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Merged Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

Cain said:
I caught a snippet of a debate where he criticized an opponent for attacking a military that provided a blanket of security so we could have free speech,
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Care to post that debate? Because the only one I can think of is:



Which isn't quite the same thing you're talking about.
 
I find it interesting that people actually expect people to be perfect. I like FDR, yet FDR trampled the constitution and committed crimes against humanity when he locked up the Japanese. Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus.

There are no perfect people.
 
ok this cheered me up a bit...are any of you familiar with tumblr? haha

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“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

— Christopher Hitchens
 
IDB87 said:
Care to post that debate? Because the only one I can think of is:



Which isn't quite the same thing you're talking about.
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That's not it. He was seated, debating someone, moderator in the middle.

And RandFan: I don't think anyone expects anyone to be perfect, but some counterbalance is in order. A correction. I'm still a fan. Somewhat. I read his column when I read Slate. I remember in Letters to a Young Contrarian when he said avoid identity politics (though as Cockburn said, he was a flagwagger, in love with "us versus them" rather than "me versus everybody"). He was critical of Elie Wiesel.

When I subscribed to The Nation in the late 90s, I would read his column right after Katha Pollitt (why doesn't she get any praise? She's witty. ).

But for the past decade he kept insisting his most important issue right up until the end is re-engineering the middle east via American empire. Good call, dude.
 
aviolet4u said:
“Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realise that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.”

— Christopher Hitchens
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Reminded me of this quote, only just found out who it's by:

“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”
― Terry Pratchett
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Cleon said:

The subject of this thread is Christopher Hitchens, not whether there is an afterlife, a God, many Gods, or two and a half Gods with a side order of bacon. We have an entire forum for that stuff.

Please keep it on-topic.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Cleon
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Ok got it, no mention of God/god is allowed in this thread. How about cancer, is that allowed?
 
trustbutverify said:
You're certainly entitled to your opinion, but I consider Cockburn to be a racist, sexist self serving douchebag and Counterpunch to be Stormfronts leftist sister.

I admired and liked Hitch- and mourn his passing. There were plenty of things not to like about him and I have no problem having those things pointed out. The fact that a trivial gasbag like Cockburn is doing it is repulsive.
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Okay, let's assume that Alexander Cockburn is not just a racist, sexist self-serving douchebag who edits Stormfront's leftist sister rag but a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, a paedophile and a strangler of kittens and bunnie rabbits who doesn't wash his underpants and has garlic breath on top of anything and everything else that is vile and deplorable in this world that you can possibly think of.

Now that we have that out of the way, what is wrong with what Cockburn actually wrote?
 
angrysoba said:
Okay, let's assume that Alexander Cockburn is not just a racist, sexist self-serving douchebag who edits Stormfront's leftist sister rag but a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, a paedophile and a strangler of kittens and bunnie rabbits who doesn't wash his underpants and has garlic breath on top of anything and everything else that is vile and deplorable in this world that you can possibly think of.

Now that we have that out of the way, what is wrong with what Cockburn actually wrote?
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Read my post again carefully.

Also- my opinion of Cockburn is based on decades of reading his stuff from The Village Voice through Counterpunch. You are free to disagree with my view, but I didn't form this opinion by concocting a list of cartoonish attributes representing the worst characteristics "I could possibly think of".

Finally- if Richard Dawkins died from a horrible disease and Alex Jones wrote an obit trashing him, employing all the usual and predictable talking points of his ilk, it would irritate me not because of my agreement or disagreement with any particular component of his "brilliant" commentary. Not because he didn't have the "right" to express his stumbling self-congratulatory postmortem. But because I would would be disgusted by a half-witted bigoted blowhard taking it upon himself to sum up the life of a man who's shoes he was not qualified to tie.
 
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trustbutverify said:
Read my post again carefully.
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I've read it a few times now. If you had written it more carefully I would be able to discern more than an ad hominem attack and a deflection from the point that Cockburn raised some important objections to some of the things Hitchens did and wrote.

Now would you be able to state your actual intent in writing that post or am I going to receive another non-response and/or admonition for an imagined lack of reading ability?
 
JihadJane said:
Maybe I should have said 9/11 (rather than Iraq), the event that pushed the old Trotskyist into the arms of George Bush and the crazed neocons, from one extreme to the other, "with no intervening period of sanity" - not an uncommon trajectory for privileged "socialists" in the UK imbued with macho delusions of military glory and hungry for the approval and the trappings of respectability.

He died with much blood on his alcoholic hands. Strange how some people here regard alcoholism as living life to the full.

There are some interesting insights into what motivated his political beliefs in this May 2010 interview:

'Christopher Hitchens: 'I was right and they were wrong'
From hero of the left to neocon turncoat, and still battling on: Christopher Hitchens talks to Decca Aitkenhead about old arguments and his new memoir'

""""In 2006, Hitchens' wife, the American writer Carol Blue, told the New Yorker her husband was one of "those men who were never really in battle and wished they had been. There's a whole tough-guy, 'I am violent, I will use violence, I will take some of these people out before I die' talk, which is key to his psychology – I don't care what he says. I think it is partly to do with his upbringing."

Is there any truth in what his wife said? He pauses for a second. Then, unexpectedly: "Yeah. Yes. One of the things I've realised, writing the book, is that it has to be true."""""
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Hitchens thought the Iraqi people were being brutalized for decades and that something should have been done about it. He supported the war for that reason alone from what I've gleaned. You make it seem like he became a die hard believer of GW Bush who advocated anything he did.
 
trustbutverify said:
Read my post again carefully.

Also- my opinion of Cockbutt is based on decades of reading his stuff from The Village Voice through Counterpunch. You are free to disagree with my view, but I didn't form this opinion by concocting a list of cartoonish attributes representing the worst characteristics I "could possibly think of".
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Oh, I see you have now edited your post to add your personal reasons for disliking Cockburn. It's strange that I have already conceded to you that Cockburn is evil incarnate and even improved on your description of him yet you are still incapable of answering a direct question.

What is wrong with what Cockburn actually wrote?
 
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