chris hitchens

yeah, he croaked; cancer sucks, and it was no more fun for him than for anyone else.  there are plenty of people getting all weepy because chris hitchens died yesterday.  many people were entertained for decades by his definitive antics.  the issue, besides his pathetic transubstantiation into a frothing neocon imperalist boob, was that his famed erudition was pretty shallow all along.  he was well, no spectacularly  well-educated and comparatively well-read, his rhetorical skills well polished and flaunted with relish.  that however, didn't make him all that intelligent or all that knowledgeable, obviously.  anyone with more than a few ounces of wisdom to go along with their barrels full of self-satisfied, self-aggrandizing wit would not have been so lacking in an illuminating historical perspective regarding the september 11 attacks or the american, and western, imperialist ambitions in the middle east and the persian gulf that had been in place and process for far longer than hitchens had been alive.  hitchens certainly enjoyed attention and having his shallow erudition fluffed by his peers.  his attacks on some of the more absurd and disgusting figures on the world stage were more than slightly entertaining, but those targets were often incredibly soft and obvious for many people.  the catholic church and organized religion in general, mother teresa, bill clinton, princess diana, henry kissinger were all pretty easy, and someone with hitchens's purported talents could, and should, have taken on higher-value targets.  in the end, hitchens was at his best a lightweight, entertaining, well-spoken clown, while at his worst he was a raving, imperialist, incoherent fool.

update: here's a weepy old tory losing his shit over mr. hitchens.  i'm pretty sure hitchens would have thought cole was a total douchebag.