Me and Christopher Hitchens

Where to begin … “Perhaps our Iraqi guests … really didn’t (and don’t) completely understand how we differ from the colonialists and imperialists of the past.”

— just as Hitch has morphed into exactly the G&T sipping expat gent that he once would have despised. And why did Colm Toibin give him such an easy time in the NYT Book Review?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/books/review/06TOIBINL.html

I found the whole thing full of negative epiphanies too. Glad I wasn’t the only one.

Michael Totten comes off as self-effacing and full of hubris at the same time. He’s a “friendly American”, I guess.

I have to say that I treasure the line:

“‘Who the hell are you?, Atiyyah said to Hitchens, as if I weren’t the last one to speak.”

It is up there with the finest of Charles Pooter.

“Til someONE we like can be elected.”
Lehrer’s verses always scanned.

“If you wanted more Iraqi support,” Atiyyah bellowed at Hitchens,” you should have given us more money and food once you got there!”

“So you’re saying, sir, that you can be bought,” Hitchens shot back.

If I didn’t deeply dislike Hitchens already, that would do it. He’s talking to one of the leaders of one of the liberal Iraqi institutions upon which the future of Iraq depends. There’s no way that the guy has the resources he needs. And Hitchens has the gall to talk about humanitarian aid and support for his projects as if it was some sort of bribe that Atiyyah should have the self-respect to refuse.

You want more money for the military? Are you saying, sir, that the United States Armed Forces can be bought? I shall have to say good day to you, sir!

you guys WISH you were meeting important people.

This one is as good as the one on Jane Galt and survey methodology! Someday I’ll learn to keep a file.

Glenn,

I used to work for a lecture agency. I’ve met Cheryl Tiegs, Anne Baxter, Vincent Price, Jeff Greenfield, Andrew Greeley, Jacobo Timmermann, Truman Capote, R. Buckminster Fuller, George McGovern, Ralph Nader (back when he was just a consumer advocate), William S. Burroughs, Richard Reeves, Vlkadimir Bukovsky, Betty Williams, Christine Lahti, Alec Baldwin, Peter Weller, Paul Simon, Lou Reed, Mary Elizabeth Mastroantonio, Elie Wiesel, Margot Kidder, Christopher Reeve and William Shawcross, Johnny Cash, Rosanne Cash, Lyle Lovett, Stone Phillips and so many others I can’t even remember them all.

I got to sit in the backseat of my boss’ car kibbitzing with Simon Wiesenthal in 1982 as we drove from midtown Manhattan to C W Post College. I sat next to Michael McDonald flying from LaGuardia to Nashville.

It’s nothing special.

But Hitchens had a defender, too. He had me.

Lucky Hitchens.

This is one of the funnier things I’ve seen in CT. There are moments when quotation renders commentary superfluous. This is one of them.

This post and the comments so far remind me of Douglas’s position in the Lincoln-Douglas debates: as long as the people vote to have slavery, it’s legitimate!

Kieran

Post often, like Glen, and you’ll be famous; write well like Hitch and you’ll be admired. That’s my advice for you.

_Post often, like Glen, and you’ll be famous; write well like Hitch and you’ll be admired. That’s my advice for you._

Then you can go on CNN, and be important.

Dipnut makes an excellent point. There’s good money in supporting the Bush administration’s line in foreign policy. It’s an excellent career choice.

Totten leaps to conclusions quite a bit. A fine case in point was when the Brazilian General in charge of the peacekeepers in Haiti said in October that a comment that John Kerry made in March of last year was giving “false hope” to the pro-Aristide groups in Haiti and causing violence there.

I e-mailed him about this (we’d exchanged e-mails many times before so it’s not like the first he’d ever heard from me) I posted comments in his post and finally I showed that the general’s statement contradicted a statement that he had made to Brazilian radio a few days before. I also provided context for Kerry’s statement and showed that Kerry was, in fact, encouraging democracy while the Bush administration’s actions in Haiti really reflected and reaffirmed the brutal status quo in that country’s history. the condition of Haiti since then only confirms what a mess Bush made by pulling the rug out from Colin Powell.

When the general later recanted, Totten made no mention of this or my earlier comments despite the e-mail, my post, links from other bloggers to my post and two trackbacks I sent to his original post.

He’s a smart guy, I genuinely think he means well, but he has a tendency to speak in absolute, declamatory statements (e.g. “The UN has absolutely no moral authority”). Sometimes he needs to dig a little deeper before putting finger to keyboard.

“Andrew Apostolou wasn’t part of our news program, but he’s been a long-distance friend of mine for a while now. I had never actually met him in person, and I had to invite him. I figured he’d fit right in, and he did. … He gave me a little lapel pin in the shape of the Kurdistan flag. I stuck it on my collar. When Hitch showed up he was wearing one, too. And he noticed mine.”

And he noticed mine. And my heart swelled, and the sun broke out of the clouds, and somewhere a choir of birds started singing …

Totten’s the very definition of lickspittle, isn’t he?

Tsk, someone hasn’t checked the meaning of their metaphors.

Say someone had tickets for the last Beatles show ever, but at the last minute couldn’t go, and later went “oh they were overhyped anyway”. That is ‘sour grapes’.

No one who despises someone’s prose so much could possibly ever worship him like a rockstar and want to spend an entire evening with him, so getting drunk with someone you despise is not a fantastic chance you wanted so badly but involuntarily missed, it’s just something you couldn’t possibly have ever desired in the first place. Ergo, there are no ‘sour grapes’ in there.

In fact, the phrase ‘sour grapes’ cannot possibly apply to anything being discussed here. At all. Not one sausage. Check dictionary if still in doubt.

– Brought to you by the annoyingly helpful Department for Redundant Explanations of the Painfully Obvious.

Now, now. Let’s not beat up on Michael Totten. We have so much to learn from him, and this is being neglected by focussing exclusively on his veneration for Hitchens.
For instance, there is his empathy and magnanimity towards those with whom he disagrees:
‘Dr. Atiyyah was the notoriously doom-and-gloom grouch who pissed all over the election on camera … I had little interest in him.’
There’s his courage in the fight for democracy: ‘We didn’t invade Iraq so we could midwife the birth of yet another despicable tyranny’.
(Gee, I didn’t know that Totten had been part of the invasion).
There’s his perceptive understanding of culture and character:
‘Donovan is an eminently reasonable person (he grew up in Holland)’
There’s his religious pluralism:
‘Thank God and Allah for that.’
Seriously though, I think that it’s great that Totten can express his sincere regard for Christopher Hitchens so honestly and openly in these cynical, guarded days. I’m not sure about his taste, but that’s another matter.
And besides — and maybe it’s just the hopeless romantic in me taking over here — how can you not be removed by things like this?:
“Angel,” he said. “Can I call you Angel?”
“Of course,” I said …
“I want to exploit your knowledge of blogs,” he said.
“Email me,” I said. “You know where to find me.”
I mean, that scene has gotta rank up there with Bogie and Bacall in To Have and Have Not.

Besides, are you so confident that nobody in this discussion would enjoy a similarly fortuitous meeting with an object of his or her admiration?

I for one would greatly enjoy a fortuitous meeting with Hitchens, so I could slug him. That would, indeed, be satisfying.

In fact, I did experience a fortuitious meeting with Hitchens about 10 years ago, when I was living in Chicago: he was in town for a book tour or something and someone arranged a dinner for him with local lefties and I got invited as an s.o. of one of the real guests. We were seated near each other and had a brisk exchange about the Baffler — I was pro, he was con, largely because they’d printed a nasty article about Katie Roiphe, whereas he was sympathetic to the “was it date rape, or just good wine” perspective. I didn’t, I’m ashamed to say, spit in his face or even forcibly date-rape him, but I didn’t write an admiring blog post about our run-in either. And not only because blogs didn’t exist yet, either.

Bogie and Bacall

My goodness. I step out for a moment, and return to find the thread descended to this…this…irony. You’re making baby Jesus cry.

No, but the cynicism I complain about is this making Totten out to be what he is not. For instance, when he says “we differ from the colonialists and imperialists of the past”, he may be missing the point, and he may be an ass. But he’s sincere, and he knows specifically what he means by it. It won’t do, to pretend he’s being sinister or deliberately ignorant.

My experience is, he’s susceptible to intelligent persuasion.

“Spitefully disparaging what brings others satisfaction, whether or not one wants it for himself, is referred to as “sour grapes” often enough.”

By people who don’t have a clue what the phrase “sour grapes” really means. If you disparage something that brings other satisfaction, you simply have different tastes, that are your own, not theirs. Oddly enough.

You brought that up, and it’s not that tangential. It’s not the fox that isn’t in sight here, it’s the grapes. Believe it or not, there are people who do not like Mr Hitchens, hence would be utterly incapable of ever pining after him as if he was a tasty morsel. You know, you can actually disparage something because you simply despise it. I would think Hitchens’ fans should know about that. He happily pours his spiteful disparagement on quite a lot of things. According to you, we’d have to call that a case of “sour grapes” too?

Kipling would be so proud of Totten and Hitch picking up this generation’s burden!

Who said anything about…sinister?

Jum Henley strongly hinted that Totten was being deliberately obtuse in maintaining his support for an immoral war and occupation. Walt Pohl said Totten sold his voice to the highest bidder.

That would be sinister.

x, normally I’m the language snob in discussions like this.

The problem is, you practically never encounter “sour grapes” in its classic form. Thus, if you insist on strict interpretation, you lose the use of this highly-evocative phrase. Like many other writers, who know perfectly well the story and meaning of “sour grapes”, I use it sometimes to refer to personal hostility tainted by envy. Envy is, after all, a species of thwarted desire, and thwarted desire is at the heart of the fable.

I reiterate that you need not like Hitchens, or want to meet him, to wish that you might have a similar experience. Say, with Al Franken or Ben Affleck.

Totten has recently enjoyed a string of little successes and fascinating experiences which have made him a trifle giddy. I personally am envious of his trip to Libya (though it never would have occurred to me to go there), so perhaps I’m projecting a little.

But I doubt it. I get the definite sense that the glow of Totten’s recent success, not his views as such, engenders part of the spleen directed against him in these quarters.

dipnut, I give up, I just can’t follow where is the thwarted envy and for whom, in taking the piss out of Totten and Hitches, not that they don’t do it themselves quite well already. The glow of Totten’s success? In… what exactly? Define success, define envy… actually I don’t even know what’s there to envy about taking a trip to Lybia, it’s not like you can’t do it if you’re not him. You don’t even need a weblog. You just need to go to a travel agency. Anyway, travelling envy is a good kind of envy. There should be more of that kind. We could all have marvellous discussions on whose trips we envy more. It just doesn’t have anything to do with anything in this thread.

Now, if I may misappropriate a metaphor myself, and drop some pearls into the trough, I feel, well, more sad than sour because I just heard from the news that one gigantic object of my unconditional adoration has departed, so I will never even be able to entertain the hope of ever getting to hear him speak in person, which, though not in the least essential to sustain my admiration, would have been a nice bonus. But such is life. ~sniff~

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.” – Arthur Miller

nikki, I guess that’s precisely the first rule of the club that all fans of the Bushite foreign policy belong to: never admit you were wrong. Second rule: never even realise it. Third rule: make up absurd explanations to disguise that fact. We’re all so used to that by now.

(and I just realised how the term “bushite” can be appreciated on multiple levels of meaning)

item!

“Totten’s a good time, just don’t get sucked into thinking that there’s a lot of there there.”

That’s Totten’s problem–he’s just not very smart. For someone who has read a lot and travelled a lot, and probably means well (or at least thinks he does) he has whatever the opposite of insight is (to borrow a phrase). Hitchens at least used to be smart. I don’t know which one is sadder. Probably Hitchens–at least Totten will bumble through life, oblivious.

Gee, dipnut, would it have hurt so very much to simply say “Ok, x, you were right and I was wrong?”

I tried, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I persist in believing that my usage is defensible.

Anyway, I’m done. See you all on some other thread.

Totten’s post was indeed an embarrassment, but I totally agree with dipnut.

Just letting the dipper know he’s not alone.

“Wine. Is. Red!” Hitchens said, and I couldn’t agree more. I had a 24-hour hangover from cheap white wine in a box when I was 14 years old. I haven’t been able to touch the stuff since. Even the thought of the taste of white wine makes my stomach do somersaults.

I found that a fitting allegory for the opinions of Totten and “dry drunk Bush’s wet drunk apologist” Christopher Hitchens.

“…you practically never encounter ‘sour grapes’ in its classic form.”

Well, John Prine’s “Sour Grapes” off his Diamonds in the Rough album is perhaps a long way to go to find an exception to “practically never”, but the Chicago folksinger and former postal worker certainly understood the classic form.

I don’t know which one is sadder. Probably Hitchens—at least Totten will bumble through life, oblivious.

Hitch, undoubtedly. For a supposed admirer of Orwell, he appears to regard the narrative of Homage to Catalonia as something to be repeated as farce.

Anyway, I’m done.

No, dipshit, you were done before you started trolling.