>Well, some of you here have known him personally, and
>so perhaps I should just cede the point. However, it
>occurs to me, when I hear about how his drinking is to
>blame for his recent behavior, that this is a far too
>facile explanation. It reminds me of all the jokes
>about how stupid Bush is, as if the current US policy
>were just the sound and fury of an idiot.
No it's not the whole explanation by any means. But if you built a multivariable model to explain the decline of Hitchens, booze would have a very respectable t-statistic.
Doug