Thursday, December 15, 2011

Christopher Hitchens. Gone.

Never met him but, oh, how I wish I had. He will live on in ways I don't think even he could imagine.

4 comments:

Edstock said...

Right or wrong, he made you think. And that wonderful, mellifluous voice, now silent.

geoff said...

Alexander Cockburn has a great obit up on his former colleague. Hitchens seems not to have been look at with veneration by those close to him who knew what he had done to others. Me, I've never gotten over his gleeful celebrating of genocides, he liked, as good & necessary feature of what he called the progress of civilization.

http://j.mp/rOYIuz

Smartpatrol said...

Did he ever get around to apologizing to the Dixie Chicks?

Carmichael said...

Fuck no. The asshole never apologized to anyone. Ever.

I've known a number of guys like Hitchens.

Usually Scots or Irish as opposed to English. From a working class background and well educated. Graduated well but pissed off that they did now that a few years have passed.

Doing well but not necessarily in the field they originally thought they wanted. Across the board with very high language skills and not the least bashful about displaying them.

Angry at their backgrounds for not preparing them to become successful and at at the same time angry that they are becoming successful. Pissed off at having been poor and just as pissed off that they don't know how to handle having money.

Still raging at people who ignored them 20 or 30 years ago and all primed to rage at people they've just met because they'll probably ignore them too.

Happy to get into anyone's face about anything at all because principles aren't anywhere near as interesting to them as confrontation and aggression.

Articulate, well dressed, prosperous yobbos in other words.

And just for the record he had no interest in making anyone think.

He only wanted people to react.

Didn't care for him and won't miss him.