Quote of the Day

Matthew Yglesias calls out Christopher Hitchens for talking about the "war" he was "waging" or some such nonsense:

"Now say it with me: which war, exactly, was Hitchens waging? He's not waging a war at all, he's sitting at a desk writing magazine articles and Slate columns and drinking just like the rest of us. He isn't waging war, he's advocating that other people wage war. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but he's saying that part of the reason he's advocating that other people wage war is that he enjoys imagining himself as a warrior."

Not as bad as claiming that working on an election campaign may be equated with military service, but Hitch does have a horrible tendency to pretend he is a warrior (see pic). Dennis Perrin posted a story about Hitchens' tough-guy poses last year as well:

"Hitchens often played the butch card when I was around him, acting as if he might go off on any enemy, real or imagined, at a dime's drop. The funny thing was that Hitch was (and still appears to be) physically out of shape, wheezing when walking too fast down the street, his soft gut poking out of his cigarette-burned shirt. Unless he knew some kind of secret fighting system, or simply packed heat, this hardcore pose was patently ridiculous. But that came with the price of admission, and I went along, smiling and nodding my head."

Perrin continues on about Hitchens demanding some kind of martial arts demonstration, it's really worth reading. It's funny because I imagine that there's great deal that mainstream liberal Yglesias and much-more-radical Perrin would disagree about, but in their own ways they both have fingered Hitchens as a poseur.

Miscellany

Stuff I wanted to post on but didn't until now:

Apparently Christopher Hitchens once praised Saddam as the next Nasser. He has apparently neglected to mention this ever since he started calling for Saddam's ouster.

Bill O'Reilly perfects the homophobia version of Reefer Madness. It is, as you may have guessed, unsubstantiated.

Who cares about the Red Ensign? It has not been Canada's flag in something like fifty years. Nonetheless, the Conservatives seem bent on fetishizing it.

Karl the Grand Inquisitor

There is a section of Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov where one character tells a story about a church official (The Grand Inquisitor) whose interest in religion only goes to the extent that he can use it to control people.

In that sense it would seem that Karl Rove is the Grand Inquisitor, at least if you believe Christopher Hitchens and/or Wayne Slater. Whether Rove is agnostic, atheist, or something else, I think you have to put him in the non-believer column on this one. It certainly casts his attempts to get evangelicals to vote GOP in another light.

It's probable that this will simply add to the evangelical disillusionment with the GOP in the US.
Picture: Dostoevsky hadn't seen anything yet!