[lbo-talk] My Letter To CH

[// ravi]

On Dec 20, 2011, at 2:36 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> On Dec 20, 2011, at 2:30 PM, // ravi wrote:
> 
>> Hitchens was a toff, a Lord. And the English-speaking world, it seems, still likes to love a Lord.
> 
> As more than one person has pointed out, he was from the "lower upper middle class" - he wasn't a lord. Thus the social climbing. A real aristocrat, like Cockburn, doesn't need to do all that climbing, and so can sit in Petrolia with a cockatiel on his shoulder. 
> 

I am guessing Galloway did not intend to capitalise “Lord” but used the word to mean upper crust in background or ambition or final station. For instance, see Wikipedia on “toff” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toff) which expands the description beyond aristocrats. In fact, one of the reasons I dislike Hitchens and find him a negative for the left (when he was part of it) is that he is the very opposite of Noam Chomsky (the latter's writing style, as hinted by shag, is not necessarily the best). Hitchens's reasoning is strong on puffery and light on logic. The ballyhooed style is not icing on sharp analysis but rather a subsitute. As someone (SA?) wrote, it’s fun to watch when the snotty treatment is meted out to a common enemy (D’Souza) but that’s about as good as it gets for me.

	—ravi