I sorta remember enjoying Hitchens years ago, when he was fun, though he was always a flyweight, I thought. Met the guy exactly once; he was quite charming on that occasion. Even after his conversion to Blimpery and hawkery, I found it difficult to get too worked up over him; he seemed like Exhibit A for the inconsequence of the 'public intellectual', an institution perhaps best compared with the public convenience.
Hitch's fellow Muslim-basher Dick Dawkins annoys me a lot more than Hitch ever did, for some reason; perhaps it's because of that smug sense of intellectual superiority he has. Hitch always clearly thought of himself as a clever fellow, but then he *was* a clever fellow; whereas Dawkins thinks he possesses a world-historical mind, when in fact he's as shallow as an oil slick.
Hitch's and Dawkins' demented frothings about Islam seem odder in the American context than in the British. A surprising number of otherwise tolerant, sophisticated, educated Brits come a bit unhinged on the subject. I wonder how far back this goes. To the siege of Khartoum? Or is it a more recent phenomenon, connected to the much-increased number of Muslims in England over the last, what, forty years? Has this development irritated into activity some long-dormant virus of Anglo-Saxon chauvinism and self-satisfaction?
> Anybody can win an argument when they're right. It takes a
> real artist to keep taking tricks when they're not.
In fact it's next to impossible to win an argument when you're right. Set against commonplace error, truth is as David to Goliath.
--
Michael J. Smith mjs at smithbowen.net http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org http://fakesprogress.blogspot.com http://cars-suck.org
"Everyone has his favorite passage from the Theodosian Code." -- M I Finley