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Goodbye, Mr. Hitchens

Jill

I don’t expect that Christopher Hitchens will be a favorite among Feministe readers, but he is a personal favorite of mine. Often wrong, often sexist, a total alcoholic misogynist disaster, but — a phenomenal writer, a modern philosopher, a true curmudgeon. I have a soft spot for people who, though they may be wrong sometimes (and right others), make me think longer, harder and more deeply. I have a soft spot for people who don’t fit neatly into ideological categories, and whose wrongness makes me interrogate my own position, and defend it more thoroughly. Christopher Hitchens was, for me, one of those people. He was one of my very favorite modern writers and thinkers. And I am truly sad to hear that he passed away today, at the age of 62. He was as far from a saint as they come, but God (who is not great) bless him.

174 thoughts on Goodbye, Mr. Hitchens

  1. Oh.

    This…it does make me sad. I am no great fan of Hitchens’s. When he supported the Iraq war, I was the first to note that he had always been anti-abortion, even when he was writing his column for The Nation, and I certainly delighted in Galloway’s characterization of him as a “drink-sodden former Trotskyist poppinjay.”

    But he was our (the left’s…mostly) drink-sodden former Trotskyist poppinjay, and he was a great writer, and I have always appreciated his eloquent, combative, and uncompromising atheism, and I am sad to read this. I never thought I’d say this about any anti-choicer, but I will miss his voice, I really will.

  2. I started reading his Slate articles after I saw that he had followed me on Twitter (although because of his illness he was pretty inactive there I think). Yeah there was a lot of drawbacks to Christopher Hitchens, and I don’t consider myself an atheist, at least not right now, but I still got a lot out of the articles, including respect for him. May he rest in peace, whatever that is, or means.

  3. Well, fuck.

    To quote the first and last lines of the last Sergei Yesenin poem ever:

    Goodbye, my friend, goodbye

    In this life, dying isn’t new. Neither’s living, for that matter.

  4. He did write very, very well. I disagreed with him on many, many things, but he also left me with tears streaming down my face, doubled over in laughter after reading about his misadventures with various types of self-improvement.

  7. He was a great writer. A complicated kind of intelligence. I’ll miss him. His recent essay in Vanity Fair about what the hideous pain + futility of his radiation treatments was doing to (or for) him is worth checking out.

  8. Personally I’m glad he’s dead. I consider him to have been a pretentious neoconservative prick who made a fetish out of his own iconoclasm. And as he himself freely admitted, he bought the cancer on himself through his heavy drinking and cigarette use. Now I feel mean for having said that. I mean he was a human being and I have compassion for the people who will miss him. But I have no respect for his views at all. I think he was a lot more middlebrow than he made himself out to be and kinda an attention whore. And I didn’t even know he was anti-choice. Figures.

    I hate this thing that we have to say nice things about people after they’re dead when we couldn’t have given two shits about them when they were alive.

  9. Can anyone provide examples of his anti-feminism? I just recently heard of him and didn´t get hat impression at all. I´m thinkink specifically of a piece he wrote for Slate, slamming Mother Theresa and her purport sanctity. I could have sworn he was very much pro-choice and for women´s rights (at least in a Third World context).

  10. LotusBen: I hate this thing that we have to say nice things about people after they’re dead when we couldn’t have given two shits about them when they were alive.

    I can speak only for myself, but I liked Hitchens in a conflicted way when he was alive, too. I grew up reading his columns in The Nation, and there are not so many committed, outspoken atheists hanging around raising hell that I’m not going to miss him.

    As for attention-whoring–he attention-whored by being smart, which is perfectly fine in my books. And I really can’t see what the genesis of his cancer has to do with anything. Are you seriously saying “he got what was coming to him so who gives a shit”? Like death and illness are some kind of cosmic justice machine? Or is that death is only sad if the person who has died was a completely innocent victim of circumstances? Like, if I had tested positive for HIV a few years ago, who cares when I die, because I brought it on myself by not using condoms?

    I mean, feel free not to give a shit about Hitchens’s death, one way or the other, but assuming that just because you never felt anything but contempt for him, that the rest of us are being hypocrites is some self-centered bullshit you’ve got going on. And coming on a thread specifically to say “I’m glad he’s dead,” is just kind of…douchey.

    Hitchens wasn’t Jesse Helms or David Duke. There’s a lot more complexity to what his political views have been over the past few decades than you seem to be aware of or allowing for. He attacked Kissinger, the Catholic Church, Vietnam War, Reagan, and US policies in Latin American; he took on the lionization of Mother Theresa; despite his support for the Iraq War he not only publicly condemned waterboarding as torture, but–and this is new to me–chose to become one of the plaintiffs in the ACLU’s suit against the US government for the disgusting warrantless surveillance that was put into place following 9/11. He was an anti-Zionist of Jewish descent, and even his anti-abortion views, while I do not like them, were more complex than we’re used to seeing in the US: he called access to contraception and reproductive rights “the only thing that is known to cure poverty.”

    I don’t know how old you are, or how long you have been following Hitchens’s writing or political views. But your summation of him as a “neoconservative” and his views as deserving no respect whatsoever sounds like somebody who hadn’t heard of him prior to 9/11.

  11. No one says you have to say nice things. But you could *not* say disgusting things like “I’m glad he’s dead”. Qualify it all you want by mentioning that he was a human being – how kind of you to notice! – but saying you’re happy someone is dead says a fuck of a lot more about your character than theirs, IMO.

    I had little respect for Hitchens as well – he was a war lover, a sexist douche, and arrogant as all get out. I didn’t read his stuff and basically ignored him. I disagreed with many of his views and in fact found a good number of them odious.

    I am NOT “glad” he’s dead. If you are, that’s a worldview I wish you’d choose to keep to yourself.

  12. To paraphrase Vonnegut, Christopher’s up in heaven now.

    The one thing that I always admired about Hitchens (and it might be _the_ one) is that, when he was called out on justifying waterboarding, he agreed to be waterboarded, and he allow his experience to change his opinion. Any public intellectual willing to say “I was wrong, I made a cheap and facile assumption before, and I’ve changed my mind” (not a quote) has a certain amount of cred by my accounting. Monbiot is another that comes to mind.

  13. Hey EG. Good, thoughtful response. First off I wasn’t calling y’all hypocrites. I fully believe many of you like or are conflicted about Hitchens. But I do think there is a cultural tendency here in my U.S.A. at least to lionize people after they die. And I think it’s fucking stupid. If I’m glad somebody’s dead; I’ll say it. If you disagree, cool.

    I admit I’m 27 and have only been aware of Hitchens for about 10 years. A lot of what you said about him was news to me. Although, I was aware that he had political views that were all over the map in terms of the conventional “spectrum.” And I think he had a pretty good sense of humor. . .I do remember being occassionally entertained when reading something of his that was skewering something I hated. But what can I say? I didn’t like the guy; I found his personal style abrasive (yeah, yeah, I know, mine is too); in most of his articles I found his views revolting; and I don’t think he was as smart as he thought he was.

    In terms of his genesis of his illness, I mean, whatever. But he himself said in an interview after his diagnosis: “I burned the candle at both ends and it gave off a lovely light.” So I mean if someone chooses to live it up, knowing it’ll reduce their life expectancy, I think that’s fine. I doubt he was looking for pity, so I’m not gonna view it as some tragedy either. Everybody dies.

  14. RyanRutley:
    ToparaphraseVonnegut,Christopher’supinheavennow.

    TheonethingthatIalwaysadmiredaboutHitchens(anditmightbe_the_one)isthat,whenhewascalledoutonjustifyingwaterboarding,heagreedtobewaterboarded,andheallowhisexperiencetochangehisopinion.Anypublicintellectualwillingtosay“Iwaswrong,Imadeacheapandfacileassumptionbefore,andI’vechangedmymind”(notaquote)hasacertainamountofcredbymyaccounting.Monbiotisanotherthatcomestomind.

    I saw the video of Hitchens being Waterboarded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7u-Wk1aU-E and I forgave him some of his indiscretions—-but only because he repented.

  15. OK Alison. It sounds like you disliked Hitchens but are annoyed with me because you believe it’s wrong to say I’m happy that somebody’s dead. I mean, I know a lot of people would agree with you on that.

    But what’s so bad about being happy with someone’s death? That means Hitchens won’t continue to spread his aforementioned odious views. And would it have been better if he had continued to live a drawn-out, miserable existence as a terminal cancer patient? I mean everybody dies; it’s an inevitable fact of life. I’m sad when people I love or like die, but I don’t view death in general as some big tragedy. I’ve known for months that Hitchens had cancer. This was going to happen. If you’re gonna take the humanitarian perspective, it’s probably better for his well-being that it’s sooner rather than later. At least, I fully plan on offing myself if I ever have an extremely painful terminal illness.

  17. Hear hear, Jill! The way you described it is exactly how I feel.

    Also, Lauren? “I hate this thing that we have to say nice things about people after they’re dead when we couldn’t have given two shits about them when they were alive.”? Personally, I cared a good deal about him when he was alive, and dreaded this day. (Or rather yesterday.) From the way Jill describes her feelings about him—one of her favorite writers, I think is what she said?—she obviously did too.

  19. RyanRutley:
    ToparaphraseVonnegut,Christopher’supinheavennow.

    TheonethingthatIalwaysadmiredaboutHitchens(anditmightbe_the_one)isthat,whenhewascalledoutonjustifyingwaterboarding,heagreedtobewaterboarded,andheallowhisexperiencetochangehisopinion.Anypublicintellectualwillingtosay“Iwaswrong,Imadeacheapandfacileassumptionbefore,andI’vechangedmymind”(notaquote)hasacertainamountofcredbymyaccounting.Monbiotisanotherthatcomestomind.

    Yeah, that was my favorite Hitchens moment too.

  20. LotusBen:
    ButIdothinkthereisaculturaltendencyhereinmyU.S.A.atleasttolionizepeopleaftertheydie.

    Yeah. There is.

    There is also a cultural tendency not to gloat about the deaths of other people, especially not hours after it’s happened when others are grieving. If you can’t respect the former tendency, you can at least respect the latter.

  22. Just……… *facepalm*

    LotusBen: But what’s so bad about being happy with someone’s death? That means Hitchens won’t continue to spread his aforementioned odious views.

    Jesus fucking Christ, do you not find any value in human life at all? I could understand this reaction if he made a career out of hateful proselytizing a la Pat Robertson, but the most offensive thing Hitchens ever did was have an unpopular opinion. To act like people’s lives cease to have value as long as you sufficiently disagree with them is frankly appalling.

  23. Amelia. . .I’m sort of annoyed because I see no reason why your emotional response to the death of a celebrity –sadness–is any less valid than mine–happiness. I mean I respect your response. Everybody’s different. But this is a blog that’s open to the public and is often pretty contentious…so I won’t censor myself.

  25. igglanova–I find value in human life, but I don’t find any inherent value of the continuation of human life. Death is natural; death is fine. I don’t have much grief or fear over the fact that someday I’ll die. In fact, the thought that everything is temporary gives me relief. So I’m not sad about someone dying who I didn’t even like. I did actually feel sad when I heard Hitchens was diagnosed with cancer though because I know it’s a shitty way to die and I would never wish it on anyone, not my worst enemy, not Pat Robertson. But yeah, I’m not sentimental about life and death. I’m happy he’s dead. Although now I just feel more annoyed because I don’t like how people are getting on my case.

  26. I was just thinking yesterday that I haven’t seen a column from him in a while and wondered how he was doing. This is sad news but I’m sure he would have enjoyed your salute.

  27. Actually, I’ve reconsidered. I’ve made my feelings about Hitchens clear I think. But I’m just one idiot on the internet, and it seems that for the most part you aren’t interested in direction I was trying to nudge this thread. So I’m going to stop my derail. TTYL.

  28. Natalia:
    Sothisthreadwentsouthatcomment#8.Notanewrecordperse–butperhapsarecordwhenitcomestodeath.

    *clapclap*

    Yeah, wasn’t the record (in general, not for death) #2? I kind of remember the thread about Zurana Horton, the woman who died protecting a child from a gunman, having the second comment be about how she had too many children and deserved to die, or something.

  29. Yeah, wasn’t the record (in general, not for death) #2? I kind of remember the thread about Zurana Horton, the woman who died protecting a child from a gunman, having the second comment be about how she had too many children and deserved to die, or something.

    I seem to have erased that debacle from my memory…

  30. Indeed, sorry for bringing it up. After I hit “Submit” I was like, “Man, should I even be dredging that up?”

  31. I knew he was ill, but I sort of figured he was enough of a curmudgeon to live forever. Vale, Mr. Hitchens.

  32. I’m a little sad to say that I’m not at all familiar with Hitchens. I recognize the name but that’s about it. My sympathy for his family and friends, and those who admired him, at any rate.

  33. I actually gasped aloud when I read about Hitchens’ death this morning. I also must say that I never agreed with everything he said, but he was an incredibly intelligent man, a fantastic writer, and never one to shy from controversy. He gave us so much to talk about and think about, so many new viewpoints to consider. As an aspiring political writer myself I was always in awe of just how good he was. And I always enjoyed watching clips of him throwing down on Fox News. Good times.

    You will be missed, Hitch.

  34. Coketalk pretty well nailed it with her description, I will miss his writing: http://www.dearcoketalk.com/

    Yes, he was anti-abortion, but I would point out he was pro contraception, something most anti-abortion folks are not. Even when he wrote from a view point I didn’t agree with he made me think. His arguments were usually rational and he wasn’t a bully.

    I did really hated his support of the Iraq war, one of the few times I felt he was rather irrational.

  36. Florence: In honor of Mr. Hitchens, I’m going to spend the rest of today being female and unfunny

    But what a pity, you’ve failed at that already. 😀

  38. I agree with LotusBen. Hitchens was overrated as a writer, as a thinker, as a wit, and as a human being. If you take away the looks, the booze, the ego, the English accent, the obscure words, the foreign words, the name dropping, and the gratuitous literary quotations, there’s nothing there. The guy was a pretentious narcissist admired by juvenile idiots impressed by the fact that he drank, smoked, and was an asshole.

  40. The man was a complete and utter jackass, but I’ll miss him because he seemed like the kind of crotchety person who’d consider that an honor. Also, serious kudos for sticking to his principles and not pulling a deathbed conversion (despite a world of pressure I’m sure).

  41. I was surprised how sad I was to learn of Hitchens’ passing. He was a curmudgeon of the old school, irascible to the end. That’s something in this people-pleasing age. He could be witty.

    He had the cajones to get a Brazilian and write about it. Then he went and ruined it by getting waterboarded for the same Jackass-like series.

    He wasn’t a particularly clear or insightful thinker. He had an inflated sense of his own moral and intellectual purpose. One day, Hitchens will take up his rightful place on the Overrated White Guys tumblr.

  42. In honor of Mr. Hitchens, I’m going to spend the rest of today being female and unfunny.

    Oh, I am so stealing this. 🙂

  43. I had the privilege of seeing him speak one time with Salman Rushdie and Deepa Mehta. I believe the talk was called, “The Only Subject is Love.” It was sensational. I don’t like many of his ideas in writing, but he was such a gregarious, boisterous man, with quick wits and sensibilities that surprised me. He recited his favorite poem at one point by memory, which I shamefully can’t remember, but it was beautiful. He was a friend of the humanities, of art, of literature.

    I will miss him.

  44. I’m just kind of amazed at the lengths people will go to to excuse a man who was hateful, willfully ignorant, small-minded and misogynist just because they like his writing.

    Oh wait, no I’m not.

    1. I’m just kind of amazed at the lengths people will go to to excuse a man who was hateful, willfully ignorant, small-minded and misogynist just because they like his writing.

      Oh wait, no I’m not.

      Where was the part where anyone “excused” him? Do you mean the section where I said he was a misogynist who was wrong about many things?

      I am always amazed at the lengths people will go to refuse to recognize any good or talent in people they disagree with.

  45. Thanks for this, Jill. Quite agree. Can I quote Auden about how good writing absolves the writer?

    Time that is intolerant
    Of the brave and the innocent,
    And indifferent in a week
    To a beautiful physique,

    Worships language and forgives
    Everyone by whom it lives;
    Pardons cowardice, conceit,
    Lays its honours at their feet.

    Time that with this strange excuse
    Pardoned Kipling and his views,
    And will pardon Paul Claudel,
    Pardons him for writing well.

    Claudel, a fascist sympathizer, has been forgotten. And Kipling… not sure he’s fully been pardoned. But the point stands for Hitchens.

  46. LotusBen: I doubt he was looking for pity, so I’m not gonna view it as some tragedy either. Everybody dies.

    There’s a difference between sympathy and pity. And the fact that everybody dies does not make any death less sad.

    LotusBen: Death is natural; death is fine. I don’t have much grief or fear over the fact that someday I’ll die.

    No fear or grief, huh? I’d like to know how close you’ve ever gotten. It’s easy not to feel grief or fear when death for you and your loved ones is “someday.” When it’s today, or tomorrow, or next week, or yesterday, that’s a whole other ballgame.

    I’m amazed at the number of people, actually, who are willing to dismiss decades of radical activism and journalism because the man said sexist things about comedy and supported the Iraq War. The former is obnoxious, and the latter is harmful, but the idea that they undo all of the unpopular leftist causes he championed during an era when Reagan was immensely popular is, to my mind, absurd. And…”willfully ignorant”? Seriously?

  47. EG: I’m amazed at the number of people, actually, who are willing to dismiss decades of radical activism and journalism because the man said sexist things about comedy and supported the Iraq War. The former is obnoxious, and the latter is harmful, but the idea that they undo all of the unpopular leftist causes he championed during an era when Reagan was immensely popular is, to my mind, absurd. And…”willfully ignorant”? Seriously?

    Memories are short and most people have only so much mental bandwidth. When Charlton Heston died you saw similar comments from leftists forgetting his fight for civil rights in an era before it became popular to do so.

  48. Count me in as another one who will miss him. It’s hard to hate anyone prepared to puncture the cult of Mother Teresa, admirable though she was in some ways. See, people are complex, I find people who expect human perfection a bit simple minded.

  49. Jill: I am always amazed at the lengths people will go to refuse to recognize any good or talent in people they disagree with.

    Seriously. Some people are acting like he’s Jesse Helms, who made racism and homophobia the cornerstones of a several-decade-long political career. Is this how it is? If you’re not with us 100% of the time on every single issue at every moment, you’re no better than the worst of the worst, nothing you’ve done or said on the side of righteousness matters? You’re either with us all day, every day regarding everything, or you’re with the terrorists?

    Are people here so confident that they’ll never, ever, ever espouse a fucked-up political position that they’re cool with that? I mean, good for you if you are, but I’m pretty sure that when I go to my grave, it will not be in a state of utterly spotless political purity, and I’m also fairly sure I will not have publicly championed as many unpopular leftist causes as Hitchens had. I had hoped that my future political fellow travellers are willing to provide me with the benefit of nuance and complexity.

    Jesus. My crits of Hitchens always came from a place of “I expected better of you, sir,” and “I don’t give a pass on these things even to people who are, speaking broadly, on my side.” The idea that he can be summed up as “neoconservative,” “small-minded,” “willfully ignorant” and “misogynist” is amazing and seems to me to reflect a culture whose collective memory extends back no further than five years. “Small-minded”? Really?

  51. Although, honestly, this has always been part of what has hamstrung the US left, a demand for ideological purity that turns into a circular firing squad and a penchant for completely rejecting leftists of previous generations and refusing to learn anything from them because they’re not as politically perfect as we’re sure we are.

  52. EG:
    Are people here so confident that they’ll never, ever, ever espouse a fucked-up political position that they’re cool with that?

    I just thought this should be pulled out of the previous comment and highlighted. In fact, it should be a 15-pages writing assignment.

  54. anon:
    http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2010/01/06/goodbye-mary-daly/

    InterestinghowsomeonelikeMaryDalywas“forgoodreason,rejectedbymanywomen”includingyouJillwhileHitchensremainsyourfavoritedespiteallthebigotryhespews.

    Wow, it’s almost like you’re willfully misreading what Jill said about Mary Daly — which is that she was brilliant, important to the second wave, and also extremely controversial, and her views were responsible for alienating a lot of women from the feminist movement, all of which was totally true — in order to score some gotcha. Huh.

    Jill liked Hitchens. I think he was an overrated git. You clearly think so too. So what? What’s your beef here? That Jill didn’t write either obit as you would? The world still turns and we are comforted with the warmth of our staunch, anonymous convictions in the comment sections of blogs.

  55. I’ve known more than my share of writers who would qualify as “complete alcoholic disasters”. A few of them were my professors in college, especially in my creative writing classes.

    I found it much easier to respect their artistic output than their lives. And some of them I may have disagreed with politically. Many of them were felled by the very sensitivity that made them such outstanding talents. Getting to know my heroes personally made for powerful lessons. I resolved afterward not to let my demons get the best of me.

  57. I just would have preferred it if Jill gave this Islamophobic misogynist bigot the same treatment she gave Mary Daly instead of “Let me mention how horrible he is BUT I love him anyway.”

  58. I actually think I gave Hitchens and Daly similar treatment. They were both important cultural figures — brilliant, controversial and interesting. They both also harbored some really abhorrent views. I mentioned both their influence (and my enjoyment of some of their work) and their problems in my posts about them.

  59. ,IhadlittlerespectforHitchensaswell–hewasawarlover,asexistdouche,andarrogantasallgetout.Ididn’treadhisstuffandbasicallyignoredhim.Idisagreedwithmanyofhisviewsandinfactfoundagoodnumberofthemodious.

    IamNOT“glad”he’sdead.Ifyouare,that’saworldviewIwishyou’dchoosetokeeptoyourself.

    It’s a HUGE exaggeration to say he was a lover of war. You even go on to say you haven’t read much, if any, of his writings. If that’s true, then how can you say with any honesty that you understood his position on the Iraq war? Obviously, you can’t. Go read; then come back and we can have a real discussion about it.

  60. anon:
    IjustwouldhavepreferreditifJillgavethisIslamophobicmisogynistbigotthesametreatmentshegaveMaryDalyinsteadof“LetmementionhowhorribleheisBUTIlovehimanyway.”

    You’ve made a claim of fact. Care to back it up? I’d like to see evidence.

  61. I often disagreed with Hitchens, but he made me think, and defend my views better than I would have otherwise. I respect his work, even when I think he’s wrong. I’m sad that he’s passed, but glad that he’s no longer in pain.

    1. Evidence of what? His Islamophobia? His misogyny? Jill’s undying love for him?

      LOL at my “undying love” for Chris Hitchens. Jesus christ, anon, you need a hobby more interesting than this one.

  63. anon: Evidence of what? His Islamophobia? His misogyny? Jill’s undying love for him?

    Yo Jill, I just want to remind you how mad I still am about that Mary Daly obit you wrote two years ago.

  64. Oh come on I’m not mad about Mary Daly, you rightfully criticized her for her disgusting views. I’m disappointed that a feminist website would praise this overrated bigoted white dude.

  65. Jill, you have violated the Feminist Terms of Movement Participation, Section 4, Subsection (b):

    “Movement members shall not praise anyone not deemed worthy by Central Feminist Headquarters. Members who do so will have their membership revoked and will have to turn in their cards and their comfortable shoes to the main office.”

    Sheezus. I didn’t even like Hitchens–I think I’ll be pilloried by some folks here for thinking he was in many instances a little too right-wing, that his writings often smacked of misogyny and Islamophobia, and his support for the invasion of Afghanistan and for the Iraq War was horrifying. But FFS, I’m not “disgusted” that Jill praised a few things about him. If you’re looking for a retraction, you might want to order some takeout to sustain yourself during the wait.

  66. Jill: Where was the part where anyone “excused” him?Do you mean the section where I said he was a misogynist who was wrong about many things?

    I am always amazed at the lengths people will go to refuse to recognize any good or talent in people they disagree with.

    I just don’t really understand why Hitchens gets all this “Yes, yes, but!” treatment when he was a demonstrable jerk who wrote really terrible, hateful things, albeit funny or poignant or highly proficient ways. If the guy had been a conservative politician–and indeed, he held a number of views in line with people of that ilk–I seriously doubt he’d be getting the same treatment. I respect a lot of people I disagree with, but I draw the line at respecting a man who, as far as I can tell, didn’t respect people like me.

    1. I just don’t really understand why Hitchens gets all this “Yes, yes, but!” treatment when he was a demonstrable jerk who wrote really terrible, hateful things, albeit funny or poignant or highly proficient ways. If the guy had been a conservative politician–and indeed, he held a number of views in line with people of that ilk–I seriously doubt he’d be getting the same treatment.

      Well, yeah. Because Hitchens was a public thinker — he was a man who was interested in debating and discussing ideas. He wasn’t enshrining his (often hideous) beliefs into law. And I do enjoy intelligent, proficient thinkers and debaters, even when they do not agree with me 100%.

  67. anon: I’m disappointed that a feminist website would praise this overrated bigoted white dude.

    Why? What’s the issue with recognizing what people are good at? If you can’t recognize how your ideological foes are efficient or talented, you lack the sophistication to participate in that kind of political critique.

    Ideological purity belongs right next to unicorns in the library of imaginary shit. It’s part of that self-aggrandizing crap that Clarisse quoted from TNC some half a dozen posts back.

  68. blondegirl: It’s a HUGE exaggeration to say he was a lover of war. You even go on to say you haven’t read much, if any, of his writings.

    Well, you know how all those war-lovers got involved with the anti-Vietnam war protests all the time.

    Andrea: I just don’t really understand why Hitchens gets all this “Yes, yes, but!” treatment when he was a demonstrable jerk who wrote really terrible, hateful things, albeit funny or poignant or highly proficient ways. If the guy had been a conservative politician–and indeed, he held a number of views in line with people of that ilk–I seriously doubt he’d be getting the same treatment.

    First of all, Hitchens wasn’t a politician. He was a writer. Second of all…right. That’s the point. He wasn’t a conservative, despite sharing a few views with contemporary right-wingers, and all political positions are not created equal. He spent most of his life agitating for leftist causes and refusing to bow to the sentimental soup of not hurting anybody’s feelings no matter what. He was not nice. He was fierce; he was mean; he was sharp; and he was incisive. That’s part of what makes him admirable, as far as I’m concerned.

    It’s not admirable to defend Reagan and his administration’s policies in South and Central America, because in that case, you are defending state terror, dictatorships, and torture. It is admirable to attack them, particularly in a time when Reagan was overwhelmingly popular. It is admirable to attack Kissinger for his war crimes and Mother Theresa for her valorization of suffering and her use of funds meant for a teaching hospital to open convents.

    This is not an issue of “yes, but.” It is an issue of “yes, and.”

    Andrea: I respect a lot of people I disagree with, but I draw the line at respecting a man who, as far as I can tell, didn’t respect people like me.

    There’s a big difference between not respecting someone–and I don’t think that Hitchens would have cared for any kind of empty respect–and refusing to acknowledge his intelligence and complexity, which is what’s going on here.

    Sheelzebub: I think I’ll be pilloried by some folks here for thinking he was in many instances a little too right-wing, that his writings often smacked of misogyny and Islamophobia, and his support for the invasion of Afghanistan and for the Iraq War was horrifying.

    See, these are completely reasonable and truthful criticisms that do not equal “He was a small-minded neoconservative who wasn’t a good writer anyway.” I agree with them, though I also agree with him that any Islamophobia in his writings was but an aspect of his general hatred of religion (he didn’t hate Islam because he thought Islam in particular was a force for evil; he hated Islam because he thought that all religion was a force for evil, and he did make this point repeatedly), and Christianity took far more hits from him than Islam. Anyway, yes, I agree, these are all true. I just don’t think they outweigh every other thing about him.

  70. I have less a problem with Hitchens than I do with his worshipful admirers who blow whatever admirable traits he had completely out of proportion. If he was an ugly teetotaler with an American accent, who didn’t gratuitously insert literary references into everything he wrote and didn’t use obscure words where simple words would do, our perception of him would be vastly different. He was a “great” “brilliant” writer who never wrote anything great or brilliant. Nothing of his will be read in 15 years, let alone 100. He wasn’t a scientist, a philosopher, a novelist, a poet, a musician, an artist, or a great humanitarian. Fine, few of us are. But he didn’t even have a good personality. He was pompous, pretentious, and egotistical. And not even funny. I read comments wittier than anything Hitchens ever wrote every day on Reddit.

    Hitchens worship is just another form of celebrity worship. It’s proof that even people who fancy themselves intellectuals still value good looks, social status, and ego over substance. There are literally thousands of writers on the internet who are more intelligent and more interesting than Hitchens. But they will never receive gushing eulogies because they don’t inspire lady/man boners in those who read them.

  71. I’m a bit sorry he’s gone, and even more that he went so hard — even though I stopped reading him a few years ago. But as to being a great writer, or even a great journalist — nothing he wrote even came close to the level of Rebecca West writing about the Nuremberg trials or Sybille Bedford writing about the Trial of Dr. Adams. Or maybe someone could point to the ten best pieces Hitchens wrote? Early on, perhaps, he had some fire. Hitches was prolific, and he had a good nose for a story. but … to be remembered as a great writer? …. don’t you necessarily have to produce some great writing?

  72. Yes, what Nick said is so very true. People love Hitchens because he dressed up his nice, unoriginal ideas in flowery language, obscure and ostensibly eclectic references, and rare clever turn of phrase. But he really wasn’t smart or brilliant; not in the way say a Paul Krugman or even a Daniel Dennett is. I think he wasn’t a particularly deep thinker, and it shows in any careful reading of him. This didn’t use to be so bad; before 10 years ago, I agreed with nearly everything he said, but the last decade has seen a precipitous fall in his acumen. To his dying breath he believed in Nigerian yellowcake, refused to apologize for promoting the Iraq war even after its disastrous nature was obvious, and believed Islamofascism was a great term. He had gotten regularly sloppy with facts in his pieces, and the crowd-pandering and publicity-seeking he once vociferously decried had become his signature at places like the 92nd St. Y.

  73. I didn’t like Hitchens’ writing style so I rarely read his essays, and I don’t like listening to British accents so I never listened to him talk, so I’m not too familiar with his actual work. However, the atheists in my life revered him, and talking/arguing with them helped me articulate my feminist positions. Like Jill, I hold an immense amount of respect for Hitchens. You don’t learn much if you’re only surrounded by people who agree or politely and cautiously disagree with you.

  74. EG: Although, honestly, this has always been part of what has hamstrung the US left, a demand for ideological purity that turns into a circular firing squad and a penchant for completely rejecting leftists of previous generations and refusing to learn anything from them because they’re not as politically perfect as we’re sure we are.

    Bah! You’re nothing but a Right Deviationist, no better than Nikolai Bukharin. Report to Lefortovo in the morning.

  75. I think it’s a little bit ridiculous to be attacking people for being too purist for not liking Hitchens. The man advocated for the War in Iraq, and was against abortion. Those seem like big enough deals to make a feminist be justified in disliking him.

    To be clear, I don’t intend this as an attack on Jill. I completely understand admiring someone who you don’t agree with. Hell, I share that admiration to some extent–he had the guts to actually go through a waterboarding, and allowed the experience to change his mind on the issue. But for some people, his good just can’t overcome his bad, and I think that’s legitimate.

  76. McAllen: I think it’s a little bit ridiculous to be attacking people for being too purist for not liking Hitchens. The man advocated for the War in Iraq, and was against abortion. Those seem like big enough deals to make a feminist be justified in disliking him.

    To be clear, I don’t intend this as an attack on Jill. I completely understand admiring someone who you don’t agree with. Hell, I share that admiration to some extent–he had the guts to actually go through a waterboarding, and allowed the experience to change his mind on the issue. But for some people, his good just can’t overcome his bad, and I think that’s legitimate.

    Of course it’s a legitimate view. The problem is that some people are whining that Jill a) sees things a bit differently and b) had the audacity to post about it on her own blog. In other words, episode #1,000,000 of the “Why won’t you blog the way I want you to” show.

  77. Annaleigh: Of course it’s a legitimate view. The problem is that some people are whining that Jill a) sees things a bit differently and b) had the audacity to post about it on her own blog. In other words, episode #1,000,000 of the “Why won’t you blog the way I want you to” show.

    I absolutely agree. My comment was neither meant to attack Jill not defend those who are attacking Jill. I think it’s also ridiculous to say Jill is a bad feminist because she likes Hitchens’ writing. My comment was in response to this king of commetn from EG and others:

    I’m amazed at the number of people, actually, who are willing to dismiss decades of radical activism and journalism because the man said sexist things about comedy and supported the Iraq War. The former is obnoxious, and the latter is harmful, but the idea that they undo all of the unpopular leftist causes he championed during an era when Reagan was immensely popular is, to my mind, absurd. And…”willfully ignorant”? Seriously?

    I do think it’s legitimate to say his war advocacy and his misogyny outweight his other actions, especially given that the former happened later in his life, suggesting he might have changed his views somewhat.

  78. EG–I’m pretty new on this site, but I do admire how you always seem to fight the good fight on these threads, conscientiously and meticulously responding with reason to ignorance wherever it rears its ugly head. Perhaps that compliment sounds a bit backhanded–and it’s true I can’t totally relate to the motivations behind your righteous but calmly collected indignations–but I’m generally impressed by your thoroughness, intelligence, and sense of integrity.

    Anywho. Christopher Hitchens. Right. Look, you obviously know more about him than me. If I grew up reading him dissing Kissinger or Reagan all the time, I’d probably feel a lot differently about him. Maybe even agree with you. But that’s not what happened. I know him as a public supporter of the war in Iraq, a public atheist, and a pontificator on random intellectual topics. And I sometimes agreed, and I was sometimes entertained. But for the most part I didn’t like what he had to say.

    The crux of my beef with him is not that he wasn’t “ideologically pure” enough. I mean, even though I suppose I’d be on the left according to most people’s schemata, I don’t even really have an ideology. My main beef with Hitchen’s is rather probably more similiar to what Nick has expressed. As far as I can tell, he was very mediocre, but he had inflated ego and people bought into it, and that frustrates me. If you’re gonna talk about journalists/activists who accomplished a lot of good, he pales compared to people like Daniel Ellsberg. If you’re gonna talk about GENUINELY iconoclastic and original public intellectuals who are sometimes right and sometimes wrong but always controverial, then he can’t compare to people like Andrea Dworkin or Peter Singer. Public atheists–Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are more nuanced and original. And I’m not even talking about all the random people I’ve read in Harper’s, Mother Jones, or the Nation who are equal or better journalists, thinkers, and wits than Hitchens but never acheived any sort of mainstream recognition.

    So yeah. It’s not like everybody can be the best. I’m sure Hitchens was probably still smarter and a better writer and did more for progressive causes than I am or have. But when you take a guy who is pretty mediocre (in my judgment), and add to that ridiculously overrated, and add to that the way I became aware of him–his support for the War of Terror/Iraq. I mean that was when I was in high school, and was sort of the political coming-to-consciousness of a lot of my generation. I’m not really sure how old you are, but if you are a baby boomer, how would you have felt about someone who was on TV all the time supporting the Vietnam War in the 1960s? I freely admit I’m an emotional person and most of my judgments about people are based off that, emotion, not some iron-clad evaluation of every pertinent fact pro and con regarding that person’s life. So yeah. I’m not saying Hitchens is some sort of objectively bad person (no one is), but that I just didn’t like him, although maybe if things had been different and I had read these articles rather than those article, I would have a different judgment.

  79. anon:
    Evidence of what? His Islamophobia? His misogyny? Jill’s undying love for him?

    Anon,
    Yes- evidence. If you cannot be specific about what exactly you disagree with then I have to come to the conclusion that you’re talking out your a$$, and threes no reason for anyone here to respect your opinion.

    So far, it’s only been Jill who’s showed any real understanding or knowledge of Hitchen’s writings. It seems to me the people who are being the most critical and condescending are the ones who’ve either outright admitted to not having read him, or who seem to have perhaps read OF him on a feminist blog or two that characterized him as misogynist only due to a single article where he professed an unpopular viewpoint.

    If that is not the case, if you indeed have read enough of Hitchens to be able to make an intellectually honest claim backed up by evidence through his writings, I invite you to post your criticisms here where we can see and discuss them. Otherwise I cordially invite you to STFU.
    I’d also like to say this: I may not completely agree with his stance in the Iraq war, but at least I have the intellectual honesty to admit that he was a much greater authority than I am on the subject, and that I could very well be wrong.

    And if he was an Islamophobe, then he was also a Christianophobe as well as an “everyreligionophobe”, because as anyone who has read “God is not Great, you’d know he hated all religions equally.

    I just get angry when people make ignorant and ill-nformed statements and expect that they don’t have to back up their opinions with facts.

  82. Before anyone buys into the juvenile, fatuous blustering above to the effect that — agree with him or not — he really wasn’t smart or brilliant, that there are wittier comments to be found on Reddit every day, and (offensively enough) that people only admire him because he wasn’t “ugly” and inspire “lady/man boners,” I invite you to read what I believe was Hitchens’s final column, published just a week ago, on the fallacy of the “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” axiom attributed to Nietzsche:

    http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2012/01/hitchens-201201

    As someone who’s been desperately ill and quite close to death myself on more than one occasion, and certainly wasn’t strengthened by any of it, I entirely agree with his opinion; perhaps others won’t be able to appreciate it quite as much.

    Still, based on this one example, I invite Messrs. Sid and Nick to demonstrate the superiority of their own intelligence, and/or to post something better from Reddit.

    I disagreed with Hitchens about many political issues, and agreed with him on others. But to attack his intelligence or his writing skills is simply embarrassing. I base that opinion on having read, or re-read, a number of his Vanity Fair columns today. And on the fact that I can’t possibly be entirely negative about anyone who, as I discovered today, chose to write a column on the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday, and included in it a quotation from one of Joyce’s explicit letters to Nora Barnacle.

  84. Christopher Hitchens was a misogynist. Not because he wrote a piece in Vanity Fair about how dreadfully unfunny women supposedly are. His utter disdain for women ran deeper than that — much, much deeper.

    There was an article in the New Yorker a few years ago about how, at a dinner party attended by Hitchens, a woman mentioned Howard Dean in passing, and Hitchens proceeded to launch into a vicious rant about how Dean was “raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag” for having argued against parental notification laws for abortion by citing a story about a pregnant 12-year-old raped by her father that turned out to be inaccurate. Hitchens then proceeded to attack the woman, telling her to “F” off several times and completely discounting anything she had to say by saying, “Save it, sweetie, for someone who cares.”

    Apparently, a woman holding an opinion was such a threatening thing to his bloated male ego that he had to bully her into silence, and, apparently, he considered Howard Dean getting his facts wrong more offensive than a law that actually would force a 12-year-old girl to bear the product of an incestuous rape.

    His opposition to abortion is well known. He argued that a fetus is correctly considered an “unborn child” and that, in essence, anyone who’s looked at an ultrasound knows that abortion stops a beating heart, etc., etc.

    “I have always been convinced that the term ‘unborn child’ is a genuine description of material material reality. Obviously, the fetus is alive, so that disputation about whether or not it counts as ‘a life’ is casuistry. The same applies, from a materialist point of view, to the question of whether or not this ‘life’ is ‘human.’ What other kind could it be? As for ‘dependent,’ this has never struck me as a very radical criticism of any aggolomeration of human cells in whatever State. Children are ‘dependent’ too.”
    (The Nation, April 4, 1989, quoted in The Quotable Hitchens)

    Apparently, for all his vaunted intellect, Hitchens could not distinguish between something being considered human in the objective, scientific sense (i.e. a member of the species Homo sapiens) and something being considered human in the subjective, philosophical sense (i.e a person). Also notice how he conveniently effaced the existence of women and their bodies in his oblique reference to “dependence.”

    “Anyone who has ever seen a sonogram or has spent even an hour with a textbook on embryology knows that the emotions are not a deciding factor. In order to terminate a pregnancy, you have to still a heartbeat, switch off a developing brain, and whatever the method, break some bones or rupture some organs.”
    (The Nation, April 4, 1989, quoted in The Quotable Hitchens)

    This type of argument by emotion, coming from an avowed rationalist, is not “contrarianism” — it’s hypocrisy, pure and simple.

    “I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I’d favor emptying a woman’s uterus.”
    (The Washington Times, February 1, 1990, quoted in The Quotable Hitchens)

    Rape? Anencephaly? Pulmonary hypertension? Goes to show exactly how anathema the concept of women having agency over their own bodies (and, consequently, their own destinies) was to Hitchens if situations like those didn’t even cross his mind as “valid” reasons for abortion.

    I can’t say I’m going to miss Christopher Hitchens.

  85. Hmmm. . .

    Well Donna, I read the article you linked by Hitchens about his illness and Nietzsche. And while I wasn’t blown away, I thought it was quite good, especially as it progressed. The feeling of decline that permeated the article was poignant and a bit unsettling, and he did a really good job of conveying the horrific conditions of undergoing chemotherapy. I did admire Hitchens’ ability to hold contradictary sentiments in his head and self-awareness and equinaminous detachment that come with that.

    Other people have brought up other good points. The fact that he didn’t soften his views on people after they died (hehe) and decision to undergo waterboarding and let it change his mind on “enhanced interrogation techniques.” I am starting to feel some of my disdain for him softening; I can see the appeal of his devil-may-care contrarianism to things. I have to admit he was a nuanced thinker of sorts, which is kinda rare in this day and age. Still. . .there’s a lot of things I could think of about him that still bother me; I doubt I’m gonna start actively seeking out his articles now. Still, I’m a bit tired of harping on it. He’s dead now. . .whatever. . .

  86. My admittedly sarcastic but sourced, on-topic post about Hitchens’s misogyny seems to have disappeared down the memory hole.

    Not a very encouraging thing for a first-time commenter.

    1. My admittedly sarcastic but sourced, on-topic post about Hitchens’s misogyny seems to have disappeared down the memory hole.

      Not a very encouraging thing for a first-time commenter.

      Dude, there’s a moderation queue — first-time comments automatically go into it. While I wish I were able to dedicate 24 hours every day to moderating blog comments, I sometimes do other things. Chill out please.

  88. This is my first time commenting here, and thus I was unaware comments were moderated. My first comment didn’t appear, but someone else’s comment posted after it did (LotusBen, 10:22 pm), and I got disheartened and jumped to conclusions. Sorry.

    Now I see there’s a “Comments” guideline page linked to from the navigation bar at the top of the page, but unfortunately that wasn’t readily apparent to me, fresh off Google. If it’s technically possible to do with the software this site is using, I think placing a note about the comment moderation near the “leave a comment” section, where prospective commenters couldn’t miss it, would help avoid future misunderstandings.

  89. Rodeo: Raison, those quotes don’t strike me as misogynist. So the guy thinks fetuses are “life,” big deal.

    Seriously? First of all, it is a big deal, but it’s not because he thinks fetuses are “life”. It’s because he thinks the fetuses life supercedes the woman’s life in every case.

    As for ‘dependent,’ this has never struck me as a very radical criticism of any aggolomeration of human cells in whatever State. Children are ‘dependent’ too.

    …

    I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I’d favor emptying a woman’s uterus.

    I mean really, could he possibly have framed those to be more dehumanizing to the pregnant women? Children and fetuses are not dependent in remotely similar ways, that’s just silly. And if he can’t think of one reason–not a single fucking reason–to “empty a woman’s uterus” (just typing that phrase makes me cringe) that says more about his lack of medical knowledge and imagination than anything we should account for in public policy. I wonder what he’d say about that 9 year old girl in Brazil who was pregnant with twins by her father. Is there an age cutoff where it’s ok for girls but not for women?

    Dude was sexist in many ways–and then again, in others kinda sorta not. He didn’t think abortion should be illegal, so…great? I would’ve respected him more if he’d had a revelation similar to his waterboarding turnaround about this. Then again, I guess it’s a lot harder to undergo a traumatic pregnancy to see if it’s really as traumatic as all those people who aren’t him say it is.

    I do want to read his book on Mother Teresa, though. I’ve skimmed some parts in the library, but I was in a hurry. That book looks great, and would give me some ammunition for when I roll my eyes whenever her name comes up.

  90. Well, I mean, I guess he’s a dick if he can’t think of a single good reason for an abortion. But big deal. He’s not a doctor nor a woman so his opinions on whether there are good reasons have little to no effect on anyone’s life.

    And, to be perfectly honest, I agree that the pro-choice argument that fetuses “depend” on a woman’s body and therefore aren’t people to be pretty weak. I’ve said it before: the pro-choice argument is strengthened when we argue from the perspective that fetuses are life. That doesn’t change a single thing about whether or not women are entitled to terminate pregnancies.

  91. Rodeo:
    Raison, those quotes don’t strike me as misogynist. So the guy thinks fetuses are “life,” big deal.

    The issue is not the moral status he personally assigned to fetuses, but that he opposed abortion and apparently thought fetuses developed inside a vacuum, not a living, breathing, thinking woman. He called the fetus “dependent,” then conflated this with the “dependence” of children, which was either failing to see or willfully ignoring the fact that a parent having to make a child a meal is categorically different than a fetus having to develop inside the body of an independent being and rely on the oxygen and nutrients taken in by her. His arguments against abortion elided the fact that women must go through nine months of pregnancy; that pregnancy has a major impact on a woman’s body, and carries risks.

    How can the term “unborn child” be a “genuine description of material reality?” How is “unborn child” qualitatively different than “fetus?” Essentially, he was attempting to argue there is some mysterious quality that makes every human organism being intrinsically special, and that this mysterious quality exists prior to birth and grants the “unborn child” an inalienable right to life. It’s an already-weak religious argument that completely falls apart when it’s recast in secular terms; without a soul or creation by a deity, there’s nothing to make a fetus inherently special from the moment of conception, and thus make abortion wrong. “Inherent specialness” is not something that can be scientifically quantified.

  92. Yeah. Mr. Hitchens’ pro-life views were pretty bizarre. I’m not sure what exactly the cause of them were. I mean this guy was an atheist, a former Trotskyist. Was it just coming from misogyny or what? It just goes to my overall feeling that Hitchens’ basic philosophy was incoherent, and not in a good way. Like there was something fundamentally inauthentic going on, something big he was trying to compensate for or hide. Because he acted as though his views were based on reason, and although he could be reasonable, there was no rational coherence there. It’s easy to see, for example, why a fundamentalist Christian who was raised that way would be pro-life. But why a rationalist atheist?

  93. grants the “unborn child” an inalienable right to life

    Did he actually say that or are you assuming that this is his belief just because he gets emotional when thinking about fetuses?

  94. Rodeo: Didheactuallysaythatorareyouassumingthatthisishisbeliefjustbecausehegetsemotionalwhenthinkingaboutfetuses?

    I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I’d favor emptying a woman’s uterus.

  95. Oh, come on! I copied and clicked on the “quote this comment?” button, AND typed my own blockquotes for the second quote! Not fair! *grumble* and it was going to be so awesome, too. One more time:

    Rodeo: Did he actually say that or are you assuming that this is his belief just because he gets emotional when thinking about fetuses?

    I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I’d favor emptying a woman’s uterus.

    *crosses fingers* c’mon, momma needs a new blockquote!

    1. superior olive

      *crosses fingers* c’mon, momma needs a new blockquote!

      I wish I could give you one! Sadly, that particular plugin is not fully compatible with the latest versions of WordPress, and doesn’t seem to be being updated any more. There doesn’t seem to be a recently updated substitute, either. It could be time for the Quote button to take its curtain call.

  96. blondegirl: Anon,
    I’d also like to say this: I may not completely agree with his stance in the Iraq war, but at least I have the intellectual honesty to admit that he was a much greater authority than I am on the subject, and that I could very well be wrong.

    You know who might might be an even better authority on the legitimacy of the Iraq War? An actual political scientist. It is quite redeeming that you are willing to defer your opinion to someone who is more informed than you, but why stop at Hitchens, whose only claim to legitimacy is journalistic experience? Instead, I would suggest someone like Micheal Walzer, who has spent their entire life dealing with the issue of war.

  98. OK Nick. Well that was an interesting article. I’m not really willing to make as many assumptions about Hitchens as Finkelstein makes. I mean, who really knows what’s going on in his head? Though if I had to say, I think Hitchens and similiar “political apostates” that Finkelstein describes might not be quite as shrewdly and coldly calculating as made out to be. I think it’s more likely they lack self-awareness in certain areas and are compulsively driven by unprocessed emotional issues, both in their original “true believer” phase as well as their subsequent “apostate” phase. At least, that’s what I infer from my analyzing my own experiences in retrospect, having personally had a history of zealously adopting beliefs and philsophies before subsequently abandoning them. I think intellectually-oriented men might be particularly vulnerable to believing their beliefs, principles, and actions stem from certain “evidence” or “logic” when they arise from nothing of the sort.

  99. Mysogynist? Yet he insisted on calling Bill Clinton to account for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, when those women were routinely dismissed/ignored as a whole by his devouted feminist groupies.

    It will be interesting if feminists hold themselves to account for that (perhaps when he pops his clogs?)

    As for his views on abortion, I have no time whatsoever for anyone telling women what they should do regarding this-my problem with feminist analysis is ignoring what I feel is the real issue and that is the centrality of penetrative sex to human sexuality as a whole, especially female.

    Despite this I’ve never doubted for one second that abortion is a brutish act where the power dynamics are that someone who has the power over someone else-
    Of course foetuses are (proto) human life, we all know that, let’s not get silly. That doesn’t make me against their provision in any way, especially given things as they are.

    So I can understand him being against it, I don’t object to that, I object to others seeking to impose that on others and prevent or in any way harrass about it, which clearly Hitchens wasn’t about.

    Lotus Ben,

    I think I’m right in saying that a person cannot be “very mediocre“.

    Superior Olive;

    You might want to check out the documentary he made about MT, “Hell’s Angel“. I will miss his presence on earth.

  100. Sorry,

    …..where the power dynamics are that someone who has the power over someone else-

    and uses that power to terminate their potential for existence (or their existence).

  101. Wriggles. . .would you mind explaining what you mean by this phrase:

    “the centrality of penetrative sex to human sexuality as a whole, especially female.”

    On the face of it, that sounds like complete bullshit to me.

  102. Lotus Ben,

    Er no, its rather self explanatory to me and easy to understand. Sorry, but I’ve found that whenever people start off with “I don’t understand you, but I know you are WRONG/STUPID etc.,” are not worth engaging with.

  103. OK. Well you do know that most female orgasms are caused by clitoral stimulation, not penetration, right? That would seem to indicate that penetration is not particularly central to female sexuality.

  104. wriggles:

    As for his views on abortion, I have no time whatsoever for anyone telling women what they should do regarding this-my problem with feminist analysis is ignoring what I feel is the real issue and that is the centrality of penetrative sex to human sexuality as a whole, especially female.

    I have yet to read a critique of the centrality of penetrative sex in sexual culture or of sexual phallocentrism that has come from anyone other than a feminist. I am unsure ‘feminist analysis’, which is incidentally not monolithic, is in fact ignoring it. Feminist writers have certainly paid more attention to the social value placed on penetrative sex than almost any other single discipline I have encountered.

    More than that, I just don’t buy your framing of there being a ‘real issue’ being elided by reproductive justice. Does that mean that reproductive justice isn’t a real issue? Can’t feminism talk about more than one issue at once? I mean, we’re getting back to the not-a-monolith point again.

    I also don’t have time for people who claim that Hitchen’s words or opinions on abortion had no effect because he wasn’t a doctor or legislator. What, do you think that he spent his life as a public intellectual because he though that ideas had no impact on the world? That he wrote for shits and giggles rather than because he believed he was actually doing something that was relevant?

  105. Li,

    I am unsure ‘feminist analysis’, which is incidentally not monolithic, is in fact ignoring
    it.

    No it isn’t; so why critique any use on that basis? I should perhaps have said “mainstream” feminist, though I hardly think the view I share is outrĂŠ.

    We are talking about abortion on a mainstream feminist blog; referring to pro choice v “pro life” positions. The “pro choice” view centres on women’s physical autonomy rather than why sex is designed to put them in a position where merely scratching an itch means they have to deal with such consequence and have the tiresome “pro lifers” kicking up a fuss?

    Isn’t that the ultimate contempt for women? It seems like “pro choice” gets to set the agenda.

    More than that, I just don’t buy your framing of there being a ‘real issue’ being elided by reproductive justice.

    You are right about feminists critiquing the nature of what we call ‘sex’, so why isn’t that central to at least the feminist position in discussions about abortion? Why ignore what gets women pregnant in the first place?

    Abortion is about “reproductive justice” expresses what you called the phallocentric view of sex as being about procreation when, most sex most of the time is about pleasure.

  106. Look, I agree, sex isn’t primarily about reproduction. All of the sex I have, for instance, not gonna get anyone knocked up. But I am fairly confident that abortion still is about reproduction, at least in part, given that one of the results of not having access to abortion is, you know, childbirth. So describing abortion as part of reproductive justice is a characterisation I am fairly comfortable of making without reiterating phallocentrism.

    I don’t want to get too heavily into a discussion about PIV sex, largely because it’s a derail. An interesting derail, but one nevertheless.

  107. McAllen: But for some people, his good just can’t overcome his bad, and I think that’s legitimate.

    I agree. What I don’t think is legitimate is simplifying his entire body of work into “neoconservative” or some such crap because of the pro-Iraq War and anti-abortion positions. Although, he was in favor of further research into medical, rather than surgical, abortion, so even that is complicated. It’s one thing to say “I don’t like him because for me, nothing can outweigh how crappy he was around X,” and it’s another to say “He thought X and therefore he is neoconservative, misogynist, small-minded, and not even very smart.” The first is a judgment call; the second is a load of bullshit.

    LotusBen: Look, you obviously know more about him than me. If I grew up reading him dissing Kissinger or Reagan all the time, I’d probably feel a lot differently about him. Maybe even agree with you. But that’s not what happened. I know him as a public supporter of the war in Iraq, a public atheist, and a pontificator on random intellectual topics….As far as I can tell, he was very mediocre, but he had inflated ego and people bought into it, and that frustrates me.

    I’m not a Baby Boomer; remember I said that I grew up reading him attacking Reagan in The Nation, and Reagan was president in the ’80s. But your argument comes down to “I don’t know anything about him prior to the last decade of his life, and why should I be expected to know more than that before I make a judgment, because nothing matters before my generation came of age in high school?” If you honestly want to make an argument based on the idea that ignorance is a perfectly acceptable basis for judgment, go ahead, I suppose, but don’t think that it’s anything but absurd.

    LotusBen: It just goes to my overall feeling that Hitchens’ basic philosophy was incoherent, and not in a good way. Like there was something fundamentally inauthentic going on, something big he was trying to compensate for or hide.

    Seriously, LotusBen? He holds an obnoxious view that you don’t think jibes with the rest of his outlook, and that’s an indication of “something fundamentally inauthentic,” rather than just garden-variety inconsistency, or maybe just something about his philosophy that you don’t understand? Yeah, sure. All his life, Hitchens was just a closet conservative Christian in deep cover. Shame he couldn’t keep it quiet when it came to abortion.

    wriggles: Mysogynist? Yet he insisted on calling Bill Clinton to account for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him, when those women were routinely dismissed/ignored as a whole by his devouted feminist groupies.

    I agree with this. Bill Clinton regularly gets positive press on feminist blogs, and leaving aside his personal conduct, he signed DoMA and oversaw the destruction of AFDC. Give me Hitchens any day; he at least understood and cared about the effects of economic coercion and terrorism.

  108. Superior Olive,

    I can’t think of a single circumstance in which I’d favor emptying a woman’s uterus.

    =/=

    granting the “unborn child” an inalienable right to life

  109. Wriggles, I like what you’re saying.

    Of course foetuses are (proto) human life, we all know that, let’s not get silly. That doesn’t make me against their provision in any way, especially given things as they are.

    I agree with this. Fetuses and embryos are “life,” “alive,” “human.” This argument can be ceded to the antis without pro-choicers losing any moral authority.

    This, however, makes me uncomfortable:

    abortion is a brutish act where the power dynamics are that someone who has the power over someone else

    Pregnancy is a situation where someone is using my body for their own needs. When it isn’t okay with me for them to use my body, I get to stop them. If the only way to stop them is via killing it, that’s a better world to live in than one where everyone but me gets to use my body.

  110. EG: P>But your argument comes down to “I don’t know any thing about him prior to the last decade of his life, and why should I be expected to know more than that before I make a judgment, because nothing matters before my generation came of age in high school?” If you honestly want to make an argument based on the idea that ignorance is a perfectly acceptable basis for judgment, go ahead, I suppose, but don’t think that it’s anything but absurd.

    I suppose in an ideal world, I’d rather not feel anger or disdain toward anyone at all because I find feelings of happiness and love to be more pleasurable. But in this world (which is absurd), I sometimes dislike people, and my dislike is usually rooted in negative judgments of them, which yes, are usually rooted in ignorance. That doesn’t mean I zealously guard my ignorance, however. I’m insatiably curious and love to become more knowledgable about things, and this thread has definitely increased my knowledge about Hitchens. Who knows, maybe after I emotionally assimilate all this new information I’ll even feel neutrally toward him?

    Now, I don’t want to risk the multiple block quote (block quoting is another field of ignorance for me). But to address your other point EG, about my mistrust of Hitchens’ authenticity. Lol. I wasn’t implying he was a crypto-Christian. But his abortion position does befuddle me. Maybe it and everything else he says is in good faith and I just can’t wrap my head around it. But I still don’t trust him and he seems slippery to me. Just a hit I get.

  111. Rodeo: I agree with this. Fetuses and embryos are “life,” “alive,” “human.” This argument can be ceded to the antis without pro-choicers losing any moral authority.

    Rodeo: Pregnancy is a situation where someone is using my body for their own needs. When it isn’t okay with me for them to use my body, I get to stop them. If the only way to stop them is via killing it, that’s a better world to live in than one where everyone but me gets to use my body.

    I basically agree with both of these statements (as to the first, I agree that a fetus becomes “human” at some point between the time it’s a clump of cells [when it isn’t], and five minutes before it’s born [when it is]). But society countenances the taking of human life (both pre- and post-birth) for all sorts of reasons it deems more important than the “value” of that life, from permitting the sale of cigarettes to permitting giant trucks to drive on interstate highways, each of which inevitably and knowingly results in far more human lives being extinguished each year than the total number of abortions even if one conceded that all abortions resulted in the extinction of a human life (which in my opinion they clearly don’t). Even the most fervent anti-abortionists seem to think it’s OK to kill a fetus, for reasons of alleged national interests, when one drops a bomb on its mother’s head in Iraq or elsewhere. And if that’s OK, then who the hell are they to make the judgment that an individual woman’s choice to have an abortion is less rational or compelling?

  112. DonnaL: Even the most fervent anti-abortionists seem to think it’s OK to kill a fetus, for reasons of alleged national interests, when one drops a bomb on its mother’s head in Iraq or elsewhere. And if that’s OK, then who the hell are they to make the judgment that an individual woman’s choice to have an abortion is less rational or compelling?

    Wow. I’m so used to hearing re-hashed stuff during abortion discussions, but that one is new to me. I really like it. May I steal it?

  113. DonnaL: I disagreed with Hitchens about many political issues, and agreed with him on others. But to attack his intelligence or his writing skills is simply embarrassing. I base that opinion on having read, or re-read, a number of his Vanity Fair columns today.

    My main problem with him was that he used his intelligence and his writing skills in the service of some really shitty ideas. And that the excellence of his prose often covered up the bankruptcy of his arguments.

    He did his best work when he knew what the fuck he was talking about, or when his position was defensible, even if that position was controversial: his writings about atheism, Mother Teresa, death and dying, cancer. Unfortunately, he often produced work when he didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about (or when his position was demonstrably untrue), and then doubled down on it when he was challenged, such as his support for the Iraq War or his whole “women aren’t funny unless they’re ugly, gay or Jewish” thing.

    Because he had such weak arguments so often, I can’t call him a brilliant or great writer. But man, he could turn a phrase.

    BTW, Lotus Ben, are you still having trouble grasping why even people who thought Hitchens was overrated as a writer are pissed off at you for your “I’m glad he’s dead” comment? You don’t have to join in the hagiography-making, but it’s really not necessary to piss on the guy’s corpse while it’s still warm. Save that for when Dick Cheney dies.

  114. LotusBen: Wow. I’m so used to hearing re-hashed stuff during abortion discussions, but that one is new to me. I really like it. May I steal it?

    Be my guest. I started using the argument more than 20 years ago, around the time of the invasion of Panama under the first President Bush, and don’t even remember at this point if I thought it up myself or heard it from someone else. If anyone finds it at all convincing, I just tell them the former.

  116. Lol zuzu, no, I fully understand why people are pissed off at me for what I said. They are pissed at me because they think “I’m happy he’s dead” comments are only appropriate for truly despicable people like Dick Cheney, Pat Robertson, and Jessie Helms, and that Christopher Hitchens does not qualify for said category. And I recognize it wasn’t necessary for me to piss on Hitchens’ corpse, but I did piss on his corpse, and I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed (by and large) observing how people subsequently became annoyed. I don’t claim to have any sort of moral rectitude.

    You will be pleased to know, however, that I’m also anticipating pissing on Dick Cheney’s corpse. Probably shitting on it too.

  118. I agree. What I don’t think is legitimate is simplifying his entire body of work into “neoconservative” or some such crap because of the pro-Iraq War and anti-abortion positions. Although, he was in favor of further research into medical, rather than surgical, abortion, so even that is complicated. It’s one thing to say “I don’t like him because for me, nothing can outweigh how crappy he was around X,” and it’s another to say “He thought X and therefore he is neoconservative, misogynist, small-minded, and not even very smart.” The first is a judgment call; the second is a load of bullshit.

    I don’t know…if anything characterizes “neocon” as a coherent ideology, it’s the refusal to see the consequences of a given action as remotely relevant to the moral value of that action. In fact, you get the sense that it’s irresponsible to consider the real effect of invading Iraq or prohibiting abortion. And so I’m not sure it’s unfair to characterize Hitchens as a neocon; his foibles were similar. He had a few ideological quirks which he refused to subject to any kind of intellectual rigor. When questioned, he accused his interlocutors of cowardice or inhumanity. Walked like a duck, quacked like a duck….

    I respect his skill, but I feel like he was content to be too clever by half; he wasn’t always willing to take his own medicine. He used his eloquence to argue around issues that made him uncomfortable. And he used it to make himself a moral authority when he lacked the experience or vulnerability to be one. Although I am impressed that he subjected himself to waterboarding, I’m amazed that someone so intelligent needed to experience it in order to understand what it meant. Wasn’t he intelligent enough to imagine waterboarding?

    And the pro-choice thing…Jesus, I’ve no time for it. It’s just fucking stupid, and a man who built his name on not being fucking stupid may ask no quarter at all.

  119. McAllen:
    But for some people, his good just can’t overcome his bad, and I think that’s legitimate.

    This is exactly where I stand. When I compare the things on which Hitchens had it right (religion) to the things on which he had it absolutely, mind-numbingly wrong (Iraq, abortion), the sum total is negative for me. And I don’t think he deserves adulation for being right in isolated instances any more a broken clock deserves a pat on the back for telling the correct time two minutes out of a day.

    wriggles:
    Mysogynist?Yet he insistedon calling Bill Clinton to account for the numerous accusations of sexual misconduct against him,when those women were routinely dismissed/ignored as a whole by his devouted feminist groupies.

    Maybe because he wished to write a book (perhaps rightly) impugning Clinton’s character in the most comprehensive fashion possible? To my knowledge, Hitchens never called out his brother’s truly repugnant victim-blaming of women who’ve been dated raped, while he wasn’t afraid to engage him on other fronts. Thus I treat with skepticism the claim that his taking Clinton to task for his sexual misdeeds proceeded from genuine outrage on a feminist level rather than passionate hatred of Clinton himself.

    wriggles:
    Despite this I’ve never doubted for one second that abortion is a brutish act where the power dynamics are that some one who has the power over someone else and uses that power to terminate their potential for existence (or their existence).

    Well, one is entitled to take whatever view of abortion they wish, so long as they understand that this view is subjective personal opinion, not objective fact. I understand having nuanced or conflicted thoughts on the issue, but when someone pro-choice treats pro-life ideological assertions — that abortion is violence/killing/murder/etc. (“brutish act”) and a fetus is a human being/person (“someone”) — like incontrovertible truths, they are unwittingly ceding the very reproductive rights they support to those who would take them away.

    zuzu:
    You don’t have to join in the hagiography-making, but it’s really not necessary to piss on the guy’s corpse while it’s still warm.

    There is a difference between being happy that someone has died and simply not being sad. I’m not happy to see Christopher Hitchens go, especially after a prolonged battle with cancer, but due to the truly odious things he espoused in life, I cannot compel myself to feel the sort of sadness I’d feel at the loss of a decent — or at least more sympathetic — person. Hitchens never pulled any punches when it came to the recently departed (Jerry Falwell, for instance), and thus I see no reason to spare him the same treatment, or engage in postmortem hagiography.

  120. I don’t know if I’d say I’m “glad” he’s dead, but I sure as hell won’t miss hearing about his various drunken, misogynist bloviations. He was a hateful asshole.

  121. piny: I don’t know…if anything characterizes “neocon” as a coherent ideology, it’s the refusal to see the consequences of a given action as remotely relevant to the moral value of that action….And so I’m not sure it’s unfair to characterize Hitchens as a neocon; his foibles were similar. He had a few ideological quirks which he refused to subject to any kind of intellectual rigor. When questioned, he accused his interlocutors of cowardice or inhumanity. Walked like a duck, quacked like a duck….

    I would say that one of the necessary attributes characterizing a neocon has to be, well, conservativism. And it is in no way intellectually honest to characterize Hitchens’s general political outlook as conservative, as he was fundamentally a materialist and a Marxist.

    Raison: And I don’t think he deserves adulation for being right in isolated instances any more a broken clock deserves a pat on the back for telling the correct time two minutes out of a day.

    I think the issue is that I’m fundamentally not understanding is how decades of radical leftism end up being “isolated instances,” rather than the only two issues on which he took a right-wing stance. It is one thing to say that his advocacy of the Iraq War and his anti-abortion bullshit outweigh the other stuff for you; it’s another thing entirely to mischaracterize his leftism as “isolated instances.”

  122. His misogyny was not limited to “isolated instances,” and that was the source of my utter disdain for him.

  123. LotusBen: And I recognize it wasn’t necessary for me to piss on Hitchens’ corpse, but I did piss on his corpse, and I enjoyed it, and I enjoyed (by and large) observing how people subsequently became annoyed. I don’t claim to have any sort of moral rectitude.

    Whee! Trolling!

    Glad you put a drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay on the same piss-on-the-corpse footing as one of the most deadly American politicians in memory and one of the biggest supporters of segregation in Congress, who was able to and did make life actively miserable for millions of citizens.

    Perspective! It’s what’s for dinner.

  124. Raison: There is a difference between being happy that someone has died and simply not being sad. I’m not happy to see Christopher Hitchens go, especially after a prolonged battle with cancer, but due to the truly odious things he espoused in life, I cannot compel myself to feel the sort of sadness I’d feel at the loss of a decent — or at least more sympathetic — person.

    I’m not exactly broken up at his death — and given that he had fucking cancer, it’s not like it’s a surprise — but Lotus Ben said he was glad the fucker was dead, instead of not giving a crap that the fucker was dead (“fucker” being my own choice of words). Also, if you read Hitchens’s Falwell piece, he’s not gleeful that Falwell is dead; instead, he’s calling the guy a fraud using specific examples of his fraudulence. Which is an awful lot like what I said about not joining in the hagiography or actively resisting the hagiography. But it’s not dancing on the grave.

  125. LOL Zuzu. Hey I said I would shit on Cheney’s corpse, which I’ll steadfastedly maintain I didn’t do to Hitchens. If you were to review my comments (which I wouldn’t recommend; they aren’t that interesting) you would notice I even said some mildly complimentary things about Hitchens. For Cheney it would truly be 100% mouth-foaming vitriol. As for Helmes, imperfectly limited and oft ignorant person I am, I don’t know enough about him to have strong emotions one way or another. But based off peoples’ descriptions here, he sounds like a really destructive, racist prick.

    Cheerio!

  126. LotusBen: he sounds like a really destructive, racist prick.

    That’s putting it mildly, where Jesse Helms is concerned. He’s been described as “the most racist and homophobic politician in the history of the United States,” and I don’t think there’s any doubt that that’s true for my lifetime; at least George Wallace renounced some of his earlier views late in his life.

    There are some lovely quotes from him here: http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2008/07/jesse-helms-dead-dead-dead.html

    What is it with kids today, anyway? Huey Long and Father Coughlin died before I was born, but that doesn’t mean I’m not at least generally familiar with them.

  127. DonnaL: What is it with kids today, anyway? Huey Long and Father Coughlin died before I was born, but that doesn’t mean I’m not at least generally familiar with them.

    Hey now, I was in utero when the Iranian hostage crisis ended, and somehow I knew we no longer had an embassy there or any direct diplomatic ties, yet Michele Bachmann was alive back when that whole thing went down didn’t until she was called on that. 😛

  128. Annaleigh: Hey now, I was in utero when the Iranian hostage crisis ended, and somehow I knew we no longer had an embassy there or any direct diplomatic ties, yet Michele Bachmann was alive back when that whole thing went down didn’t until she was called on that. 😛

    And *that* should read “Michele Bachmann was alive when that whole thing went down and didn’t know until she was called on it.”

    I think I need to go to bed soon… :S

  129. Well I read those quotes you linked Donna. That’s some pretty fucked up stuff. I learned a while ago that for every over-the-top parody viewpoint you might see on the Daily Show or the Onion, there is someone out there who says that exact same thing and means it. Hard to know whether to laugh or cry over things so outlandishly offensive.

    Let’s not get all generationalist though. I happen to have a pretty good grasp of who Father Coughlin is too. How well do you know your radio personalities from the 1890s?

  130. I won’t miss him. Wonder where he is right now and if he maybe would like to rethink his position vis a vis God?

  131. DonnaL: What is it with kids today, anyway? Huey Long and Father Coughlin died before I was born, but that doesn’t mean I’m not at least generally familiar with them.

    I don’t know, but it’s weird, and I think it’s particularly harmful when those damn kids who won’t get off my lawn are into political activism. When you don’t actually have a grasp of history, Ann Coulter can say things like “Joe McCarthy was an American hero,” and instead of either laughing hysterically or becoming nauseated, you wonder if she’s worth taking seriously…

    LotusBen: Let’s not get all generationalist though. I happen to have a pretty good grasp of who Father Coughlin is too. How well do you know your radio personalities from the 1890s?

    You’re…joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking, and that you know that broadcast radio wasn’t developed until the twentieth century. I’m going to believe that you’re joking.

  132. Given that Christopher Hitchens lent his public voice to supporting this godawful colonialist war (and hence, the murder of countless numbers of people) and has also used his voice in supporting the hatred of Muslim people, I think I have more than enough justification in seeing him as a vile, reprehensible human being. He is a public bigot and warmonger. Add to that his misogyny and his opposition to women controlling their own bodies and I can say with confidence that I too am glad the man is no longer around.

    Does that make me a terrible person? Maybe, but at least I’m honest: the man was a reprehensible asshole and I think the world is better off with fewer reprehensible assholes.

  133. EG: You’re…joking, right? Please tell me you’re joking, and that you know that broadcast radio wasn’t developed until the twentieth century. I’m going to believe that you’re joking.

    I was joking until you ruined it. Thanks a lot!

  134. Al right. For the delectation of those of us who do remember the Cold War and the depredations carried out by the US and the USSR, who do remember the genesis of the current rightward swing in domestic politics, and perhaps as a crash course for those whose political memories began on 9/11/01, The Nation is running a greatest hits retrospective.

    Donna–a few years ago, when I was a grad student one of the students in a class I was TA-ing for said, in all seriousness, “Before 9/11, we’d never worried about being attacked on our soil.” The other TAs and the prof looked at each other in disbelief before the professor, much more gently than I would have, reminded her of the Cold War. “Just because you don’t remember it,” he said, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  135. And man, does it bring back memories. The Iran-Contra scandal had receded in my memory, but re-reading, I am reminded of how many times Reagan claimed “not to know” what was happening in his own administration, and also of perhaps my favorite thing Reagan ever said: “A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”

    I think that’s a defense criminal defense attorneys should adopt: “Your honor, the defendant’s heart and best intentions tell us that he did not, in fact, gun down five people in cold blood; the facts and evidence tell us that he did. But why should not the words of the heart be weighed as strongly as evidence?”

  136. Li,

    Fair enough, I recognised I was getting off track.

    This,however,makesmeuncomfortable:

    Pregnancyisasituationwheresomeoneisusingmybodyfortheirownneeds.Whenitisn’tokaywithmeforthemtousemybody,Igettostopthem.Iftheonlywaytostopthemisviakillingit,that’sabetterworldtoliveinthanonewhereeveryonebutmegetstousemybody.

    Agreed, I tend to view abortion as an act of necessary self defence and often a defence of others already in existence. I just can’t say that I am not the stronger of the two not that I feel any sentimentality about that either, we don’t design our bodies and cannot be blamed for their design.

    As for mysogyny I’m not arguing either/or just saying that anyone who’s prepared to advance women’s cause for investigation of their claims, when many who should no better seek to deny and erase them in collusion with their alleged abuser cannot be dismissed so clearly as a mysogynist.

    There’s plenty else to critique Bill Clinton about without needing to go there unless you feel sympathetic.

    I don’t feel like uncritical about CH, I’ve no time for Islamophobia nor especially his intellectually sterile religious hating, yet, I still don’t feel any rancour for him at his passing so I must feel overall he was a good thing.

  139. LotusBen: I was joking until you ruined it. Thanks a lot!

    I had the same reaction as EG’s — a moment of horror, followed by deciding that it simply had to be a joke. But please keep in mind that as ancient as you may think I am, the 1890’s do not bear the same relationship to me that Jesse Helms’s career does to you.

  140. EG: Donna–a few years ago, when I was a grad student one of the students in a class I was TA-ing for said, in all seriousness, “Before 9/11, we’d never worried about being attacked on our soil.” The other TAs and the prof looked at each other in disbelief before the professor, much more gently than I would have, reminded her of the Cold War. “Just because you don’t remember it,” he said, “doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

    That is rather amazing. And it isn’t as if one has to go back to the War of 1812, or the concerns about U-boats on the East Coast during the Second World War, to find other examples. Don’t people ever watch movies like Dr. Strangelove anymore? I gather that you grew up during the Reagan administration, and I remember quite well the fears of nuclear war that Reagan’s bellicosity had revived. Even though (perhaps because I was an adult by then) that didn’t compare to the pervasiveness of the fear I had during my own childhood in the 1960’s, every time I went to sleep at night, that I might be dead by morning. And I’m sure it was worse, in turn, for people who were children during the 1950’s and had to go through Civil Defense drills on a regular basis. They still had them occasionally when I was in elementary school; we would go outside the classroom to sit in the corridor, and even then I thought it was asinine. I do remember the Cuban Missile Crisis, but only very vaguely — seeing President Kennedy on TV all the time for a while, and my parents telling me that there might be a war, although I didn’t really understand exactly what that meant. By later in the 1960’s, when I was 11 or 12, I was old enough to read all sorts of pre- and post-nuclear holocaust novels like On the Beach and Alas, Babylon and Failsafe, scaring myself half to death; I would lie awake wondering whether I would even hear anything or see the flash before I died.

    So, no, 9/11 was hardly the first time. Kids today indeed!

  141. EG: More so than the essays, actually, I think <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/38011/changing-places?page=0,0D. D. Guttenplan's review of Hitch-22 in The Nation does justice to Hitchens’s complexity without sparing the condemnation of his rightward turns.

    That link didn’t work, probably because I didn’t realize that the “D” at the end wasn’t part of it; http://www.thenation.com/article/38011/changing-places?page=0,0 should work.

    Quite fascinating, although I think it assumes greater familiarity with Hitchens’s opinions and work than I brought to it. And I had no idea that he was partly “Jew-ish” (!) in origin, with emphasis on the “-ish.” Nor did I realize that he knew Bill Clinton at Oxford, even slightly.

    One thing I hadn’t known, which completely horrified me and made me wonder even more, not about Hitchens’s intelligence per se but about how well-educated he really was about certain things — as well as the value of an Oxford education! — was learning about his “flirtation” with David Irving. Disgusting. One shouldn’t have had to know about Irving’s fabrications, etc., to realize that he was an utter and mendacious crackpot.

  142. EG: I am reminded of how many times Reagan claimed “not to know” what was happening in his own administration, and also of perhaps my favorite thing Reagan ever said: “A few months ago I told the American people that I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that is true, but the facts and evidence tell me it is not.”

    Finally: that is a wonderful quote. I never thought I could ever again despise a U.S. politician as much as Nixon until Reagan came along. God, I hated that man. (I hated both Nixon and Reagan even more than GW Bush, by the way.) And the current worship of St. Ronnie, not only in the Republican party, makes me want to vomit. Especially the claims of his brilliance as a political thinker. I always thought that even apart from the substance of his views he was simultaneously a liar (or fantasist), a moron, a superficial thinker even at his best given his complete inability to understand how anyone could disagree with him, and supremely lazy — although in retrospect I believe that the Alzheimer’s was already well underway by his second term. I know someone who used to be in Republican politics who met Reagan *many* times back then; each time, Reagan had no idea who he was and didn’t remember meeting him before.

  143. This is awful, I’m not remotely trying to say otherwise, but I have no earthly idea what Iran-Contra was about. At this point in my life, I also don’t care. All of my history classes through college ended at WWII, and aside from reading about feminist and race politics, I never bothered to go back and learn what they left out. As a result, the only thing I really know about the 80s is Ronald Reagan laughing at Rock Hudson’s death from AIDS and Just Saying No to drugs.

    It’s hard to believe that Iran-Contra, Joe McCarthy, etc is a big deal when I have a master’s degree but those topics never came up in my entire education.

  144. I also think it’s disingenuous to say nice things about someone you didn’t care about just because they’ve died, but the author clearly WASN’T doing that, and very adequately expressed her long-term and conflicted feelings about Hitchens. If you hate him, then hate him, but your comments are very much beside the point here.

    Also, although drinking and smoking could have exaggerated the condition, he was genetically predisposed to esophageal cancer. His father died from it. So, he didn’t “bring it upon himself.” Saying that someone deserves to die of cancer because they participated in the same “risk” behaviors that EVERYONE ELSE DOES is, frankly, beyond idiotic, childish, heartless and simple.

    LotusBen:
    PersonallyI’mgladhe’sdead.Iconsiderhimtohavebeenapretentiousneoconservativeprickwhomadeafetishoutofhisowniconoclasm.Andashehimselffreelyadmitted,heboughtthecanceronhimselfthroughhisheavydrinkingandcigaretteuse.NowIfeelmeanforhavingsaidthat.ImeanhewasahumanbeingandIhavecompassionforthepeoplewhowillmisshim.ButIhavenorespectforhisviewsatall.Ithinkhewasalotmoremiddlebrowthanhemadehimselfouttobeandkindaanattentionwhore.AndIdidn’tevenknowhewasanti-choice.Figures.

    Ihatethisthingthatwehavetosaynicethingsaboutpeopleafterthey’redeadwhenwecouldn’thavegiventwoshitsaboutthemwhentheywerealive.

  145. Iran-Contra was the first place I learned about pleading the fifth. I watched Ollie North evade question after question, but my parents thought I was too young for lawyer shows.

    Wikipedia is useful for things like that, but not something I would quote in conversation. I had never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis until Thirteen Days came out. My history classes, like most, taught good citizenship. There were no valuable lessons or controversies of any kind.

  146. Rodeo:

    It’s hard to believe that Iran-Contra, Joe McCarthy, etc is a big deal when I have a master’s degree but those topics never came up in my entire education.

    Wow. I always forget how boned the US education system is. I’m Australian, and even my high-school ed had Iran-Contra pop up.

  147. LotusBen:
    Yeah. Mr. Hitchens’ pro-life views were pretty bizarre. I’m not sure what exactly the cause of them were. I mean this guy was an atheist, a former Trotskyist. Was it just coming from misogyny or what?

    Resentment towards his mother for having had two abortions. The thought that one may very well have prevented his own existence seems to have been a supreme offense to his inflated sense of self-importance — his fatalistic certitude in being one of history’s Great Men. At the same time, however, avoiding such a fate seems to have reaffirmed said narcissism.

    Vanity Fair, “Fetal Distraction“, February 2003:

    I claim an absolute right to be interested in the condition of the human fetus because … well, I used to be one myself. I was in my early teens when my mother told me that a predecessor fetus and a successor fetus had been surgically removed, thus making me an older brother rather than a forgotten whoosh.

    Also resentment toward a woman who had the gall not to complacently gestate some of the wild oats he admitted to having liberally sown at one period in his life.

    Vanity Fair, “Fetal Distraction”, February 2003:

    And I’ve since become the father of several fetuses, three of which, or perhaps I had better say three of whom, became reasonably delightful children. There was a time, it seemed, when I couldn’t sneeze on a woman without becoming a potential father. […]

    […] Some of those start-up operations never made it to full term for mysterious reasons, and at least once I found myself in a clinic while “products of conception” were efficiently vacuumed away. I can distinctly remember thinking, on the last such occasion, that under no persuasion of any kind would I ever allow myself to be present at such a moment again.

    Mind you, Hitchens left his first wife for another woman when she was still pregnant with one of those “reasonably delightful children,” and thus his rancour at having been party to an abortion seems to have had less to do with noble concern for the “condition of the human fetus” and more to do with a self-centred man-baby not liking being told he couldn’t have his way despite furious protestations of “mine, mine, mine!”

    One of the chief defects of Hitchens’ character seems to have been his apparent difficulty in empathizing with other human beings, or considering the thoughts, feelings, needs, and wants of anyone but himself. He had to experience waterboarding firsthand before he acknowledged its terribleness. While I commend him for being brave enough to try it, and then admit that it was indisputably torture, I’ve got to wonder at one of supposedly great intellects of our age only being able to comprehend certain things in immediate relation to himself. Perhaps I shouldn’t blame him for being a pro-lifer and a misogynist; he had no way of identifying with a pregnant woman’s situation, since he could never get pregnant himself.

    I should also like to note that Hitchens’s argument about being “interested in the condition of the human fetus” because he “used to be one [himself]” has antecedents in bumper stickers (“As a former fetus, I oppose abortion) and the fightin’ words of the Gipper:

    With regard to the freedom of the individual for choice with regard to abortion, there’s one individual who’s not being considered at all. That’s the one who is being aborted. And I’ve noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.

    Oh, how great minds think alike!

  148. DonnaL: I had the same reaction as EG’s — a moment of horror, followed by deciding that it simply had to be a joke. But please keep in mind that as ancient as you may think I am, the 1890′s do not bear the same relationship to me that Jesse Helms’s career does to you.

    LOL. I’m apparently not as effectively communicator as I think I am. So I’ve decided to ruin my joke further and explain it, since it wasn’t funny initially anyway. I was saying I’m familiar with who Father Coughlin is. Which I am, he’s a Catholic radio demagouge from the 1930s, originally largely known for his support of FDR and criticism of big business, then more widely known for his virulently anti-Semitic views. If I was born in 1984, and Coughlin was prominent in 1934, that means I’m familiar with a radio personality from 50 years before I was born. Do you know any radio personalities from 50 years before you were born? Probably not, so I’m probably superior to you on that count. But I wanted to make sure of my superiority, so I fudged the numbers a little bit and said the 1890s, before radio broadcasting have even started, to guarantee that it would be literally impossible for you to match my degree of knowledge. Even though you were probably born more around 1960, so 50 years before your birth would have technically been 1910.

    See, a lot of thought actually went into my completely miscomprehended and comedic fail of a comment.

  149. “effectively communicator” = “effective of a communicator”

    I also make a lot of typos, and I don’t want them to misinterpreted as some form of intentional, pretentious newspeak.

  151. For those interested in an article that takes a more negative view of Christopher Hitchens, go here.

    One of my favorite quotes from Christopher Hitchens is when he referred to the Dixie Chicks as sluts and “fucking fat slags” because they had the nerve to call out George W. Bush because of the Iraq War.

    Ugh.

    I remember trying to read his articles in The Nation after I first subscribed to the publication in the early 90s. I was put off by the kind of personality that showed through his writing then and as the years have passed, I’ve grown to dislike him even more.

  152. Rodeo: This is awful, I’m not remotely trying to say otherwise, but I have no earthly idea what Iran-Contra was about. At this point in my life, I also don’t care….It’s hard to believe that Iran-Contra, Joe McCarthy, etc is a big deal when I have a master’s degree but those topics never came up in my entire education.

    You’re joking, right? You don’t really base your assessment of what is and is not a big deal based on what made it into the institutionally approved education curriculum? Especially when that curriculum is regularly some decades behind current events, and the events being discussed are the misdeeds of our leaders?

    OK. Ronald Reagan and his cronies sold arms to Iran illegally, despite an arms embargo, in exchange for Iran freeing hostages. In addition, profits from this exchange were used to provide weaponry and financial support to a bunch of terrorists, the contras, in an effort to help them overthrow the democratically elected Sandanista government of Nicaragua, because the Sandanistas were socialists and the US did not like that. This was also illegal, needless to say. Nobody was held to account and punished for this; there were a bunch of show hearings, but the names involved crop up as Republican advisors again and again, without the disgust they warrant. Oliver North, at the center of this, has a reality show now, I think. The Contras, by the way, systematically attacked health-care facilities and health-care workers, as well as raped, tortured, mutilated and killed civilians, children included, but you know, they weren’t dirty commies like the Sandanistas, so Reagan supported them.

    Joe McCarthy, at the beginning of the Cold War, ran a congressional committee that conducted witch-hunts of leftists, blackballing and ruining the lives and careers of people who had the gall to be socialists, or to be friends with socialists, or to walk into rooms socialists had also been in within the previous ten years. People’s lives were destroyed; some of them committed suicide, because the US government did not approve of their thoughts and words. The right wing is currently trying to anoint him as a hero.

    But…you don’t care? You don’t care? This is recent politics, and the fact that people don’t know and don’t see that as something to care about is what allows the right wing to rewrite history so that Reagan and McCarthy are saints and defenders of the people and all that is virtuous. When you cede historical ground, you give up on the importance of truth, for one thing, but you also relinquish your connection to a whole history of progressive/left (depending on how you describe yourself) activism, thought, and analysis, and success in activism does not arrive fully grown from the head of Zeus.

    The Vietnam War took place after WW2, when your classes ended. Does that not matter either?

  154. EG: OK. Ronald Reagan and his cronies sold arms to Iran illegally, despite an arms embargo, in exchange for Iran freeing hostages. In addition, profits from this exchange were used to provide weaponry and financial support to a bunch of terrorists, the contras, in an effort to help them overthrow the democratically elected Sandanista government of Nicaragua, because the Sandanistas were socialists and the US did not like that. This was also illegal, needless to say. Nobody was held to account and punished for this; there were a bunch of show hearings, but the names involved crop up as Republican advisors again and again, without the disgust they warrant. Oliver North, at the center of this, has a reality show now, I think. The Contras, by the way, systematically attacked health-care facilities and health-care workers, as well as raped, tortured, mutilated and killed civilians, children included, but you know, they weren’t dirty commies like the Sandanistas, so Reagan supported them.

    Don’t forget that we were also arming/funding Iraq at the time, due to its war with Iran. See famous video of Donald Rumsfeld, then Reagan’s special envoy, shaking hands with Saddam Hussein.

  155. DonnaL: I was old enough to read all sorts of pre- and post-nuclear holocaust novels like On the Beach and Alas, Babylon and Failsafe, scaring myself half to death; I would lie awake wondering whether I would even hear anything or see the flash before I died.

    Yes, that was exactly what it is was like for me in the 1980s. I literally used to lie awake at night when I was four, five, and six worrying about dying in a nuclear war. I remember my mother trying to comfort me and telling me that she’d keep me safe, but that was no comfort, because I knew enough to know that she couldn’t keep me safe from nuclear bombs, and I was worried that she’d die too. I was terrified.

    Now, actually, I take comfort in knowing that I’d die in the first exchange of hostilities. I’ve seen what happens to intellectual young women without skill in hand-to-hand combat in post-nuclear-war movies, and I want no part of that, thank you very much.

    DonnaL: One thing I hadn’t known, which completely horrified me and made me wonder even more, not about Hitchens’s intelligence per se but about how well-educated he really was about certain things — as well as the value of an Oxford education! — was learning about his “flirtation” with David Irving.

    Right? Bizarre, deranged, and idiotic. I do think that it had in some ways to do with shocking complacent liberals–not as an excuse, by the way, because I consider that as morally heinous. You do not get to use the Holocaust, or the denial thereof, as a stick with which to poke people, no matter how much you like to see them jump and yelp.

    DonnaL: God, I hated that man. (I hated both Nixon and Reagan even more than GW Bush, by the way.) And the current worship of St. Ronnie, not only in the Republican party, makes me want to vomit. Especially the claims of his brilliance as a political thinker. I always thought that even apart from the substance of his views he was simultaneously a liar (or fantasist), a moron, a superficial thinker even at his best given his complete inability to understand how anyone could disagree with him, and supremely lazy — although in retrospect I believe that the Alzheimer’s was already well underway by his second term.

    I agree with every single word of this. Reagan was loathsome, mendacious idiot who acted as though real life was a Hollywood movie filmed under the Hayes Code. He didn’t care who suffered and died, because he had no moral compass of any sort whatsoever, in large part because he was too much of a stone idiot to understand morality. It was Reagan who made union-busting government policy again, and it was Reagan who refused to acknowledge the existence of AIDS, and it was Reagan who funded terrorists, and I loathe him, loathe him, loathe him.

    I wasn’t surprised by the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s in the slightest, and I was twelve when he left office. I actually didn’t then and still don’t think he was smart enough to have been lying about all those things he “didn’t recall.”

    On that note, I think that part of the reason I like Hitchens is that, in an era when US liberals and what passes for the left seem to have dedicated themselves to being as nice as possible to everybody no matter who they are and what they have done, Hitchens was never afraid to be a mean bastard or an asshole. Nowadays we talk about “educating” people like Santorum etc. Hitchens understood that the point is not to educate or make friends with your enemies; the point is to hit them as hard as you can, as often as you can, in the hopes that when they finally fall down, they will not be able to get back up again.

  156. Sheelzebub: Katha Pollitt sums up my feelings about him perfectly.

    Oh, Katha Pollitt! I was waiting to see what she would say! She always gets to the heart of the matter so acutely. Thanks for the link.

  157. EG: I remember my mother trying to comfort me and telling me that she’d keep me safe, but that was no comfort, because I knew enough to know that she couldn’t keep me safe from nuclear bombs, and I was worried that she’d die too. I was terrified.

    Now, actually, I take comfort in knowing that I’d die in the first exchange of hostilities. I’ve seen what happens to intellectual young women without skill in hand-to-hand combat in post-nuclear-war movies, and I want no part of that, thank you very much

    Much of this is very reminiscent of my own experiences at a slightly older age. I used to worry about a war starting while I was in school for the day, and my parents not being able to get to me, or, when I was older and going to school in a different borough, not being able to get home. Eventually, after discussing the issue with some 12-year old self-styled nuclear weapon and blast radius experts (one of whom ultimately grew up to be Mark Penn, of Hillary Clinton campaign fame), I realized that since I lived and went to school in New York City, I’d undoubtedly be killed instantly wherever I happened to be. And after reading some of the books I mentioned, decided that I’d be better off that way. Even though I wasn’t diagnosed yet with a chronic illness, and wasn’t yet dependent on medications, I remember being particularly affected emotionally by the death of an older character in Alas, Babylon, who was no longer able to get her medications, for diabetes I think.

    I didn’t want to live in that kind of world. And have seen enough movies since then to know what happens to middle-aged women in disaster movies who don’t have combat skills! They usually die in the first, or at the latest the second, act, often in a pathetically ludicrous way, as in the case of the woman in The Birds who’s dispatched after trying to beat the birds away, entirely ineffectually, with an umbrella. It’s bad enough to be murdered by a flock of crazed birds; it’s even worse to look ridiculous while doing so.

    I think zombie movies are today’s equivalent of the post-nuclear holocaust movie, and people like me don’t fare too well in those, either.

  158. I like what Suzie commented over at echidne’s:

    “Sexism is considered inconsequential, and not worth mentioning, in these stories of Great Men.”

    Echidne’s piece, along with Pollitt’s, is also very good. She quotes Pollitt.

    I am also not “comfortable” with Hitchens – reminds me too much of the intellectual bullies I know personally. I’m not sorry he’s gone.

    (Hope I’ve linked that correctly!)

  159. Well, is anybody comfortable with Hitchens? That’s part of what I admire, that he made it almost impossible to be comfortable with him.

    Pollitt’s piece is wonderful, as always.

    Donna L: Even though I wasn’t diagnosed yet with a chronic illness, and wasn’t yet dependent on medications, I remember being particularly affected emotionally by the death of an older character in Alas, Babylon, who was no longer able to get her medications, for diabetes I think.

    Oh my goodness, yes! A month ago or so, I was joking with my mother about what would happen if the Occupy protests actually were harbingers of “the revolution.” “I believe I would be shot down as the bourgeois parasite I so clearly am,” I told her. “Probably by a band of revolutionaries who caught me rifling through the stock of an abandoned drugstore, looking for anti-depressants!”

  160. I appreciate what Pollitt says about his drinking, while everyone else seems to want to raise a toast at it. It’s bad form to lionize alcoholism as a hallmark of good artistry. It’s toxic. It’s also why he died so early.

  161. Raison, I just want to say that you’ve been totally spot-on in this thread!
    A few days before Hitchens died I actually called him a blowhard and an asshole, which shocked my friends. Of course, I don’t think anyone deserves to die of cancer (or anything other than old-age), but I’m not very sad at his passing.

  162. Well, upon reading the title of the post, I was sad that Hitchens had died, though not surprised (as I had heard of his ill health). Reading the post itself, I was disturbed and doubtful about him. Having read the comments, now I’m a bit glad he’s no longer writing (though I draw the line at being glad he’s dead, being glad of people’s death is not something I believe is a good practice) and sad that fellow atheists respected him.

  163. he pushed islamophobic and war-mongering views…and this post is a classic example of first world “feminism” with no anti-imperialist analysis.

  164. This is one atheist/agnostic who feels no respect toward Hitchens.

    Yes, feminism is too frequently devoid of an understanding of colonialism/imperialism, but what passes for organized atheism these days is far worse. It was actually feminism that first led me to explore imperialism and its effects upon the world. In contrast, there is virtually no understanding of these concepts in “new” atheism. I’ve spend a lot of time reading discussions at various atheist web sites. They’re pretty clueless. Seeing the stark contrast between the two perspectives (new atheism vs. feminism) is one of the big reasons why I have come to feel more more loyal toward feminism.

  165. I can’t say I’m too familiar with organized or “new” atheism, though I suspect that many of the problems stem from it being a collection of white males with a religious upbringing.

    Still, I find there’s often a basic FAIL in any group that doesn’t embrace the concept of intersectionality. This is why we get the circular firing squad that’s mentioned above, I think. Personal, I’d side with what’s gotten me through life so far, not buying too much into any one group and letting the label describe who I am, but not define it. I realize this isn’t always an option when it’s an inherent quality and an external label, but when it comes to groups based on ideology, it generally is. Or maybe that’s entirely foolish of me to think that sometimes one can define themselves, even if not always.

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  168. Yup, intersectionality is the key… and it was feminism that introduced the concept to me. (It helped me better understand the intersection of the various aspects of my own identity, too.) Not that feminism is perfect by any means, but at least the issue receives a chunk of attention.

    The article that you linked to pretty much hits all the reasons why I find “new atheism” to be an utter disappointment. I’ve written about similar stuff on my own blog. Thanks for the link. I’ll have to check out more of Jadehawk’s blog.

    Given that the discourse is saturated with the voices of a lot of clueless white guys (Hitchens being one of the guilty parties), I’m not holding my breath for any dramatic changes in the near future, but one can dream. Hopefully, the next generation of atheists/agnostics will produce something better.

  169. Yeah, feminists in the form of TBD introduced me to intersectionality. As a vegan, Breeze Harper help expand on problems that many vegans have with intersectionality. I’d agree that understanding intersectionality has helped me understand myself better – it also made me understand that privilege is something that a person like myself can have (as cis, basically hetero, and male), but not be an inherently shitty person, just someone who needs to check it (which makes sense as someone who’s poor, a POC, and not as masculine as most men).

    In the comments on that link, it also links to a post by Greta Christina, whose writing I generally like, though don’t always agree with. Also, if the things that Jadehawk’s article discusses are typical (and I guess despite my lack of engagement with “new atheism”, I’m not surprised from my experiences with the mainstream in general), then I wouldn’t hold my breath, either. However, I will hold out hope that those of us who are making efforts to educate ourselves and raise our intersectional consciousness can expand, network, and work to educate the people who “don’t get it”. Because I think it’s happening, albeit slowly.

    What worries me is when I see people acting/believing against their own interests (anti-feminist female atheists being an all too common example) and not getting intersectionality at all. They’re free to believe what they want, but I feel they’re shortchanging themselves in regards to critical thinking and self-advocacy. And if that’s because the sexist and colonialist views of Hitchens or Dawkins are influencing them to think that way, it’s something we need to address, just as rape culture and consumer culture are things we need to address.

    Okay, I’m sorry if that turned into a rant… but this frustrates the me.

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