralists busy for decades to come.
The disease kills 14,530 Americans a year and one type -– squamous cell carcinoma -– is associated with smoking and drinking, habits Hitchens extolled as virtues in essays and features for Vanity Fair magazine.
"It tends to be an aggressive cancer," said Dr. Richard Battafarano, chief of thoracic surgery at the University of Maryland. "By the time a person knows he has esophageal cancer, it's already moved to stage 3 or 4. By the time people go to the doctor because their voice has changed or their swallowing has changed, the tumor has advanced."
Speculation has already begun on what role Hitchens' self-proclaimed hedonistic lifestyle played in his diagnosis.
"The fact that people are also calling it throat cancer tells me it's high up behind the voice box," said Battafarano. "We know he had a prolific consumption of alcohol and cigarettes and he had quit smoking, but it might be a little late."
Keeping our focus, for the moment on Hitchens fils, here's David Miller on the Spinwatch...er...Gate Affair. (Note, for some incomprehensible reason the image to your left is how little baby Hitchens chooses to expose himself to the world on his Policy Exchange Profile. Unless he actually looks like that, in which case, my apologies).
'When the anger of a prominent young thinktanker causes one of the world's largest web-hosting companies to shut down a site that monitors lobbying and transparency, it is time to start asking questions about online free speech and censorship.
SpinProfiles, run by sister organisation Spinwatch, aims to stitch together publicly available information to provide a detailed picture of who's who in the shadowy world of lobbying. It features close to ten thousand profiles of think tanks, lobbying organisations and those associated with them.
Although all the information mentioned in his profile is in the public domain and is fully referenced and sourced, last week 1 & 1 Internet asked that the page be removed. They gave no reason, and when we queried the decision, they responded:
"Regardless as to whether the contents of the webpage in question is factual and backed up by sourced information, we still have a legal obligations as an ISP provider to ensure that personal information (for which you have not obtained the permission for) is removed from your website."
When we asked what part of the information was "personal", they declined to specify. When we declined to remove the page, the site was closed down.
We do not know precisely why Meleagrou-Hitchens objected to the page. According to Hugh Muir, Meleagrou-Hitchens did ask for the profile to be taken down, although he did not say that anything in it was defamatory. We wrote to Meleagrou-Hitchens to ask for his reasons, but he has not, as yet, replied.
However, the page did report claims about his role in attacking allegedly "Islamist" organisations. Our investigations highlighted that Meleagrou-Hitchens appeared to have been associated with a Policy Exchange briefing attacking the 2008 Global Peace and Unity festival, the annual Muslim conference at London's ExCel Centre. In October that year, Nick Clegg attacked Policy Exchange in a letter to its director Neil O'Brien for "privately" briefing against the event in London. Clegg mentioned the "notable lack of evidence to support many of the claims", and said he was "appalled to see 'evidence' quoted from the Society for American National Existence, an organisation which seeks to make the practice of Islam illegal, punishable by 20 years in prison".'
— Stabler questions whether or not Christopher's cancer should be considered tragic
Waste is the heart of compelling tragedy.
It's what Hitchens bemoaned in The Clinton White House in a rare truthful and fair criticism of that Administration. The fact that Clinton's White House would be a case of governing under siege from the worst elements in American Political life, given legitimacy by press hacks like Hitchens, blurs the responsibility for that waste, to put it mildly.
Once Htichens had humiliated himself by turning his friend in to Judge Starr for making a mildly impolitic statement that was true; and then tried to justify himself by further lying about the incident, there was no turning back for him. He would be the thinking man's Dick Morris, a turncoat who would enrich himself, receiving the credibility the mainstream press always showers on those who have turned on the left. He got rich, he mitigated his actions by showboating to the libertarian balcony; wrapping himself in glory for the great epiphany of realizing Noah's Ark was just a story.
Alas and in addition, apologies to some REAL disbelievers at Hitchens Watch, he seems to have killed himself with booze and cigarettes. It's worth a little reflection, what sort of man worships reason and treats his body like a garbage dump, and his lungs like an ash tray? A man who is a very poor advert for reason, as we at Hitchens Watch have endeavored to illustrate for the past several years now.
Yet there remains that nagging question of waste. How much was there before ego and laziness swallowed up Hitch's potential whole? Was it bitterness at the awful circumstances of his mother and her death (for which Hitchens's was of course blameless) that left him with such a twisted sense of sympathy for the real bullies of the western world?
Or, as one struggles to remember, was he really ever any good? His slim book on Mother Teresa encompasses both his best and worst. Yes, he was on some good ground attacking one of the sacred cows of the media, and reminding us that her towering reputation was founded on a hokey stunt by some right wing TV journalists bent on enshrining her with a supernatural connection. Some of the charges the book makes about her are quite damning, but they are not footnoted or firmly tied to anything.
And so it would always be with Hitchens, he was to be taken on faith, and if you can't believe HIM, well, what good are you? That Hitchens's star continued to rise as a journo/entertainer (the violent swing to the right being critical, of course) is as much a commentary on the dumbed down corporate media as a black mark on Hitch. He would revel in glory at Vanity Fair unfettered by "overly literal fact checking".
It is when we consider those all too literal facts on the invasion of Iraq that we are forced to conclude, yes, it's a hell of a black mark on Hitchens too. Orwellian as his later work would be, there was alas precious little Orwell in our Hitch. Eric Blair, perhaps driven by guilt over his father's part in the British Opium Trade, struggled to report on the injustices of a broken world, perhaps as a way to create another world where good men aren't drawn by money into such ghastly departments. Hitchens seemed only to crave approval in terms of the worst of his Father's old world bigotries and imagined justifications of ruthlessness.
Finally, of his recently revealed cancer, it must be said there is no tragedy in this cruel diagnosis. It is merely very very sad.
Frankly I'm embarassed at the alleged 'Christian Response' to Hitch's recent illness. You can see my comment posted there. And I thought I'd mention a small news item I saw where those in charge thought a 'Christian Response' was a 'sick joke', but not for the same reasons, so, just for balance:
" Tom Jones album branded 'sick joke' Posted Mon 5 Jul 2010 9:32 BST by News Editor in Pop Gossip Tom Jones' new album has been branded a 'sick joke' by a record company boss.According to reports, Island Records vice-president David Sharpe is appalled by the veteran singer's new religious direction on forthcoming album 'Praise & Blame', due out later this month."I have just listened to the album in its entirety and want to know if this is some sick joke????," he wrote in a blistering email to staff at the company."We did not invest a fortune in an established artist for him to deliver 12 tracks from the common book of prayer. Having lured him from EMI, the deal was that you would deliver a record of upbeat tracks along the lines of 'Sex Bomb' and 'Mama Told Me'."As venerable and interesting as Tom's story is, this is not what was agreed and certainly not what we paid for."Jones is said to have been left 'stunned' by the comments. [Daily Telegraph]"
Anyway, it got me thinking of Hitch and the 'green green grass of home'. When I spent some time in America that was one of the most noticeable things that struck me when I got back to Blighty - how green it was. Britain really is a pleasant land. Christopher was at Hay this year which is housed on the edge of Wales. And that is what I missed most when I was away - how green our land is, how it looks and smells, changes and most of all how it sounds. The UK is full of song, we sing at the drop of a hat, and well too more often than not. Well, some of us do - Peter Hitchens complained that people don't sing in church and I can tell him why: he might have a gorgeous baritone voice but some of us simply can't manage a sound. Honestly! At Christmas I managed one carol because I could sing an octave lower on that one - it's just too high a key for me usually. I open my mouth and nothing comes out, which I'm sure is how Peter Hitchens likes it. But on sunday at evensong we sang Cwm Rhondda, one of my favourites. I call it 'bread of heaven' as that's the bit you remember, you can really enjoy the bread of heaven bit. You've got to give it all you've got, it's compulsory!
So, I feel moved to post a 'Christian Response' in amongst all the others. And this is what I want to say:
I heard on Radio 4 that they are suggesting banning rugby in schools as it's too dangerous, can you imagine that? What is the world coming to?! Rugby, and the sound of cricket on a warm afternoon. The sound of the surf off the point at Lee on Solent and the smell of the sea and fish and chips at Gosport. The wind across the soft green hills and the murmer and bark of laughter in the pub, chink of glass and disinterested tones of a 'Boden mummy' in the beer garden because 'I don't know if it's Fair Trade, Poppy, just eat something or go hungry'.
I'm looking forward to seeing you at Hay next year, Christopher Hitchens. Get well soon.
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Paul Cooper offers "a Christian response" to Hitch's cancer
Fumbling around for a response to the news that today's most outspoken anti-Christer has been stricken, Old Testament style with a terminal wasting disease, self-declared Christian Paul Cooper, opens his blog post today by reminding us that cancer is like a blow job artist. That's right, it "sucks". A little later on, he gets a bit deeper, describing cancer much as Forest Gump's mum described life.
Cancer comes in all varieties. And of course what stage you are in matters as well. I’m not sure what stage Hitchens is in, but esophageal cancer is a tough one to fight and most people get diagnosed in the late stages. Usually the prognosis is not good. The disease can be very painful, especially when trying to swallow. The one suffering will often have to vomit a lot along with painful coughing.
Not that Paul is enjoying any of this one bit! But he does come across as yet another Christian of the finger-waving holier-than-thou stripe, sharing his insights about the agonies the Hitch can look forward to experiencing in some Hieronymus Bosch version of the hospital hell that awaits this sinner before he even sets off on his journey into the next world. And of course, by dropping heavy hints, Paul is sending out a message likely to be interpreted by many as that although the cancer may not be an act of divine wrath, the sinner has nevertheless earned his reward in the cause-and-effect/action-reaction/behavior-has-consequences material world by following a potentially dangerous lifestyle course.
The two biggest causes of esophageal cancer are the combination of drinking and smoking. Anyone who knows Hitchens knows he did both regularly much of his life (Hitchens did quit smoking in 2008). The overall 5 year survival rate for this type of cancer is less than 5% on average. Now I don’t know if Hitchens falls in the average, but his situation is tough regardless.
Still, Christians should not be crowing like Anne Coulter about Hitch's predicament, at least not in public. Happily, Paul is very firm on this point. The sad thing is that he actually feels the need to spell this advice out. Why do piety and gloating so often go together?
So what is the Christian response to this news? Do we cheer what some might say is the vengeance of God? Do we tell Hitchens he got what he deserved? Do we feign sorrow but smile on the inside? Do we mock him as he mocked us?
Mercifully no. Instead, Christians should follow Jesus's injunction to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So in Paul's book, does this mean Christopher is an enemy and persecutor of Christians in the same way that quite a few Hitch fanboys regard the denizens of this blog as an enemy and persecutor of their idol?
Commenting on Chris Phillips enjoinder to Hitch to "spit in the eye of the religious and get well?", Paul declares:
I hate to break it to Chris and Christopher, but getting well won’t be spitting in our eyes. It’ll give us reason to praise God. Why? Because we are going to pray that you do get well. We’re going to pray that you recover and that through your rough journey ahead, the light of truth and faith will beam in your heart.
Not that the Christers need any particular reason to praise the Lord, of course, but this is precisely the kind of syrupy language that keeps an increasing number of sensible ordinary conventional contemporary people at the maximum possible polite distance from the followers of organized Christianity for fear of throwing up during social intercourse. On top of that, it's the sort of declaration that can only give Christopher the courage to grit his teeth and go through the journey determined not to listen to the pleadings of his higher self. And even if he did find God, he would never want to give these smug sanctimonious sods the satisfaction of knowing he'd done it.
Finally, what's all this atheist tosh about not praying to God for a miracle cure? In their excellent and thoroughly scientific study of people who have made remarkable recoveries from terminal illnesses, Carlyle Hirshberg and Marc Ian Barasch report that prayer was cited as an important factor in 68% of the cases they studied and faith in 61%. But under the psychosomatic theory of the benefits of prayer and faith, for them to do any good at all, they must come from the patient. And indeed, when people experienced miraculous recoveries in the presence of the Christ, he is reported as telling them that their faith had healed them.
“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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