Christopher Hitchens RIP

[Apjp]

I couldn't stand his position on Iraq either. But I think I can handle agreeing deeply with someone on one subject and disagreeing with them on another. If we don't have that we'd end up with American politics.

I'd say we probably agreed on abortion- that it should be extended to 75 years of age in some cases.

I know where you're coming from here. I had this feeling in a conversation with my nana on a rare trip home for her, and an equally rare visit to my aunty and uncles house for me. We agreed that Ireland, for better or worse, when it was an independent country before '73 it had more basic freedoms than it had had since it joined the EU, or at least since the common market erupted into a political/monetary union monster whereby they now control everything down to whether you can sell extra eggs your hens produce to your neighbours. We also agreed that Ireland is not a democratic country and that the three main parties will have to go, yet her and my aunt support Obama where my Uncle and I see through the petty incidentals on which he differs with Romney, and my uncle and I think the Palistinians should get their state back, noting a dangerously ignorant view in Obama supporters like my nana that Palestine 'deserves' occupation because of Israel's right to exist. My Uncle and I, compared to my Nana and Aunt, also have very strong views against religion.

I guess the scale of an error like Hitchens' just took away a good deal of his credibility. Having said that, the American public themselves endorsed such policy in 2004 by re-electing the same tyrant.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Life never seems to deliver the heads of two tyrants on the same day, unfortunately, APJP.

[Count Bobulescu]

Michael Wolff in GQ on Christopher Hitchens's legacy What kind of man was Christopher Hitchens, the much-loved and -hated essayist who died in 2011? For one, writes Michael Wolff, he was no model by which others should fashion their careers: "His style of journalism, that particular, opportunistic, cynical British form (ridiculed by the British too), was all about parachuting into a foreign country and acquiring, mirabile dictu, instant expertise," Wolff observes. "His greatest effort always seemed to be to live in public, with the effort itself being more important than the nature of the opinions or controversy that got him there." Wolff, something of a controversial character himself, has at least one supporter in Dylan Byers, another controversial journalist who works at Politico and saw an advance copy of Wolff's column. Hitchens, Byers wrote in March, "was all volume, tolerable only because of the accent. He was preaching to the choir, and the choir desperately wanted to elect another preacher."

[random new yorker]

Ahhhh....an i find these hidden gems every now and again ... an keep coming back..every now and again?!