"Fearlessly challenged moral, religious hypocrisy"? Are we talking about the same Christopher Hitchens?

"For the last 10 years of his life he was a profoundly bad man."

-- Ian Welsh, in "RIP Christopher Hitchens"

by Ken

Like a lot of people of a liberal persuasion, I was excited by Christopher Hitchens, who died Thursday following an evidently grueling battle with esophogeal cancer, when he first burst on the American punditocratic scene. (If memory serves correctly, I first encountered him when Alexander Cockburn tapped him to fill in for him while he was writing the Village Voice "Press Clips" column. Or was it his Nation column? It was certainly my impression that Cockburn did a lot to pave the way for his "friend" into left-wing media circles. I have a feeling he came to regret that championing.)

There was obviously a spectacular mind at play, and a refreshing pugnacity in the face of received wisdom. Alas, somewhere along the line that refreshing outsider's combativeness turned to insider's self-promotion. No, it was worse than that. It wasn't just self-aggrandizement, it was a willingness, even eagerness to promote -- using that same old take-no-prisoners pugnaciousness -- truly evil causes and ends. I look, for example, at this WaPo headline: "Christopher Hitchens dies at 62: Sharp-tongued writer fearlessly challenged moral, religious hypocrisy," and shake my head. "Fearlessly challenged moral, religious hypocrisy"? Yes, I guess he liked to continue promoting that image, but if it was ever true, it was pretty well dead and buried before he was.

This is a controversy that's been lavishly controverted by now, but you hate to see it pass uncontested at obituary time. I wasn't surprised to find Ian Welsh having much the same reaction.

RIP Christopher Hitchens
2011 DECEMBER 16

by Ian Welsh

I was going to keep my mouth shut, but the hagiography is making me hurl. Yes, he was a good writer. Yes, when he was young he seemed to want atrocities to stop. After 9/11, however, he realized that people like him could die senselessly and became an apologist for an unprovoked war (the same war crime the US hung Germans for) and for torture. Atrocities were ok to protect lily-livered upper class white people like himself.

Christopher Hitchens helped make the world you live in, the one most of my readers spend time complaining about. As a prominent ex-lefty he was very useful to the powers that be in excusing their policies.

Also a quick note to my atheist friends. Because someone is an atheist does not mean they are in any way, shape or form a good person or someone who has made the world a better place. Richard Dawkins is a noxious human being and was before he defended an inappropriate pass. Hitchens was a war crimes apologist.

If there is life after death, I hope Hitchens is treated kindly, because I don’t believe in torture. But for the last 10 years of his life he was a profoundly bad man.

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