It’s not just the rote Hitchens-bashing. I’d react the same way in the case of a hate figure I feel less ambivalent about. A thorough and measured demolition of Michelle Malkin’s hypocrisies, yes; 100 comments offering minor variations on “Malkin is a lying bitch”, no. You may feel differently. And I’d enjoy a joke about Malkin. If it was a good joke.

I was aware of the earlier CT discussion you cite, Dr S. I thought of mentioning it in my initial comment, but “See how good you can do when you really try” would have sounded a tad patronising…

What you said, Jeremy.

I’ve reread the original post and can find no indication that the poster was remotely aware of the allusion to Diderot/Meslier.

Oh, come off it. The CT that I’ve been reading regularly has never been dedicated to utter humorlessness, and has been “extracting and engaging with” what passes for Hitchens’ arguments for quite a while. If you don’t think they’ve earned the right to a few jokes at the guy’s expense, you haven’t been paying attention.

Larger point: Some readers presumably have limitless tolerance for these “Hitchens is a wanker!” schoolyard pile-ons. And probably some don’t. Me, I read CT because it’s one of the few political blogs in which the posts and comments (sometimes… occasionally) rise above prepared positions and shed a little light. If I want a mob scene I can go to [insert blog-name of choice]. Hitchens is often wrong-headed and incoherent, but the ongoing fascination he still holds for you guys suggests that his arguments, rather than his soundbites, might actually be worth extracting and engaging with. Silly, silly me.

Chris Morris once had a good sketch in which AIDS suffers were divided into those who had ‘good AIDS’ and ‘bad AIDS’ (people with ‘good aids’ had caught it in ‘non-morally challenging ways’ (e.g. haemophiliacs) whereas people with ‘bad aids’ caught it from gay sex). Likewise we always have to remember that there are ‘good Kurds’ and ‘bad Kurds’ for the Keyboard Kommandos. Good Kurds are in Iraq, bad Kurds are in Turkey (and non-existent Kurds are in Iran and Syria…most of the self-professed ‘Kurd Lovers’ are actually unaware that there are Kurdish communities in these countries).

In any case, a good way to shut them up is to ask: ‘are you, or are you not, in favour of a Kurdish homeland?’ (i.e. a Kurdish state on the model of Israel). And remind them that the answer is either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ not some irrelevant waffle about minority rights etc.

In fact, one of the collateral casualties of this war might well be Northern Iraq’s fragile concord. The place went into civil war in the 90s, and that could well happen again.

The French eat frogs and horses, fetishize fromage, practice loose gallantry, chew raw garlic, and behaved badly enough under Vichy to make Woody Allen go see Marcel Ophüls’ Le Chagrin et la Pitié until he had it by heart.

At what point in Annie Hall is the film referred to as Le Chagrin et la Pitié?