22nd Jun 2004
Christopher Hitchens, My Hero
I think I’m turning into the old Elizabeth Spiers. Not only do I want to marry Jonathan Franzen, but I’m thinking about taking up stalking Christopher Hitchens as well.
The guy’s liberal credentials are unimpeachable and his intellect is simply so far out there it’s creepy. Yet, like me, he’s morphed into some weird new kind of liberal foreign policy hawk. Please, someone, buy me all of his books for Christmas (since you just missed my birthday).
And, as if I didn’t love him enough already, in this Slate piece he tears Michael Moore a new one so wide you could just give Moore a gentle poke and his whole blubbery mass would just snap insideout, his stupid, greasy baseball cap landing gently on top. It’s really must-read stuff.
Also, while you’re at it, listen to an interview with the Wise One on the Brian Lehrer Show yesterday on why the war in Iraq is still a good idea, among other topics.
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Chrismas?
(Sorry, dude, but I’m in last place in the great Nazi Proofreader spelling points. I need to catch up to Steve and Olivier.)
As an aside, I read the Slate piece, too and thought it was phenomenal. Personally, I object to Michael Moore being elevated to the role of poster child for the left’s conscience. Even though I didn’t agree 100% with the Slate piece, I do agree that Michael Moore needs to be taken down a few pegs for his intellectual dishonesty.
Yeah, “Chrismas” didn’t look right to me, either. Oh well.
Rick,
I love your blog as much as I do you, but I must point out that politically you’re becoming a tad eccentric in your old age. As a native of a real liberal/social democratic country, your politics and Hitchens’ politics are not liberal, and the designation “liberal hawk” is an oxymoron as preposterous as “military intelligence.”
Mr. Hitchens is indeed a smart man, and a skilled wordsmith and reading his copy is always a pleasure. But he is drunk a lot. Moore may not have such a fine excuse for his wilder assertions, but he does make a few worthy points — Why does it take a fringe film maker from Flint to hammer away at the business relationship between the Bush and bin Laden families, particulary since the terrorist scion of the latter obviously has access to the family fortune to fund his attacks? (If Whitewater, an insignificant real estate investment that spilled not one drop of blood, was worthy of almost weekly headlines for years, why wasn’t this? And isn’t it somewhat interesting that the bin Laden family was still doing business with the elder Bush and the Carlyle Group after 9/11, an attack clearly funded through al-Qaeda’s access to the bin Laden fortune?) On to Iraq, given the fact the Bush administration’s stated premise for going to war in Iraq (WMDs) was based on clear misrepresentations (there were no WMDs), how can anyone now say the administration’s pro-war lobby (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolf., etc.) did not have ulterior motives (oil, wrong-headed strategic vision for US in the Mideast, whatever), and that going to war in Iraq was a good idea?
Hitchens is right in his Slate piece. Americans don’t need Moore to tell them that poor folks and African American folks join the army because they are poor and black. But I don’t think Moore was wrong in reminding everyone that they — and not columnists, bloggers, or liberal hawks — are the ones doing the dying in this conflict.
John:
Your almost sophmoric views of what liberalism means is something that you should vastly re-think. Or do you really believe that no war is ever worth fighting?
The will to fight / liberal is not (and never was) considered mutually exclusive ideas. Many of the anti-war crowd adopted those ideas in the 60’s and 70’s. However, that crowd has now become a parody of itself and no one - either on the left or the right - takes their ideas serious.
As for your “ulterior motives (ie. oil)” regarding the administrations foreign policy - you should note that while adolescents are often permitted to view the world in conspiratorial terms, it becomes a crutch when an adult reflexively utilizes it.
The continual use of the ‘conspiratorial view of history’ is more of a sign of psuedo-intelluctualism combined with a cowards heart for the truth. It bucks you up, I’m sure, to think that this is all about ‘oil’ because then you don’t have to face your moral own relativism, and have that conflict with the your own glorious self-portrait.