>I'm a fan of alcohol myself, so this is not coming from some
>temperance type. But Hitchens drinks enormous amounts of booze.
>Monumental. I really think it's damaged his brain. It's not a moral
>issue, it's a physiological one.
I’m a fan of the grape, the barley sandwich and the fermented oatmeal too, but I can see Thomas' point, it does sound like I'm engaging in ad hominem attacks. But I think his drinking is a legitimate thing to raise.
In addition to Doug's point about his prodigious consumption, when you turn up at speaking engagements and on talk shows carrying a drink and/or you're obviously bagged at said engagements, and when you insist that your drinking has nothing to do with how you perform, cogitate, or the content of what you're saying, it's an issue.
Hitchens creeped me out when he was on the left, but he seems to have reached new levels of petty vindictiveness and intellectual dishonesty that weren’t there when he was on the left. From personal experience I've seen enough 'high functioning' alcoholics to recognize the signs in someone, even over the toob. Again to echo Doug's point, when you consume the way he does and act the way he does, it starts to become a plausible part of the explanations for behaviour.
PC
N P Childs
'I'm Mister Bad Example, the stranger in the dirt, I like to have a good time and I don't care who gets hurt'.
-Mr. Bad Example, W Zevon