Friday, March 16, 2018

Did someone mention Christopher Hitchens? Why yes they did.

from one article on his life by William Grimes, circa 2011.


Christopher Hitchens, a slashing polemicist in the tradition of Thomas Paine and George Orwell who trained his sights on targets as various as Henry Kissinger, the British monarchy and Mother Teresa, wrote a best-seller attacking religious belief, and dismayed his former comrades on the left by enthusiastically supporting the American-led war in Iraq, died on Thursday in Houston. He was 62.
The cause was pneumonia, a complication of esophageal cancer, Vanity Fair magazine said in announcing the death, at the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. Mr. Hitchens, who lived in Washington, learned he had cancerwhile on a publicity tour in 2010 for his memoir, “Hitch-22,” and began writing and, on television, speaking about his illness frequently.
“In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist,” Mr. Hitchens wrote in Vanity Fair, for which he was a contributing editor.
He took pains to emphasize that he had not revised his position on atheism, articulated in his best-selling 2007 book, “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything,” although he did express amused appreciation at the hope, among some concerned Christians, that he might undergo a late-life conversion.
He also professed to have no regrets for a lifetime of heavy smoking and drinking. “Writing is what’s important to me, and anything that helps me do that — or enhances and prolongs and deepens and sometimes intensifies argument and conversation — is worth it to me,” he told Charlie Rose in a television interview in 2010, adding that it was “impossible for me to imagine having my life without going to those parties, without having those late nights, without that second bottle.”
(reminds me of a photo on twitter of a supposed grown man, wearing a suit, holding a beer and then doing a face first plunge into a swimming pool)
Christopher Eric Hitchens was born on April 13, 1949, in Portsmouth, England. His father was a career officer in the Royal Navy and later earned a modest living as a bookkeeper.
Though it strained the family budget, Christopher was sent to private schools in Tavistock and Cambridge, at the insistence of his mother. “If there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,” he overheard his mother saying to his father, clinching a spirited argument.
He was politically attuned even as a 7-year-old. “I was precocious enough to watch the news and read the papers, and I can remember October 1956, the simultaneous crisis in Hungary and Suez, very well,” he told the magazine The Progressive in 1997. “And getting a sense that the world was dangerous, a sense that the game was up, that the Empire was over.”
Even before arriving at Balliol College, Oxford, Mr. Hitchens had been drawn into left-wing politics, primarily out of opposition to the Vietnam War. After heckling a Maoist speaker at a political meeting, he was invited to join the International Socialists, a Trotskyite party. Thus began a dual career as political agitator and upper-crust sybarite. He arranged a packed schedule of antiwar demonstrations by day and Champagne-flooded parties with Oxford’s elite at night. Spare time was devoted to the study of philosophy, politics and economics.


15 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:47 AM

    And? Anon 941 here

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  2. Anonymous12:04 PM

    Anon 941 here - are you a fan of Mr Hitchens is that why you are posting this ? What books of his have you read?

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  3. Anonymous12:13 PM

    When I typed in Christopher Hitchens in GOOGLE the 1st article written [besides wiki page(s) ]was this NY TIMES 2011 obituary written BY Food and entertainment critic Mr. Grimes. So, I probably just answered my own question if you infact had read anything of the volumes of books, CSPAN interviews or any other media of the late Mr Hitchens. I thankyou for reminding me that such intellectual existed not that long ago and how his voice is missed. Anon 941 here

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  4. Anonymous12:26 PM

    Gotta love those Trotskyites, right 941? That tradition has led to nothing but despotism and human misery.

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    1. Anonymous12:48 PM

      1905 the fight for representative parliament and fight for the Russian Douma of course failed, which lead to a decade long economic and political struggle tearing the country apart then leading into the 1st world war - devestation of country then Soviet Control under Lenin then Stalin etc .. horrible summation but just another reason to fund education so that all of history is learned. Anon 941 here

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  5. Anonymous12:31 PM

    Since we have turned the page to authors I like this book -anon 941here
    https://books.google.com/books?id=wkZZAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=de+tocqueville+on+town+meetings&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjkmoirofHZAhUMX60KHTnqDN4Q6AEINjAD#v=onepage&q&f=false

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  6. Anonymous1:00 PM

    Indoctrination of young children into the craven beliefs of the Left is not education. There's a book, "Illiberal Education" by Dinesh D'Souza that you may be able to read. But you'll need a dictionary, 941.

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    1. Anonymous1:31 PM

      Anonymous 1:00pm you should be involved with education , literature or books if you currently are not. I don’t know why you assume I may not be able to read a D’Souza book or why I would need a dictionary to do so . I suspect that your suggestion of needing a dictionary is because you needed one to complete that book. Anon 941

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  7. Anonymous1:08 PM

    Not a fan sorry. But you seem to know a lot of authors. Dinesh D’Souza is a man who makes conspiracy YouTube videos while he himself gets convicted for felonies for violating campaign finance laws. Why choose that author ? Why not Madison? Mills ? Interesting. Anon 941 here

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  8. Anonymous1:19 PM

    I will add that D’Souza’s pride I feel was his downfall ...his belief that he needs no critics to challenge his ethics or intellectual arguments. A shame rally because if he'd stayed humble and intellectually honest anyway D'Souza could have reached that peak of conservative respected intellectual in more what is now the fringe right wing trump sycophants. Anon 941 here

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    1. I do like to say, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, because that is what I believe !

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  9. Options as the say are not facts. Argument of ideas is needed but if one does not agree on a set of verifiable facts well - you have a problem.

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    1. Correction spelling * opionions

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    2. Jesus - opinions! Horrible! I do need a dictionary!!!!

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    3. However ,I should and no one else should be surprised at this point about facts . https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds/amp

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