Perrin has a new piece up:
http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2011/12/letter-to-lost-friend.html
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:55 (twelve years ago) link
We then went to HBO Studios where you were to debate John Podhoretz on Comedy Central. It was a live show. You said "fuck" several times. Moderator Al Franken told you to stop. You replied, "I thought I was allowed to say whatever the fuck I wanted!" The segment ended early.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:56 (twelve years ago) link
lol ned p sure perrin is just some guy morbs made up
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:56 (twelve years ago) link
We are all Dennis Perrin.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:57 (twelve years ago) link
its full of stars
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
I'm not DP but we have the same initials
― OH NOES, Friday, 16 December 2011 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
hitch taught us how politics could be rocknroll
― schalke nult fear (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 December 2011 19:59 (twelve years ago) link
who will teach us how politics can be rickroll
― OH NOES, Friday, 16 December 2011 20:00 (twelve years ago) link
Obama
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 16 December 2011 20:01 (twelve years ago) link
"Never Gonna Lock You Up"
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 16 December 2011 20:02 (twelve years ago) link
i remember one july afternoon at a convention center in san antonio the louche figure of hitch was draped over a sedan wth two vassar girls, smoking rollups and downing a magnum of pol roger
a hieratic silence prevailed
'never let the islamo-nazis win', he intoned to the assembled press corps
everyone cheered
hitch was inspirational like that
― schalke nult fear (nakhchivan), Friday, 16 December 2011 20:07 (twelve years ago) link
http://www.thedialecticalplaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Hitchens1.jpg
― Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 16 December 2011 20:10 (twelve years ago) link
sweet christ
― HOOS aka driver of steen, Friday, 16 December 2011 20:11 (twelve years ago) link
mine eyes
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Friday, 16 December 2011 20:35 (twelve years ago) link
paging dom
― one pug (dealwithit.gif), Friday, 16 December 2011 21:17 (twelve years ago) link
You guys never read his VF piece on his makeover?
― Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 16 December 2011 21:42 (twelve years ago) link
Died the day the Iraq War ended, his work complete I guess...
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 16 December 2011 23:45 (twelve years ago) link
otm http://coreyrobin.com/2011/12/16/christopher-hitchens-the-most-provincial-spirit-of-all
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Friday, December 16, 2011 11:00 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark
"Only a writer of Hitchens’s talents could do justice to the culture that now so shamefully mourns him."
what sanctimonious garbage
― river wolf, Friday, 16 December 2011 23:50 (twelve years ago) link
eh supporting the Iraq War is pretty unforgiveable imho
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, 16 December 2011 23:55 (twelve years ago) link
dont be so sanctimonious abt this war that killed hundreds of thousands of people guy jeez
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:28 (twelve years ago) link
He contained multitudes. Righteous truthsayer, imperial asshole.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:31 (twelve years ago) link
no i meant dont be so sanctimonious about ppl expressing (possibly conflicted!) regret about the passing of an interesting and forceful personality
― river wolf, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:32 (twelve years ago) link
let me do the next part for you:
"did u kno hitler was an interesting and forceful personality mmmmmm ~think about it~"
― river wolf, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:33 (twelve years ago) link
"a bunch of people got bombed by people that weren't this sad drunk blowhard oh well its sad, he was a alcoholic"
― river wolf, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:34 (twelve years ago) link
christopher hitchens was a total asshole!
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:35 (twelve years ago) link
dont use apologetic words like 'forceful' i mean be serious
― Dr Morbius, Friday, December 16, 2011 5:31 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Permalink
... an unforgettable journey along Dr Morbius's chode
― nuhnuhnuh, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:36 (twelve years ago) link
being an asshole is fun sometimes (i'm sure you've noticed I enjoy it occasionally) but defending The New American Century is another story.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:37 (twelve years ago) link
i meant 'sanctimonious' in a p literal way, dudes
― river wolf, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:40 (twelve years ago) link
being an entertaining asshole = forgiveable, even admirable under certain circumstances
joyously advocating and celebrating warfare = gtfo you monster
― aesthetic partisan (Shakey Mo Collier), Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
lol he was a movement atheist too
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:42 (twelve years ago) link
that is: yes the dude was an asshole and on the wrong side of history on at least several issues, but that blogue post you posted was redlining the sanctimonitron imo
― river wolf, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:42 (twelve years ago) link
man deal w/it guy deserves sanctimony all over his gravesite
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 00:43 (twelve years ago) link
I read the Trial of Henry Kissinger not long out of college, while I was staying at friend's house. I couldn't sleep, so I pulled it off the bookshelf and sat at his kitchen table and started reading. My friend walked in to get breakfast the next morning, and I was still there, just finishing the book. He said "Holy shit you've been reading that the whole time?" and I was all "YES AND SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE ABOUT FUCKING KISSINGER." I'll never forget that.
Hitch was almost 100% of why I subscribed to Vanity Fair. I had a hard time with the pro-Bush stuff, hell, I had hard time with half the stuff he wrote in the last 10 years. But at the same time, he was what convinced me to read and love Joyce. He sent me back to re-read Byron. Got me to read Wodehouse, for god's sake. And in general, he helped me appreciate the craft of actual rhetoric, and language...and even when he depressed the hell out of me, his turns of phrase were still often sheer gloriousness.
I'm going to miss that drunk fucker. So much.
― VegemiteGrrrl, Saturday, 17 December 2011 04:14 (twelve years ago) link
ice - hitchens was an early and important figure in the history of trolls so by trolling his rip thread you are really just paying tribute to the man's legacy
― iatee, Saturday, 17 December 2011 04:15 (twelve years ago) link
Let's not forget that even in the last 10 years he's been otm on politics some of the time, like his (demonstrative!) stance against waterboarding.
― Simon H., Saturday, 17 December 2011 04:43 (twelve years ago) link
ha, i saw some old clip today of him on hannity pissing all over falwell after his death and i totally thought about how he was an A+ trollxp
― t. silaviver, Saturday, 17 December 2011 04:56 (twelve years ago) link
― iatee, Friday, December 16, 2011 11:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink
duh i mean just duh
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 07:44 (twelve years ago) link
Greenwald compares the whitewashing of Hitch's corpse to Reagan's, and quotes Orwell to spank CH's bloodthirsty war cries.
Orwell:
The people who write that kind of stuff never fight; possibly they believe that to write it is a substitute for fighting. It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours. Sometimes it is a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is altering the conditions of war. Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.
Greenwald:
There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” — hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/17/christohper_hitchens_and_the_protocol_for_public_figure_deaths/singleton/
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 16:28 (twelve years ago) link
The comparison is facile at best, and most of the obituaries I read yesterday were perfectly capable of explaining two contradictory impulses: that Hitchens was an excellent and often great writer who proselytized for the most worst geopolitical disaster of the last thirty years.
― Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 17 December 2011 16:49 (twelve years ago) link
I'm surprised Greenwald, for maximum effectiveness, didn't cite Hitchens' Reagan obit:
I only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information. This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.
― Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 17 December 2011 16:52 (twelve years ago) link
btwn this and the Kael thread(s), I've realized I don't give much of a damn about "great writing" in nonfiction.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 17:00 (twelve years ago) link
lol journalism is graded on a curve for sure
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 17:05 (twelve years ago) link
Morbs, are you telling us you don't want us to read your reviews?
― Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, 17 December 2011 17:06 (twelve years ago) link
I'm under no illusions that what I do is great, but criticism is way easier than standup comedy.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 17:10 (twelve years ago) link
anyway the Weekend Edition guy on NPR this morning did a eulogy today praising Hitchens as a 'free thinker' umoored from his old dogmas etc. I doubt we'd be hearing any of that if he had moved from imperial bloodluster TO Trotskyite.
― Dr Morbius, Saturday, 17 December 2011 17:13 (twelve years ago) link
wonder how many of the ppl waxing self-righteous about hitch and iraq were fervent supporters of obama's unconstitutional attack on libya (at least one poster here, by my count). anyway, pretty much all the obits i've seen (aside from the 'the first time i ever met hitch...' ones) make a point of hitch's wrongness on that one issue.
― j.d. again, Saturday, 17 December 2011 22:10 (twelve years ago) link
he was also a misogynist a bully and a really lame reddit style contrarian and movement atheist lets not forget!
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 22:35 (twelve years ago) link
btw lol @ 'fervent supporter' and false equivalencies
― Cooper Chucklebutt, Saturday, 17 December 2011 22:37 (twelve years ago) link
criticizing hitchens as a pretty shitty orwell substitute is prob the critique that would hit closest to home. his iraq war support was something of an orwellian gambit "I will look silly right now but I will be validated" and that really does not appear to be something that's ever gonna happen. 10 years later, 'islamofascism' seems like more of a joke than ever.
but he could be funny and seemed to live a good life, I'll defend those things. I'd find his political views more objectionable if I felt like he were the type of person actually influencing people and world events, instead of basically just an entertainer.
― iatee, Saturday, 17 December 2011 22:50 (twelve years ago) link