• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Merged Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

aviolet4u said:
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/christopher-hitchens-slideshow-201112#slide=1

He was handsome.
Click to expand...

That he was. I recall from the pictures in Hitch-22 that his father was also extremely handsome, and his mother was very beautiful.

Actually, he was good looking even in older years, though the overweight did not exactly suit him well, and the years of cigarettes and alcohol seemed to have taken their toll. Look at this photo for instance: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XqUnk0CGY3o/Tda0kIjovxI/AAAAAAAAE50/0255l1TsQ8s/s1600/hitch22.jpg (yeah, the beard is pretty terrible).


And I say this as a straight male.
 
I already miss him, can't believe there won't be any new youtube videos of someone getting "hitchslapped" :(
 
Last edited:
Travis said:
So no more juicy youtube debates where he makes some religious nut look like an imbecile.
Click to expand...

Not that his opponents made it all that hard.

MoeFaux said:
I mourn.
Click to expand...

Ditto, this.

tim said:
I am deeply saddened by the loss of an intellectual giant. Mr Hitchens was not one to suffer fools gladly and many a person has felt the lashing of his tongue. That said, his lifestyle was not one that exactly promoted longevity.
Let it be said that he was never, ever, boring!
Click to expand...

True, but most importantly, he was accurate.

Foster Zygote said:
The first I knew of Christopher Hitchens was an appearance on Politically Incorrect years ago. I found him terribly offensive because he was savaging Mother Teresa, of whom I knew only the popular mythology regarding her mission. After I looked into Mother Teresa in more detail and read Hitchen's book The Missionary Position, my opinions of both Hitchens and Mother Teresa were altered considerably.

Thank you Mr. Hitchens. Your life was shorter than it should have been, but you spent it well.
Click to expand...

I went through this, too. Scary business, that. It does alter your mindset considerably.

MaGZ said:
I heard--I think it was on an old interview of his on C-SPAN--that he had a Jewish grandmother from the Ukraine. Can anyone confirm this?
Click to expand...

Wow. At no point did this have any bearing on anything of any particular consequence.

You're 10 for 10, MaGZ.
 
When I said this man helped me, I meant that he triggered what it is to be a free human with his ideas and words, and helped break the control of cult religion expertly. This is an example. Linked to the part I mean in "The Best of the Hitch slap"
 
TubbaBlubba said:
That he was. I recall from the pictures in Hitch-22 that his father was also extremely handsome, and his mother was very beautiful.

Actually, he was good looking even in older years, though the overweight did not exactly suit him well, and the years of cigarettes and alcohol seemed to have taken their toll.
Click to expand...

I understand he lived his life to the fullest on his terms. His father died of cancer and yet he didn't take any precautions. I had a professor who reminded me of him. He smoked cigars, drank, was overweight (over 250 lbs) and in his sixties at the time. He would say his father lived till his 90's smoking cigars so he had no worries. :rolleyes: He was intellectual- brash, witty, articulate as well. I was always intimidated, no doubt would've felt the same if I'd met Hitchens.
 
Last edited:
angrysoba said:
It would be boring if there were no dissenters from the mourning of Hitchens.

I am sure that he wouldn't want a Princess Diana-style gush-a-thon and Hitchens and Cockburn had long since ceased being civil to each other.

Cockburn hated Hitchens not just for his loud support of the war but his active denigration of those who opposed it, branding the opposition to the war as "objectively pro-fascist". Also, he hated him for what Cockburn considered attention-seeking attacks on Edward Said, which began when Said was on his death-bed. Cockburn thought this was a betrayal of one of his mentors and he thought Hitchens betrayed a number of other friends and mentors that had assisted his career.

I think Cockburn has some fair points, in fact, and his obituary is not as snide as some of the other things Cockburn wrote about Hitchens when he was alive.
Click to expand...

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.
 
Last edited:
"I think...if you look at [Cockburn's] journalism, he would rightly be proud of saying that he's often written counter-obituaries of people who have been overpraised and has chosen precisely the moment when there's a lot of sentimental garbage being published to say, 'come on, this guy wasn't so great!'

-- Christopher Hitchens, apparently making some awesomely meta pre-posthumous point about Cockburn's obituary of him.

(I think Cockburn is a douche and Hitchens was great, but this quote is just hilarious in this context)
 
cambion said:
"I think...if you look at [Cockburn's] journalism, he would rightly be proud of saying that he's often written counter-obituaries of people who have been overpraised and has chosen precisely the moment when there's a lot of sentimental garbage being published to say, 'come on, this guy wasn't so great!'

-- Christopher Hitchens, apparently making some awesomely meta pre-posthumous point about Cockburn's obituary of him.

(I think Cockburn is a douche and Hitchens was great, but this quote is just hilarious in this context)
Click to expand...

Great find.
 
Book TV gives Hitch an hour and a half in prime time Saturday night. An interview discussing Hitch 22 and a debate with David Berlinski.
http://www.booktv.org/schedule.aspx
Both segments should be availible on-line (at least for Americans).

Tony said:
Goodbye Mr. Hitchens, you've touched my life live no other.

ETA: I just read that he passed away at the same place as my mom here in Houston. That is surreal.
Click to expand...

M.D. Anderson works miracles, but even they can't save everybody.
 
Sword_Of_Truth said:
Hitchens died of cancer.
Click to expand...

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."""""
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom