Things we learn from Christopher Hitchens’s new column:
1) A woman who opposes the Libya venture “disqualif[ies] herself from any consideration for high office” by opposing the Libya venture.
2) It is possible to want to stay the course in Afghanistan, as Bachmann does, while still being an exemplar of “isolationism.”
3) People who grow up in small towns don’t “know about laboratories, drones, trade cycles, and polychrome conurbations both here and overseas”; by implication, people who grow up elsewhere do.
4) If he had not grown up in a small town, John Edwards would not have “fallen so abjectly” for Rielle Hunter.
5) It is possible to assail others as bumpkins while asserting that Edwards had never previously strayed.
Quaddafy is a threat to Europe's southern flank and if Bachmann doesn't realize it, yada, yada... Yikes. Hitchens is off the rails on this one. You could almost believe he isn't aware that 'Europe' clamors for the US war machine in Libya because the UK and France import most of their oil from there and have allowed their own military strength and spending to wane because the US always rides to their rescue. Almost believe....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLibya is a threat to Europe???
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSince when?
I think he means its teeming masses are a threat.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYeah, funny how "war for oil" roils the leftists when it's OUR oil consumption at issue, but they will gladly risk American lives and treasure for Europe's.
Truly, it is US they despise, and Hitchens has proved it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnyone who uses the term "polychrome conurbation" in a serious context suffers from kaleidoscopic verbocination.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, this is Christopher Hitchens we're talking about. In his defense, he was probably drunk when he wrote it.
Generally, anything written by him either before 7:00am or after 10:30am can safely be ignored.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe's a terrific writer, but if you could transform the books of, say, Margaret Wise Brown into a pill, and turn it into something like literary cholesterol medicine, he should be prescribed some.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMB's husband runs a clinic so I'm quite convinced, call me crazy, that she knows a thing or two about laboratories, despite being from a "small town".
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAs for the "polychromatic" slander, Chris is basically stating that because MB grew up in a small town she's a cracker unexposed to minorities (the "polychromatics"). As for misunderstanding "trade cycles" MB has been in favor of trading treaties whereas Obama and his fellow democrats have sat on their hands, and are dissing the polychromatic conurbations of our foreign allies.
How do we know Edwards never previously "strayed" given how the liberal media did everything it could to spike the Reille Hunter story for months? And if MB disqualified herself from the Presidency for opposing the Libyan misadventure, then why didn't Obama and all his democrat allies disqualify themselves from opposing the Iraqi War and declaring defeat in Afghanistan?
Hitchens is a dishonest progressive (redundant).
Whose principles are more critiqued here, Democrat or Republican? Even as Democrats chortle as Hitchens' take-down of the loathed Bachman, they are reading that a President should notice that American security is entwined with remote and dusty characters like Qaddafi, and that pitting the expense of putting down terrorists against domestic needs is cowardly and stupid.
It shouldn't take much imagination to connect those principles to the positions on the budget currently taken by certain prominent politicians.
It seems to me that Hitchens now weighs the use of his time very carefully. He has spent a great of time and turmoil, and lost many friends, opposing fascism as he sees it. I think he's earned a more thoughtful hearing than this, and never mind the unkindness to a GOP celebrity.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe lost those friends because he is a hateful man who lashes out at anyone who disagrees with his vision of the world ... he's is and has always been nothing but a journalist ... with a biting wit yes ... but a vicious dog of a man if you cross him ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't care who he attacks, right or left, he has lost it ...
His rant sounds ignorant and pompous, regardless of how yo may view his other rants. He often merely sounds like an angry man, no matter how astute he may be on a particular subject. I stopped following his writing a couple of years ago because it was hard to discern his anger from his rational.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHITCHENS. Not SULLIVAN.
H-I-T-C-H-E-N-S.
In a world too full of predictable rationalizers, I'm prepared to make wide allowances for someone following a train of thought. But then I think Hitchens doesn't need allowances as you would think.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"He has spent a great of time and turmoil, and lost many friends, opposing fascism **as he sees it**."
Has he gone blind? He's missed its most glaring examples: Japan and the urban leftists in America.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat else is to be expected from gray matter addled by immersion in scotch and Trotsky
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHitchens cannot be expected to rationally discuss anyone who is religious ... ever ... his religious hatred blinds him ... he is not an atheist, his is a hatred disconnected from rational discourse ...
hatred like his does eat away at your soul and your will to live ... in his case he is simply speeding up his own demise ...
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseRamesh,
Surely the crack by Scott Wilson about his drinking is a joke? ad hominem aside, health wise he's in bad shape. I can't get too worked up about it. Chris has always been infuriating but I'm glad we've had him.
Steve
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCultural elitism at it's finest.
Is it any coincidence that those deeming themselves our intellectual superiors always reveal the true depths of their complete and utter ignorance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseApparently, superiority rots the brain.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh Hitch-Hitch-Hitch...your legendary implacability is becoming so contrived anymore.
I found his lesson on the make-up and character of Waterloo (a city about an hour north of where I grew up) especially precious in its conflation of pure arrogance and complete ignorance of the subject. While it's no center of the known universe, like say Portsmouth, it's hardly the isolated backwater berg he makes it out to be. He lost me there, so why challenge the rest of his absurd premise?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHope and Plains, two of the last Democrat brainiacs to win the presidency. And if Obama(where did he grow up?) is an example of someone who passes muster, heaven(sorry Hitch) help us.
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