Christopher Hitchens, a sharp-witted provocateur who used his formidable learning, biting wit and muscular prose style to skewer what he considered high-placed hypocrites, craven lackeys of the right and left, “Islamic fascists” and religious faith of any kind, died Thursday “from pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer,” according to Vanity Fair, the magazine for which Mr. Hitchens worked. He was 62.
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A brightly burning intellect, with a rapier-like wit. Hitch will be missed.
A loss for the world.I hope he wasn’t in too much pain.
I will now go and re-watch him and Stephen Fry take apart the Catholic church in that TV debate and drink to his memory.
A symbol of pure independence, no compromise and incredibly beautiful command of language.
You will live in our minds Hitch.
I will miss many of his qualities. This is a very sad day for me.
Terrible news, we’ve lost possibly the person with the greatest mastery of the English language.
http://someothersuckersparade.blogspot.com/2011/12/christopher-hitchens-1949-2011.html
Hitchens in his later years reminded me of Jeff Goldblum after his DNA got mashed up with that of a fly. A chimera whose good qualities were being destroyed by some sort of internal chemical imbalance. His support of the War in Iraq was the first sign of his downward spiral. At the end only his atheism remained of a brightly burning progressive intellect. Not enough to redeem his perfidy. I met Hitchens on several occasions in the 1970’s and was sad to see what became of him.
–bks
So how long before someone claims a death-bed conversion?
I think before 2012.
Hitchens is a reminder that “atheist” is as poor a predictor of people’s politics as “religious”. Bush supporting (despite Bush’s religious support), Muslim- hating, bogus- war cheerleader, he had travelled the path from extreme left to extreme right followed by so many of the self- adoring of his generation. He didn’t pause to examine sanity in mid- flight. He will not be missed.
“Hitchens is a reminder that “atheist” is as poor a predictor of people’s politics as “religious”
If you read he autobiography it was not a simple right swing. Hitchens was always aligned to leftist ideology. His Iraq view came I think, from arrogance. With good reason he thought Saddam was a tyrant, and he naively thought that the US could go in there and make things better. So he became part of the group that was urging action. I think he felt very let down by the complete lack of planning for after the invasion. Maybe leftist naivete?