FALLEN IDOL
A PROTEGE of Vanity Fair's Christopher ("Hellbound") Hitchens says his formerly fun friend has turned into a "smug, nasty scold." In a Minneapolis City Pages piece reminiscent of the screeds Hitchens has written attacking his own ex-pal, Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal, Dennis Perrin writes that he misses the man who would routinely scream at bartenders for playing Cat Stevens and would likely have praised the Dixie Chicks for standing up to "our Dear Leader" rather than calling them "[bleep]ing fat slags." Perrin once considered Hitchens "my mentor, more or less," but says now "I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead," while his TV appearances "show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him."