>Admittedly I was foaming at the mouth when I melodramatically opined that
>Hitchens is a "shabby palace intrigue journalist." I am ill-acquainted with
>his complete oeuvre, including his columns for _the Nation_.
>Nonetheless, in my
>view, in his relentess bashing of the Clinton myth (including especially
>his notorious support for Clinton's impeachment) he has been far too
>incautious about aiding and abetting reactionary social forces who are
>opposed to even the meager norms of bourgeois parliametary democracy and
>civil liberties (not that Clinton's record is anything to boast about).
>Also, in a recent interview w/
>Hitchens (I forget the source, perhaps I saw it here on lbo-talk), he claimed
>that he no longer identified himself as a "man of the left," implying somehow
>that "the left" and corporate liberalism were one and the same. Someone once
>pointed out that both Hitchens and Cockburn (despite their differences), much
>as they are right-on in their critique of decadent and bankrupt corporate
>liberalism, romanticize the revolutionary potential of U.S. populism and see
>libertarian socialists in-the-making when they should actually be
>seeing racist
>lynch mobs and ardent defenders of "self-earned" property. (Jeezus, is that
>our range of choices ? Identify with the National Wildlife Federation or the
>militia
>movement ?)
>
>Also, what gets my goat about Hitchens (please correct me if I'm wrong) is
>that he's fundamentally part of that inside-the-Beltway crowd he demagogically
>disdains -- e.g. his schmoozing interviews with Chris Matthews. Kind of like
>"anti-globalist" hippie kids whose parents are tax attorneys with 401K plans.
At least Gore Vidal is kinda funny when he does his "palace intrigue" gossip thing -- besides he has a far more enlightened view on such topics as abortion & sexuality than Hitchens.
***** Christopher Hitchens may actually be more in tune with the communitarian bent of post-New Deal liberalism in his critique of pro-choice philosophy. Hitchens caused an uproar among readers and staffers of The Nation in 1989 when he published an article in which he observed with approval that more and more of his colleagues were questioning whether "a fetus is `only' a growth in, or appendage to, the female body." While supporting abortion in some cases, he insisted that society has a vital interest in restricting it. <http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/95sep/abortion/abortion.htm> *****
Yoshie