weird Hitchens comments on Israel

[Peter K.]

>Na, he knows better. He just doesn't care.
>
>Apropos of the Hitch, in the current Nation, having "quit," he engages Katha Pollit in fruitless
discussion, and sneers at Chomsky for saying that (as he pararphrases it) al Quaida on a  bad day is
about as murderous as US foreign policy on a good day. That hasn't the Chomsky ring. In fact US
foreign policy on any given day is far more murderous than al Qaidas' worst day, as I am sure the
Noamster would point out with citations and heavy handed sarcasm. Once upon a time Hitch,w ould
knwos that too, would have cared as well. As Bob says these days:
>
>I used to care/But things have changed.
>
>jks

LA Times (Corporate Media, in other words Owned By The Man)
http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/showcase/la-et-rutten4dec04.story
By TIM RUTTON
Dec. 4, 2002
[clip]
The answer seems to be that the memory of all this has been laundered from respectable media
attention by Kissinger's carefully cultivated social and professional relationships with
taste-making journalists like Ted Koppel, Jim Lehrer and Tina Brown, who recently lionized the
ex-diplomat in one of her famously acerbic columns for the Times of London. At least that's the view
of Christopher Hitchens, who within hours of Kissinger's appointment published a damning outline of
his record in a column for the online magazine Slate.

Hitchens, who also is the author of a book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger" (Verso Books, 2001),
which controversially alleges that Kissinger should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity,
points to the way in which the onetime Nixon aide's rather thin academic credentials and
Mitteleuropean gravity have combined to make him a hyper-respectable uber-professorial presence on
programs like ABC's "Nightline" and PBS' "News Hour."

Kissinger's "biggest coup in life," said Hitchens, "is getting people like Koppel and Lehrer to
treat him like an impartial expert and to call him 'doctor' on the air." (Kissinger has a doctorate
and taught at Harvard before his government service.)

"If everyone in America with a degree like his was called 'doctor,' it would be like Heidelberg
under Bismarck," said Hitchens. "The fact is he was a mediocre academic with the ability to express
his views in a German accent, and if that impressed people in the Oval Office, perhaps it's no
wonder it also works in newsrooms.

"However, when the Ted Koppels of the world bestow their imprimatur on him, it's not like the
approval conferred by one of these rat-bag fruit bats on Fox Television. This seeps through the
media culture. And when reputation leads the media simply to accept someone at face value, as it has
now done with Kissinger, the elementary work of journalism just doesn't get done."
[clip]