I've been sufficiently creeped out by the fulsome celebration of all things "Hitch" that I'm compelled to write a little more. The turning point was reading Katie Roiphe, the hackiest of Slate's considerable stable of knee-jerk "contrarians" -- who regularly pulls off a trifecta of being wrong, thin-skinned, and boring -- describing how Hitchens offered personal encouragement in her career as a "provocateur."
Well, the man frequently suffered from terrible judgment, and I'm glad that my favorite writer younger than me, Alex Pareene at Salon, was there to settle the record. In particular, his refusal to excuse his hypocritical support for the war in Iraq:
The sting of this behavior is just how convincing his writing about Kissinger and that ilk is. I was shaken by his powerful reporting on the immorality of Agent Orange -- a toxin whose evil reaches across generations -- that I cannot understand how that writer and the Iraq War cheerleader are related (it's a little infuriating to say it now, but seriously, go read 'The Vietnam Syndrome' in VF). Strange, but I think that to be so right about one thing while at the same time being so wrong about another is a chronic condition of the 20th century.
Well, the man frequently suffered from terrible judgment, and I'm glad that my favorite writer younger than me, Alex Pareene at Salon, was there to settle the record. In particular, his refusal to excuse his hypocritical support for the war in Iraq:
"And so we had the world's self-appointed defender of Orwell's legacy happily joining an extended misinformation campaign designed to sell an incompetent right-wing government's war of choice. The man who carefully laid out the case for arresting Henry Kissinger for war crimes was now palling around with Paul fucking Wolfowitz."
The sting of this behavior is just how convincing his writing about Kissinger and that ilk is. I was shaken by his powerful reporting on the immorality of Agent Orange -- a toxin whose evil reaches across generations -- that I cannot understand how that writer and the Iraq War cheerleader are related (it's a little infuriating to say it now, but seriously, go read 'The Vietnam Syndrome' in VF). Strange, but I think that to be so right about one thing while at the same time being so wrong about another is a chronic condition of the 20th century.
There was a quote kicking around twitter in which Hitchens described how he always wrote to be read posthumously. That's an ambitious idea, and truly cuts both ways. Without the shambolic, chain-smoking, lovable curmudgeon we remember from the chat-show circuit, we only have his words. Many should be cherished for a good long time (see above), but I hope I don't live to see the day that his cheap, blood-thirsty, war-mongering is accepted as truth by reasonable people.
If there is a fate worse than an eternity in hell, perhaps it has having your biggest mistakes laying in the sun without the opportunity to charm yourself into a state of grace where a mere man does not belong.
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