[lbo-talk] Hitch returns to 7th grade

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Apr 23 06:25:31 PDT 2003


I sent this to Christopher Hitchens yesterday afternoon:


>Christopher -
>
>It really saddened me to see you write and say these things recently:
>
>
>
>>In his responses, Hitchens mostly ignored the questions and went
>>for the laughs. The biggest came when he ridiculed Berkeley, where
>>he has been teaching, as "the world capital of absurd-istan."
>>Hitchens decided to milk the laughs: "I tell them about Saddam's
>>torture and fascism and genocide against the Kurds-they don't care.
>>So then I tell them that in 1991, Saddam set fire to the Kuwaiti
>>oil fields and filled the Gulf with burning oil. I tell them we
>>need to get Saddam to protect the sea otters and birds in the
>>Gulf-now I've got them on the run!" The audience went wild, and
>>Hitchens didn't try to conceal a self-satisfied grin.
>
>>I think we can be sure that the contract would not have gone to
>>some windmill-power concern run by Naomi Klein or the
>>anti-Starbucks Seattle coalition, in the hope of just blowing out
>>the flames or of extinguishing them with Buddhist mantras."
>
>If you want to go right and give private briefings at the White
>House, fine. But this is really low stuff. It's Limbaugh or O'Reilly
>material. I want to say it's way beneath you.

His response, timestamped 1:13 AM:


>But you'll get over it. Sadness is transient. By the way, you may be
>right that it's beneath me, but it's still well above you.



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