I generally agree with the range of issues Rob has mentioned on the different national and class uses of irony.
I too got lost reading the Hitchen's retort and the sentence Doug quotes made me stop too. I think the grammar though can, slowly, be parsed.
I think the irony is probably a deliberate smokescreen of camp hinting at bisexuality without *necessarily* implying anything that could be pinned down about homosexuality or homophobia.
I skimmed on and did not re-read. My impression, and I am likely to be even more critical of a fellow countryman who like me, likes irony, is that he is a narcissist selling his pen in the name of a higher moral virtue, made bearable by wit. I could not detect anything marxist in his approach.
The question is whether his political stance merits gaze, male or female.
The politics of substance is about off-the-record briefings by governments to the press. This may involve exploiting friendships and emotional intimacies. Hitchens presents himself as a brightly winking star in what is a much larger political constellation, which we should not lose sight of.
Chris Burford
London