[Znet has some interesting speculations on which of these superannuated shockjocks, Hitchens or Cockburn, is the more egregious bunko artist:]
Fetters of the Old Contrarians by Charles Demers; May 24, 2007
Over the past few weeks, progressive writers such as the Guardian’s George Monbiot have attempted to engage Counterpunch editor and Nation columnist Alexander Cockburn’s provocative writing on the subject of human-caused climate change. Wrongly presupposing that his argument denying man-made global warming comes “from the left” (or, for that matter, from any particular politics whatsoever), these writers have missed a problem that goes beyond Cockburn or any particular political issue, but rather goes to the heart of the hollow, contrarian parlour tricks that invariably come along with a certain brand of charismatic journalism predicated on personality.
Regular readers of Cockburn’s Counterpunch know that among his favourite targets are the blogosphere (referred to routinely as the “blathersphere,” though discernable from Counterpunch only in that most blogs have far fewer typos), Christopher Hitchens, and now the pointy-headed “grant farmers” of climate science who defy logic and bend backwards to justify their continued employment. The contempt which Cockburn reserves for those who use the space provided by internet ersatz-journalism to natter impotently ad infinitum, or for those who resort to intellectual gymnastics and petty theatrics to keep themselves in work, comes off as a combination of projected self-loathing and, in the case of Christopher Hitchens, professional jealousy. After all, Hitchens is a writer who has done much of what Cockburn has tried to do – which is to say he’s punctuated a vague association to left-wing politics with ‘wacky,’ ‘out-there,’ ‘telling-it-like-it-is’ rightist stunts and postures aimed at improving the salability of books and columns (the best assessment of this tendency of “maverick unpredictability”, to which I’m deeply indebted, is Norman Finkelstein’s ‘On Christopher Hitchens’) – to infinitely greater effect, wealth, popularity and influence than has Cockburn. Whether writing against equal marriage, espousing lunatic politics that require a complete ignorance of the dynamics of racial violence in America – such as defending militias or, more recently, the posse as an instrument of popular justice – Cockburn has yet to attain anything approaching the notoriety of his anti-choice, pro-NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, pro-War on Terror fellow British ex-pat, who just this week received another gushing assessment of his contrarianism in the New York Times review of his book God is Not Great. ...
Getting beyond this hollow, theatrical contrarianism and into a realm of real, good-faith debate will require overhauling the way that writers, especially political writers, make their living. Perhaps the left critique of professional politicians – who despite the best of intentions tend to become empty shells, enslaved to the prerequisites for maintaining a social and political position abstracted from society at large, cushioned from the drudgery of daily work routines – ought to be turned against the very people who’ve been mounting it all these years.
<http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=57&ItemID=12895>
[BTW, Norman Finkelstein’s essay "On Christopher Hitchens" is indeed insightful. Excerpt:]
... [T]he élan with which Hitchens has shed his past and, spewing venom, the brio with which he savages former comrades is a genuine wonder to behold. No doubt he imagines it is testament to the mettle of his conviction that past loyalties don't in the slightest constrain him; in fact, it's testament to the absence of any conviction at all. ... The famous aphorism quoted by him that nations have no permanent allies, only permanent interests, might be said to apply, mutatis mutandis, to himself as well. Indeed, his description of a psychopath -- "incapable of conceiving an interest other than his own and perhaps genuinely indifferent to the well-being of others" -- comes perilously close to a self-portrait. To discover our true human nature, Freud once wrote, just reverse society's moral exhortations: if the Commandment says not to commit adultery, it's because we all want to. This simple game can be played with Hitchens as well: when he avows, "I attempt to write as if I did not care what reviewers said, what peers thought, or what prevailing opinion might be," one should read, "My every word is calculated for its public effect." ...
<http://www.normanfinkelstein.com/article.php?pg=4&ar=6>
Carl
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