Protégé Says Hitchens Has Become "A Coarser Version of Podhoretz"

From:
Obit For A Former Contrarian

Image: ERICA BLAIR


A friend and protégé tries to make sense of what's happened to Christopher Hitchens

by Dennis Perrin


http://www.citypages.com/databank/24/1179/article11370.asp


I can barely read him anymore. His pieces in the Brit tabloid The Mirror and in Slate are a mishmash of imperial justifications and plain bombast; the old elegant style is dead. His TV appearances show a smug, nasty scold with little tolerance for those who disagree with him. He looks more and more like a Ralph Steadman sketch. And in addition to all this, he's now revising what he said during the buildup to the Iraq war.

In several pieces, including an incredibly condescending blast against Nelson Mandela, Hitch went on and on about WMD, chided readers with "Just you wait!" and other taunts, fully confident that once the U.S. took control of Iraq, tons of bio/chem weapons and labs would be all over the cable news nets--with him dancing a victory jig in the foreground. Now he says WMD were never a real concern, and that he'd always said so. It's amazing that he'd dare state this while his earlier pieces can be read at his website. But then, when you side with massive state power and the cynical fucks who serve it, you can say pretty much anything and the People Who Matter won't care.

Currently, Hitch is pushing the line, in language that echoes the reactionary Paul Johnson, that the U.S. can be a "superpower for democracy," and that Toms Jefferson and Paine would approve. He's also slammed the "slut" Dixie Chicks as "fucking fat slags" for their rather mild critique of our Dear Leader. He favors Bush over Kerry, and doesn't like it that Kerry "exploits" his Vietnam combat experience (as opposed to, say, re-election campaign stunts on aircraft carriers).

Sweet Jesus. What next? I'm afraid my old mentor is not the truth-telling Orwell he fancies himself to be. He's becoming a coarser version of Norman Podhoretz.

you missed a great expose of Hitchens, who used to be a good friend of Blumenthal's. The guy hates Clinton yet left his first wife when she was 8 months' pregnant.

I already suspected Hitchens was scum, but Blumenthal filled in the picture.

There's no question that there's been something very wrong with the Hitch for the past five years or so. At first he lost sight of the principles he held dear and started attacking personalities with a blind fury. Then with 9/11 he seemed to morph into this "guardian of Western ideals" and embraced all the evil methods perpetrated by others who thought of themselves that way--including Dubya.

You wonder these days if he even recognizes himself in what he wrote in the 80s and 90s.

Once upon a time, he really was a witty writer who knew how to turn a phrase.

that is all there is to it.

I think corruption of the brain, vision, liver, etc. have more to do with it.

I am not kidding. It's like watching a train wreck in slo-mo and it's a tragedy.

fellow barfly?