RIP Christopher Hitchens

c'mon, you could spend all of eternity chasing those goldurned Duke boys thru the swamp

― OH NOES, Friday, December 16, 2011 12:45 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

i believe you mean the uke boys

hahah I did almost write that

Well I wondered what the other Hitchens was going to say:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2075133/Christopher-Hitchens-death-In-Memoriam-courageous-sibling-Peter-Hitchens.html

ding dong the hitch is dead

A letter from Sully's blog:

I've been reading and enjoying your work for years, but I've never felt compelled to write until now. I know you'll get a million of these, but here's my Hitch story:

I once went to hear Hitchens speak in San Francisco. Afterward, he was signing books. I was broke and didn't have enough money for a book, but I got in line just to thank him for his articles denouncing Kissinger, which meant a lot to me and my parents, who were both deeply affected by the Vietnam War. I told him all this. He listened - he seemed as good at listening as speaking - and he asked me all kinds of questions. We talked for a bit, and finally he asked if he could sign something. I told him I didn't have enough money for a book. Without hesitating, he pulled one off the pile, asked for my parents' names, and inscribed the book to them. One of the best moments of my life. I loved the man. He's left the world to a bunch of fucking lightweights, but we have to try our best.

Similar to my experience.

One of the best moments of my life.

:( :( :(

Yeah, why couldn't that person have had a better life.

seriously

must be all the fucking lightweights

Looking back, I realize now I should have fucked more lightweights.

Perrin has a new piece up:

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2011/12/letter-to-lost-friend.html

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.

lol ned p sure perrin is just some guy morbs made up

We are all Dennis Perrin.

its full of stars

I'm not DP but we have the same initials

hitch taught us how politics could be rocknroll

who will teach us how politics can be rickroll

Obama

"Never Gonna Lock You Up"

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

http://www.thedialecticalplaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Hitchens1.jpg

sweet christ

mine eyes

paging dom

You guys never read his VF piece on his makeover?

Died the day the Iraq War ended, his work complete I guess...

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

eh supporting the Iraq War is pretty unforgiveable imho

dont be so sanctimonious abt this war that killed hundreds of thousands of people guy jeez

He contained multitudes. Righteous truthsayer, imperial asshole.

no i meant dont be so sanctimonious about ppl expressing (possibly conflicted!) regret about the passing of an interesting and forceful personality

let me do the next part for you:

"did u kno hitler was an interesting and forceful personality mmmmmm ~think about it~"

"a bunch of people got bombed by people that weren't this sad drunk blowhard oh well its sad, he was a alcoholic"

christopher hitchens was a total asshole!

dont use apologetic words like 'forceful' i mean be serious

He contained multitudes. Righteous truthsayer, imperial asshole.

― Dr Morbius, Friday, December 16, 2011 5:31 PM (43 seconds ago) Bookmark Permalink

... an unforgettable journey along Dr Morbius's chode

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.

i meant 'sanctimonious' in a p literal way, dudes

being an entertaining asshole = forgiveable, even admirable under certain circumstances

joyously advocating and celebrating warfare = gtfo you monster

lol he was a movement atheist too

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

man deal w/it guy deserves sanctimony all over his gravesite

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.

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

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.

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+ troll
xp

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, Friday, December 16, 2011 11:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Permalink

duh i mean just duh

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/