Hitch's parting shot

[Peter K.]

Murdoch:
>Aside from a possible history of being a fair-weathered friend and betrayals, I don't really see
how Snitch was "helping" the left.  If you want to bring people to the left in the US, the way to
NOT do it is to put a pampered drunk looking English guy on C-SPAN ranting about how Mother Teresa
was a horrible person and that type of stuff.  Not that some far-out leftie rags shouldn't do
analysis, just like Chomsky analyzed coverage of Cambodia, then compared it to coverage of East
Timor.  But the manner in which he did it made him seem like a raving liberal nut.  He's said to be
a younger Gore Vidal in many ways, and that is apropos, as Vidal sometimes acts the same way,
although only sometimes.  The fact that the corporate media chooses to give them a wide audience
makes me somewhat suspicious.  I agree with Cockburn on Snitch's departure - good riddance to bad
rubbish.
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And yet, and yet, the piece the American left's flagship publication The Nation chose to run on the
anniversary of 9-11 about the left's reaction during the past year said Hitch was "the left's most
gifted polemicist."

Also, Hitchens is an incredibly loyal friend. Here's just one example.
Andrew Sullivan - who knows the left when he sees it - writes in today's London Times:
"The departure is notable because Hitchens is very much a man of the left. His most recent campaign
was an attempt to indict Henry Kissinger for war crimes. The last time I saw him, he walked out of a
dinner party in protest at a fellow guest’s disparagement of Edward Said, the leftist anti-Israel
historian. And Martin Amis has just denounced him for being tardy in his renunciation of Stalin’s
evil."

On the subject of Vidal, did anyone see his cameo in the movie _Igby Goes Down_?
I can't tell if I hated or kind of liked that movie. I went so far as to ask the always wise, always
funny  Heather Havrilesky of Rabbit Blog her opinion, but she hasn't blogged on
the subject.
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/24/01/ether-cassel.php

Peter