Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon

Subject: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 10:39 AM

Christopher Hitchens, militant pundit, dies at 62


"There will never be another like Christopher. A man of ferocious intellect, who was as vibrant on the page as he was at the bar," said Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. "Those who read him felt they knew him, and those who knew him were profoundly fortunate souls."

He had enjoyed his drink (enough to "to kill or stun the average mule") and cigarettes, until he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the esophagus.

He was a most engaged, prolific and public intellectual who wrote numerous books, was a frequent television commentator and a contributor to Vanity Fair, Slate and other publications. He became a popular author in 2007 thanks to "God Is Not Great," a manifesto for atheists.

"Christopher Hitchens was everything a great essayist should be: infuriating, brilliant, highly provocative and yet intensely serious," said Britain's Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. "I worked as an intern for him years ago. My job was to fact check his articles. Since he had a photographic memory and an encyclopedic mind, it was the easiest job I've ever done."

Subject: Obit: Christopher Hitchens
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 10:50 AM

"Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer and a troublemaker, and to those who knew him well, he was a gift from, dare I say, God,"
Graydon Carter, Vanity Fayre.

What an epitaph that makes. I'd be really proud to have that said of me post mortem.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: theleveller
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:00 AM

Sad loss - a great intellect and a true original.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:02 AM

National Public Radio ran a story about him this morning.

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:04 AM

Christopher Hitchens, 1949-2011, Polemicist Who Slashed All, Freely, With Wit

I did not follow him closely enough to get past his obsessive combativeness.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:08 AM

Oh, he could be maddening even to those who basically agreed with him on most things. He considered his role to be "stirring things up" rather than gently converting with careful reason.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Arthur_itus
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:19 AM

Was he a mudcatter Bill?

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:21 AM

I find polemics problematic. I am happy to see from the outpouring from those who knew him personally that he could be compassionate, as well as passionate, and non-combative in friendship in contrast to his public persona.

Andrew Sullivan's favorite memory of Hitch (page with video).

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: theleveller
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 12:04 PM

I find polemicists refreshing so long as they make their points with wit and erudition. Hitchens could be both infuriating and inspiring - depending on whether you agreed with his position or not (for me, it was a mixture of both). He was, however, never mealy-mouthed and that, in my opinion, makes him admirable.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: theleveller
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 12:19 PM

"Was he a mudcatter Bill?"

That's what I wondered when I read: "only an open conflict of ideas and principles can produce any clarity."

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 12:21 PM

Also an admirer of Phil Ochs, contributer to "Phil Ochs - There But for Fortune".

Sad loss, RIP.

Rog

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 01:00 PM

Obituary in the Guardian

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: bobad
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:13 PM

I like this line about him taken from a remembrance on Huffington Post:

"When he heard that another friend, a professor, had a habit of seducing female students in his writing seminars, he shook his head pityingly. "It's not worth it. Afterward, you have to read their short stories."

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:17 PM

Slate roundup of tributes

Highlighted Slate columns

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,999
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:28 PM

Would it be possible to remove the word 'curmudgeon' from the title? I ask because I initially thought it referred to Mudcat's Curmudgeon.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,Bluesman
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:44 PM

He said it as he saw it.No doubt the mods here would have deleted every one of his posts here. A sound guy.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: gnu
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:47 PM

PLEASE change the title of this thread and delete "curmudgeon" ASAP!

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 02:58 PM

If you can't tell the difference between Curmudgeon and curmudgeon. Then there's no hope for either of you.
Don't forget it's a proper word, not just a Mudcatter's handle!

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: pdq
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 03:05 PM

This man was a brilliant intellectual and deserves some respect.

Calling him a "curmudgeon", "militant" and "pundit" show a great deal about the character of the initial poster.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 03:19 PM

I must confess a guilty pleasure reading "God is not great". His attitude, however, was not helpful to FreeThinkers because he was so combative. He was also a warmonger in my opinion.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 03:23 PM

He had more soul than the entire Vatican to the 10th.

warmonger compared to what. Cheney? I think not.


btw I have a garden gnome with the face of Dick Cheney.
We call it Lawn Cheney.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Paul Burke
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 07:08 PM

Sorry to disagree with the lot of you. He had travelled the well- trodden road from left to right, proving that his vaunted intellect was nothing more than Oxbridge debating society skill. The basic problem was that he lacked humanity, and that led him to support war, and to viciously attack Muslims, hiding racism under the cloak of atheist disdain for religion. He demeaned atheism.

As an atheist, I hope the Divil carries him off below.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: MarkS
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 07:24 PM

Perhaps better said that he was able to modify his opinions and positions based on new knowledge. Rightly or wrongly, he will never be known as a "Flat-Earther" in his intellectual views.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 07:25 PM

Didn't this guy support Bush and his illegal war in Iraq? Screw him.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 07:54 PM

If Paul Burke believes Hitchens lacked humanity, he didn't get close to understanding the man.

Hitchens' support for the Iraq war and his utter contempt for Saddam, under whose rule Iraq was a better place than it has ever been since, was unfathomable when taken with his positions on so much else. But it is wildly simplistic to say he started on the left and finished on the right. By some measures he was as much a socialist on his deathbed as in his early working days on the New Statesman. Neither could his antagonism to Islam be characterised as racist, not least because it was more than equalled by his antagonism to the other Abrahamic churches, a large proportion of whose adherents are decent white folk.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 08:22 PM

As the "initial poster", pdq, I applied the term 'curmudgeon' because *I* felt it fit. If you read carefully, instead of just having a knee-jerk response, you'll see that the other terms were not MY doing, but part of the tributes by others.

John MacKenzie explains above why there 'should' be no confusion....and by now in this thread it is obvious that it was used as a term, not a name. (If our member had not picked that name *I* would have been tempted to grab it....and I'd bet that Hitchens would have liked the name.) I was surprised to that the word was NOT generally recognized as a term for a personality trait. (We had a member who used the name "Nerd" awhile back... would anyone mistake it in lower case?)

I admired Hitchens, even as I strongly disagreed with some of the directions he took....just as I do with some of our Mudcatters ☺. Some of us are curmudgeons (with a small 'c') in our own right

To be a Christopher Hitchens requires a LOT of intelligence and reading, no matter what any of us think of his attitudes, habits or conclusions, and we could all do with a good dose of his wide-ranging interests, if not his often prickly behavior.

I will miss hearing him debate with those whose intellects approached his own... I never failed to learn something from it.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bobert
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 08:44 PM

"Curmudgeon" is diplomatic...

The guy was an egoistical dick...

B~

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 09:29 PM

**grin** scholars seem to differ. That also might have amused Hitchens.

He WAS an egotistical dick, but a smart one. One doesn't have to like that sort to see that they had some serious influence.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Mrrzy
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 10:28 PM

Curmudgeon is a great descriptor for this great man, whom I will miss, and do not expect to see ever again!

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 16 Dec 11 - 11:34 PM

Christopher Hitchens at the Atlantic.

Many of those who knew him personally found much to value in him, whether they agreed with him or not, which is making me look more closely than I did in the past.

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 12:06 AM

Was it Oscar Wilde who said, "I'd like to go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."?

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST, Eb
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 02:43 AM

That sounds more like Mark Twain.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 06:30 AM

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a series of Hitchens' essays a couple of months ago. He personally subjected himself voluntarily to waterboarding (by guys who'd done it for real in the war against terror) to assess for himself whether it constitutes torture or not. His verdict was that it does.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Will Fly
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 06:59 AM

Martin Amis tells a great story about the time when he and Hitchens, two young men at the time, were having a meal in a restaurant. Just as they'd started, two "hooray Henries" - UK-speak for so-called upper-class, ill-behaved rich oiks - came in and, after speaking to the maitre d', began very noisily and peremptorily, to rearrange tables. Obviously in preparation for a large group.

One of them then went up to the Amis and Hitchens table with the obvious intention of asking them to move and, with a condescending smile on his face, said, "Sorry, chaps, you're going to hate me for this."

Hitchens immediately retorted, "We already hate you," and studiously ignored him. End of conversation. Love him or hate him, he was his own man.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 07:43 AM

well lets just be sorry for him. Cancer of the oesophagus - not a nice way to go.

A bit like Clarkson, entertaining but annoying. There are teachers and social workers and people like that dealing with the shit as best they can. And you never feel he had much respect for the people who dealt with that side of things.

why can't we all aspire to being a clever bugger like me. and none of the rest of you have any claim or right to be educated. It was that sort of arrogance that put me off.

but having said all that, I'm sorry he suffered.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Mrrzy
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 10:24 AM

That restaurant memory is wonderful!

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Max Johnson
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 11:23 AM

A very funny Rowson cartoon on The Guardian comments page.

You might not find it funny of course, but never mind because I'll probably bugger up the link anyway.

Cartoon

---

Unbuggered -Mod

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Max Johnson
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 11:25 AM

Yep. It's here:

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2011/dec/16/martin-rowson-christopher-hitchens-cartoon

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 12:14 PM

"There are days when I miss my old convictions as if they were an amputated limb," Christopher Hitchens wrote recently. "But in general I feel better, and no less radical, and you will feel better too, I guarantee, once you leave hold of the doctrinaire and allow your chainless mind to do its own thinking."

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: pdq
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 12:47 PM

I wonder what would have happened if Christopher Hitchens and Mark Twain met.

Here are some of Mark Twain's best quotes.


"There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist."

"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."

"Always do right - this will gratify some and astonish the rest."

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so."

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."

"Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand."

"It has been often said, very truly, that religion is the thing that makes the ordinary man feel extraordinary; it is an
equally important truth that religion is the thing that makes the extraordinary man feel ordinary."

"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn."

"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another."

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Max Johnson
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 01:45 PM

Many thanks, Mod.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,Steaming' Willie
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 02:59 PM

What I enjoyed about him was how you could read some bits he wrote and think his views on the world chimed in time with yours.

Then he rattled on passionately about something you might fundamentally disagree with.

His denunciation of organised religion is on an artistic level which made him an ideal foil for Dawkin's scientific views and the two together made an intellectual argument.

His views on wars in The Middle East were crafted with the same skill, even if many, myself included, took issue.

Certainly lost a clever larger than life character too soon.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 17 Dec 11 - 03:16 PM

Very witty and funny man. But, as said before, an attention seeker beyond compare. Don't get me wrong - Nothing wrong with what he did and he did it so well. But I often got the impression that the words were for effect rather than from the heart.

Pretty much like me realy so fuck off you set of sychophantic arse lickers.

:D tG

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 11:05 AM

His writing was always lively and witty. And the fact that he was only 2 months older than I am I take as a personal affront. I'm not finished reading him yet, dammit! And I'm certain he wasn't finished writing.

In this past June's issue of Vanity Fair, he described his latest symptom -- loss of his speaking voice -- in terms that most people just don't understand. Alas, Tom and I understand all too well. But it was Hitch who wrote of it for his large audience. And I wrote about it, too, quoting him, in a note at Facebook, if anyone is interested.

My world is emptier without him.

Linn

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Joe_F
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 01:53 PM

Max Johnson: That cartoon reminds me of an anecdote I heard from an orthodox Jew (a folksinger, by coincidence), who visited a friend -- a skeptic -- in a hospital. The skeptic said he was about to die; he knew it because he had seen God. The Jew was taken aback, but his friend immediately said: "Don't worry; it wasn't Jesus". He died the next day.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 03:31 PM

He was largely a waste of space. An intellectual argument against Christianity? Why, is one necessary? Do we need intellectual arguments against Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy? No intellectual arguments are required. You believe the stuff or you don't and all the arguing in the world isn't going to change it or it would have by now.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Bill D
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 03:43 PM

Hitchens did far more than argue against Christianity.

And intellectual arguments are important in any debate, else all the other shallow, stupid arguments be the only ones... and even shallow, stupid people seem to recognize shallowness & stupidity in others.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: GUEST,josepp
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 09:04 PM

///else all the other shallow, stupid arguments be the only ones///

Hitchens preached to the converted to get his little pat on the head. He did nothing to undelude the deluded except call them stupid which doesn't exactly inspire a desire in them to listen to anything he had to say. I don't care what he had to say because I don't believe anyway. He was a devisive character and we have enough of those.

////Hitchens did far more than argue against Christianity.////

Yeah, he supported the war criminal Bush and his illegal, murderous war. He's a fuckhead. Thanks for nothing.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 09:18 PM

Well maybe he paid his tax and did some good. At least he worked. Anyway he's dead after an awful illness.

You shouldn't call him a fuckhead, even if he was.

Subject: RE: Obit: Christopher Hitchens- curmudgeon
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 18 Dec 11 - 09:37 PM

I donno Al. I don't often agree with josepp. But he may have stumbled on a rather profound thing here. Hitchen's had no trouble calling it as he saw it. Sawing just exactly what you think of Hitchens without diplomacy, is probably the best tribute to him.