When my daughter has grown old enough to articulate (what I'm convinced she already secretly believes) that my every parenting decision has been wrong, thoroughly damaging, and clear grounds for lawsuit to cover therapy costs, I will at least be able to explain why I did not raise her to believe in Santa.
"Christopher Hitchens," I will say, as her eyes well up with tears. "Christopher Hitchens killed your Santa."
From behind Murdoch's firewall at Times (of London), we learn that Christopher has been sipping wine and nibbling cheese with the impeccably attired Ollie Kamm, although what these two could possibly have in common socially I am at a loss to articulate. Meanwhile, the Wikileaks Odyssey is providing far more entertainment value, so as a service to the thousands who still turn up here regularly in search of a laugh, here's one with a hilarious impersonation of Hilary.
The Hitchens Watch Shura recently convened and has now declared a hudna against that infidel Peter Hitchens. Our Qassams shall not fire at that Zionist entity today. We had heard a treacherous and false rumor that the infidel Peter had made peace with The Great Satchens, given his brother's illness. But thank Allah, it looks like we can put those awful rumors to rest with PH's post, one that would have been more appropriately published here than at the Daily Mail. He calls bullshit on Chris' tedious, hackneyed, and self-indulgent "debates," and on his publicity-whoring in general. And he makes some perspicacious observations regarding Mr. Blair and the vulgar Chris Cult out there. That's why Peter, even though he'd like to lock up a chap like myself and toss away the key (just for enjoying more than the odd jazz cigarette!), is our "Hitchens Watch Hero Of The Week":
Guest post by Peter Hitchens
I'm asked to comment on my brother's encounter (styled by some a 'debate') with Anthony Blair in Toronto, recently broadcast on BBC radio. Delighted as I am that the BBC (which can and often does reduce an important Parliamentary event to three jokey minutes) has taken to broadcasting debates on major issues on Radio 4, I do wonder whether the habit will last, and why this particular one made it so swiftly on to the air.
I haven't in fact heard it in full, and don't expect to, though I've read a few accounts. I have in the past watched or listened to YouTube versions of many of my brother's meetings with opponents. These were at least interesting because his opponents were in fact opponents, and in many cases also scientists or theologians of note.
But I know from long experience and observation that Mr Blair is not an intellect of any kind, knows little about anything important and speaks (with a vacuous charm that passes me by) in cliches, both mental and verbal. I've also had for some time a grave problem with his self-description as a man of faith. When his actions are questioned, on Christian grounds, by leading exponents of that faith, Mr Blair tends to assume that he is right, and to imply that, in that case, we really ought to find another Pope, Archbishop, Moderator etc. He certainly took that view on the Iraq war, and I think his views on the Church's positions on sexual politics are of a similar sort.
Which is my second reason for reluctance to bother with this occasion. I'd also place Mr Blair - who famously said in Stevenage in April 1997, days before he came to office, 'I am a modern man. I am part of the rock and roll generation—the Beatles, colour TV, that’s the generation I come from' - very much on the same side as my brother in the moral and cultural arguments of our time. Perhaps he should really have said 'Rolling Stones' rather than 'Beatles' to achieve full congruence. He would now, but at that stage he was worried about votes.
I used this quotation as the opening epigraph in the original version of my 1999 book 'The Abolition of Britain' (it's not in the new edition, which has a new and different introduction) and was recently fascinated to discover on the web an account of the Stevenage evening by that fine writer Ian Jack, in the 'Independent'. In this, it's clear that Mr Blair greatly pleased his audience by promising not to spend any money on the Royal Yacht, and by underlining his commitment to sexual liberation.
In fact, I'm quite sure that both men owe a lot of the popularity and success of their lives to being in tune with the post-1968 Age of Aquarius ethos of a whole generation of successful, prosperous and self-satisfied baby-boomers. The two men's radical interventionist, anti-sovereignty, utopian support for the Iraq War (though entirely consistent with this position) goes a little too far for most boomers, whose strong sense of their own goodness forbids them to support any sort of war. I seem to recall an occasion a couple of years ago when my brother actually took a ride in Mr Blair's armoured car, for a friendly chat about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
But, interestingly, most of my brother's fan club are prepared to forgive and forget about Iraq, and even for his sympathy with the Blair creature, because what really matters to them is the liberation from 'old-fashioned' and 'mediaeval' and 'repressive' moral systems, which is the real foundation for 21st century militant Godlessness. And it is his espousal of that position which has propelled him into intellectual superstardom in the USA. The ditching of Christianity is, alas, an idea whose time has come among the college-educated young of the USA.
After all, the same people generally still hate and despise me (where they've heard of me), even though I opposed the Iraq war, which they also opposed. And it's my attitude towards sex, drugs and rock and roll which causes them to do so.
Whereas what passes for the conservative movement in the USA (and to some extent here) is actually much more comfortable with my brother (thanks to his enthusiastic anti-Islamism, the badge of membership of the neo-conservative movement) than it is with me, with my inconvenient insistence on domestic conservatism which they find difficult and unattractive, and my preference for actual liberty over illusory security. My opposition to mass immigration (which some of my sillier critics like to pretend I never voice) also has something to do with this.
This is most educational, and it was pondering upon it which caused me to write 'The Cameron Delusion', where these paradoxes are addressed.
I'd also say that my brother gives more or less the same speech at all these debates, whoever his opponent is. I've joked for years that there was a major problem with the sound system at our clash in Grand Rapids, which meant that the speakers could not hear what the other one was saying properly (at one point I sat on the edge of the stage trying to catch what he was saying, and it was still so difficult to hear that I pondered going to sit in the audience. I probably should have done, and stayed there). While this bothered me quite a lot, it didn't trouble him, since he would have said pretty much the same thing whatever I said, and his assembled fan club (mystified by their very recent discovery of my very existence, and none too pleased by that discovery) would have whooped with joy over it.
Like many jokes, this is founded in truth. If I hear that thing about North Korea and the Celestial Dictatorship one more time, or the one about 'Created sick and commanded to be well', my eyelashes will start to ache. One of the pleasures of our recent non-debate, rightly described as a 'conversation', in Washington DC was that neither of us was performing, and so there were one or two genuine exchanges.
So I doubt if I'll get around to listening to the whole thing. And the reason I place the word 'debate' in inverted commas is that, like many others, I wondered - when I heard about the event - who was going to be on the other side.
By the way, a few words about the votes on these occasions, under which one side or the other is said to have 'won' - often because of a large switch of votes during the evening. I am suspicious, even when I win by these rules. Very few people come to such debates with an open mind or anxious to hear the other side. The system of taking a preliminary vote (in which the voters know that they will be polled again at the end) is an invitation to the mischievous and partisan to give a false or misleading vote the first time, and follow their real inclinations at the end - thus giving a false and misleading impression of the debating powers of those involved. This is so obvious, and such an obvious trick to play, that I am amazed nobody else ever seems to even ponder it, and that such votes are taken at face value.
I'm told by someone who was present at my brother's (and Stephen Fry's) attack on the RC Church in Central Hall Westminster that the size of the pro-RC vote at the beginning was absurdly out of tune with the whole mood of the audience. Of course that 'vote' had collapsed at the end.
This is no surprise. The debate-going classes in central London are far more likely to be urban secular liberals than suburban Christians, for a thousand obvious reasons.
This past month the left tried to make a little hay out of a revelation in George's W. Bush's ungodly horrible "Decision Points." Mitch McConnell, Bush's ghostwriter clumsily reveals, was publicly decrying the Dem's call for troop withdrawals at the same time he was asking Bush for them to help with the election. So, we learn, sometimes politics actually enters into matters of war and peace.
McConnell is only echoing, of course, Adolph Menjou's pragmatic Gen. George Broulard in Stanley Kubrick's "Paths Of Glory (1957)," just given a loaded-with-extras rerelease by Criterion. We shouldn't be too hard on McConell's two faced gamesmanship. Kubrick's much beloved anti-war film seems to softly echo "this is how it always been and will always be." Obama, who was elected on the basis of a no risk vote against Bush's invasion of Iraq, can be charitably seen in no hurry to set the Military indulgences he ran against right.
Hitchens, in his daring-of-progressives-days, once used Kubrick to pummel Clinton, I think mixing up the Sterling Haden and Keenan Wynn characters in "Dr. Stangelove." Yet when it was time for W to make War, Hitchens was way beyond satire, celebrating Haliburton and shrugging off the few bad apples of Abu Garab.
"Paths of Glory" is, I think, a simple film, yet it's not only the likes of Hitchens who seem to miss or evade it's point. War is a commercial and political endeavor where people's lives are weighed like any other product, and the risk of death in ennobled and celebrated by those who are noticeably not dead. Gen. Mireau (a perfect performance by George Macready) is not a phony when he says "the man you stabbed in the back was a soldier!" The point is a soldier can easily be just another man: vain, stupid, corruptible.
Bush's book also contains what might be the final pathetic burp in the ugly history of what Hitchens still euphemistically refers to as "regime change." Screaming for George W to further abuse his power of Presidential Pardon, Haliburton's boy, deferment king Dick Cheney, screamed at his heretofore pliable Boss "You don't leave a wounded man on the battlefield!" W hoped his old friend would eventually forget the anger forged by his incident, and apparently he did.
Some are repelled by the scene at the end of the film where Kirk Douglas suffers a brief moment of weakness, allowing his superior to witness his frayed contempt for the whole grotesque, stinking enterprise. I think it's critical and, again, rather the point of the whole thing. I think it nicely captures a correct response to a slimy war monger like Christopher Hitchens.
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Hitchens' lame-ass attempt to pile on Julian Assange
On Wikileaks and Assange, Hitchens got it completely backward. He encouraged Julian Assange to turn himself in - not to Interpol to answer questions about the Swedish sex case - but directly to the lynch mob that wants Assange 'eliminated' in one way or another. Smart advice, eh?
Hitchens vs. Assange: Who's the real megalomaniac?
I repeat, Hitch's recommendation to Assange on Monday was this: hide from the "laughingstock" Interpol ("what he really ought to do," wrote Hitch), but instead face the juridical system for his Wikileaks work, like Hitchens would've done back in '76 when he had the chance to reveal a state secret: "I would have accepted the challenge to see them in court or otherwise face the consequences." The bravest of them all, that Hitch, esp. 35 years in hindsight.
Here's just one problem with Hitch's scenario: In relation to his work with Wikileaks, Assange has not been charged with any crimes. Nor is or was he ever 'wanted' by the authorities for questioning in relation to Wikileaks activity. So, what the hell is Hitchens talking about? Has Assange dodged any court challenges related to his work? Absolutely not.
A couple other essential points. Hitch's description of Assange as a "micro-megalomaniac" couldn't have been more poorly timed, if you think about it. Assange has just been demonstrating his actual power and grandeur by effectively taking on the entire United States government. Megalomania is defined as, "a mental illness characterized by delusions of grandeur, power, wealth, etc."
Delusions? If anything, Assange is not just flavor of the week and man of the year; he's a historically significant individual. Not that he's one to boast: Assange has behaved rather modestly throughout the whole process...unlike, say, Chris Hitchens who comes a lot closer to being a megalomaniac.
Hitchens also criticized Assange for "resenting the civilization that nurtured him." You really gotta love this one, coming from Hitchens: A man who spent much of the 70's, 80's and 90's resenting the "civilization" that nurtured him. I guess because Hitchens failed at his resentment, he took a 'well, if you can't beat him, join 'em' turn.
As for Assange having been 'nurtured by civilization', I refer readers to the New Yorker profile which makes plain Assange's family's attempts (largely successful) to avoid so-called civilization. And a very good thing too, for us.
One line I do agree with Hitchens on is this: "The cunning of Julian Assange's strategy is that he has made everyone complicit in his own private decision to try to sabotage U.S. foreign policy."
And yet in the same article Hitch tries to tell us Assange is suffering from delusions of grandeur?
From now until Christmas Eve, the Guardian will be asking people to nominate their heroes and villains of 2010. To kick off, the paper asked a nameless, dying Iraqi child, who lost his mother and father in the sectarian bloodshed of 2009.
'Eloquent, witty, literate, intelligent, knowledgeable, brave, erudite, hard-working, honest (who could forget his clean-through skewering of Mother Teresa's hypocrisy?), arguably the most formidable debater alive today yet at the same time the most gentlemanly, Christopher Hitchens is a giant of the mind and a model of courage,' argues the nameless child, who will not live for much longer. 'A lesser man would have seized the excuse of a mortal illness to duck responsibility and take it easy. Not this soldier. He will not go gentle into that good night; but instead of a futile raging against the dying of the light he rages, with redoubled energy (and concentrated power in his vibrant, Richard Burton tones) against the same obscurantist, vicious or just plain silly targets as have long engaged him,' the child continued, pausing only to sob uncontrollably at the thought of his dead brother, killed in an American air attack. 'But he never rants. His is a controlled, disciplined rage, and don't get on the wrong side of it,' argued the child, who has suffered almost constant psychological and physical ill health after prolonged exposure to depleted Uranium and white phosphorus, both used illegally by the Americans.
'Like Bertrand Russell, Hitch "would scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation". He laughs off the spiritual vultures eager for a death-bed conversion, and dismisses – but with unfailingly gracious courtesy – the many schadenfreudian prayers for his recovery. As Daniel Dennett said, in similar circumstances, "And did you also sacrifice a goat?"' stated the child, who, unlike Hitchens, was born into poverty and who will die there, having never having had the advantages of a public school/Oxbridge education, nor the constant attention of the world's media.
'I devoutly hope (not pray),' the boy continued, after wheezing and pausing for breath ''that we shall see realised the 5% chance of recovery that modern doctors (not ancient gods) can offer. And if it is not to be – if, in his own gallantly insouciant words, he has to leave the party early – he will bequeath us an example worth following for centuries to come.' The child then paused,before hobbling off to beg for change from the constant stream of passing Iraqis desperately trying, economically, to keep their heads above water, before he was lost from sight, as another power cut plunged the street into darkness.
“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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