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.
“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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