The guy you love to hate and hate to love chimes in on the McCain/Palin ticket with his usual flair:
Last week’s so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.
***I suppose it could be said, as Michael Gerson has alleged, that the Obama campaign’s choice of the word erratic to describe McCain is also an insinuation. But really, it’s only a euphemism. Anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear had to feel sorry for the old lion on his last outing and wish that he could be taken somewhere soothing and restful before the night was out. The train-wreck sentences, the whistlings in the pipes, the alarming and bewildered handhold phrases—”My friends”—to get him through the next 10 seconds. I haven’t felt such pity for anyone since the late Adm. James Stockdale humiliated himself as Ross Perot’s running mate. And I am sorry to have to say it, but Stockdale had also distinguished himself in America’s most disastrous and shameful war, and it didn’t qualify him then and it doesn’t qualify McCain now.
The most insulting thing that a politician can do is to compel you to ask yourself: “What does he take me for?” Precisely this question is provoked by the selection of Gov. Sarah Palin. I wrote not long ago that it was not right to condescend to her just because of her provincial roots or her piety, let alone her slight flirtatiousness, but really her conduct since then has been a national disgrace. It turns out that none of her early claims to political courage was founded in fact, and it further turns out that some of the untested rumors about her—her vindictiveness in local quarrels, her bizarre religious and political affiliations—were very well-founded, indeed. Moreover, given the nasty and lowly task of stirring up the whack-job fringe of the party’s right wing and of recycling patent falsehoods about Obama’s position on Afghanistan, she has drawn upon the only talent that she apparently possesses.
That will leave a mark.
Dork
Chris, 3 days from now: I wrote what? Blame it on the sauce…..my ubiquitous, everpresent sauce.
TheFountainHead
That was better than sex.
Correction: That was better than sex with a dirty, dirty hooker who you pay extra to leave as quickly as possible as soon as she’s done.
Svensker
Christopher Hitchens is a disgusting bag of scum, a war monger, and a filthy liar. Every now and then he’s right, tho.
bh
In that vein of what ‘what does he take me for?" I must say, RUFKM?
I’m sorry, but I’ve never been able to understand how anyone – especially one like Hitchens who claims to be such an intellect – couldn’t have concluded the exact same fucking thing about Bush 8 years ago. Bush has always been a lying, foolish, infantile phony and to me this was blatantly obvious from the first time I heard him speak. Htichen’s tirade now has about as much credibility (despite obviously being right here) as Frank Rich discussing the evils of false equivalency.
The Grand Panjandrum
Hitch, whether you agree with him or not, does have a rather magical flare for the English language. Even when I think he’s completely wrong I still admire his willingness to be utterly vicious. With the exceptions of Frank Rich and P.J. O’Rourke, I can think of no other writers with the same command of language and savage wit. Just call me a sucker for great writing. And, right or wrong, Hitch is one funny MF.
And, yes, that will leave a mark.
Jim
Mr. Puddles, I have some snauseges
Donna
Ouch!
Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a man played for a fool by a bunch of right wing yahoos and their aging pet pageant queens.
Napoleon
Matt Taibbi
Zifnab
Wait, is this Hitchens, Hitchens + 3, Hitchens + the liquor cabinet, or what?
MattF
Hitchens is reliable in his unreliability–who else could you count on to attack Mother Theresa and Henry Kissinger?
Crusty Dem
I believe if the by-line says "Christopher Hitchens", it’s safe to assume it’s the standard Hitchens + liquor cabinet + 3 roofies – any sense of shame.
Hitchens had been so wrong for so long I’ve been wondering if we should apply "Hewitt Rules" to him. Does his railing against Palin mean I’m wrong about her? Maybe she’s not so bad…
Never mind. I suppose a staggering drunk will stumble in the correct direction some small proportion of the time..
slag
Or, as Bush would say to Bill Kristol, the freaks at NRO, and Sean Hannity and all the Faux Newsers: "Christopher Hitchens calls you ‘the whack-job fringe’. I call you ‘my base’."
JGabriel
Napoleon:
Taibbi is more excoriating than witty.
Much as she annoys the living hell out of me on occasion, I’ve gotta go with MoDo as the wittiest political writer out there (now that Molly’s gone…).
Every second or third column features at least one paragraph featuring something like a triple-word play with backflip that leaves me scratching my head and wondering, "How is that someone with such a shallow intellect can pull off linguistic gymnastics like that?"
.
Mylegacy
Before the town hall meeting the old lion stood near the stage entrance, breathing in long low breaths. He could hear the roar of the crowd, his power returned slowly to him – one more deep breath then onward – smile – arms outstretched – my people need me.
"He’s an arab – a terrorist – kill him – kill him."
The old lion smiled – "My people, they need me" he thought. Then he stood motionless as the growing wall of hate and bile he’s let loose came over him like a blizzard coming down from the mountains. "Ah…" he thought as he slowly walked off the stage and returned to his life, "…but I don’t need them. I was a POW you know. I was a hero. I was…"
Dennis - SGMM
now that Molly’s gone…
Damn. She would have had such fun with this election.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Napoleon: Thanks! How could I forget Taibbi? And he puts the Laugh Out Loud in LOL.
El Cruzado
MoDo is smart alright, she just refuses to use her powers for good and settles for putting decades of writing experience and a sharp wit in the service of high school level cattiness.
The Grand Panjandrum
@Dennis – SGMM: I can only imagine what this election season would be like if Molly Ivins and Doc Thompson were still around. Jesus!
Ecks
I’ve never seen a stopped clock be so entertainingly right, even once a day.
DrDave
I’m having a tough time coming to grips with the context of this. The essay is great and he hits all the correct points. But I wonder about the context. Did he write this in a moment of sober clarity or was he so far over the edge that he was no longer in touch with what he conceives as reality?
Aaron
Did you catch Hitchens taking a crap on Bill Clinton?
Now it’s not clear from his article where he goes from discussing Clinton to Palin but to me-this stinks. While I continue to be disapointed in Clinton getting a blow job and then lying about it, I personally don’t see this as such an atypical character flaw for a man.
And what about this turd:
‘surrender faction’: ‘I dare you to say it to my face!’
howard
2 points: first, apparently hitchens (by his own account) didn’t bother to look into palin’s track record initially. those of us who read up on her in the first weekend after her selection knew instantly who (and what) she was, and remain completely unsurprised by what she has done since being nominated.
and second, long ago and far away, in the late ’60s when i was an adolescent, i was watching bill buckley’s firing line with my mother.
"boy that buckley is smart" my mom said at one point.
"no mom," i replied. "he’s articulate. if he were smart, he wouldn’t say so many dumb things."
les
If it leaves a mark, she’ll wear it proudly.
Dennis - SGMM
@The Grand Panjandrum:
We will not see their like again.
JGabriel
DrDave:
Can’t say for sure, but it reads like it was written in that window of unselfconsious clarity that directly precedes shit-faced drunk.
Given Hitchens no doubt high alchohol tolerance, my guess is that, in his case, that state probably arrives around +7.
.
Tzal
JGabriel:
Exhibit A
It’s fairly old, but a real goldmine nonetheless. . .
Napoleon
I have a rule, ignore anything Hitchens says or writes.
Dennis - SGMM
Hitchens makes some good points while belaboring the obvious with nicely written prose. I disagree with the phrase, "America’s most disasterous and shameful war." Have you looked at Iraq, Chris? Let us not forget that during that other war of choice there were people very much like Hitchens who admonished us for years that withdrawal was tantamount to surrender, victory was just around the corner because we had a new strategy and that the sacrifices of the troops should not be in vain.
Punchy
As soon as she’s done? You, sir, may be getting ripped off.
libarbarian
Note to Over-The-Top Obama Fanboys: Would you please STFU and stop embarrassing the rest of us you giant douchebags?!?!?!
It might be snark — at least I hope it is.
DonnaInMichigan
McCain: "We’ve got them right where we want them".
Bahgdad Bob:
"We’ve got them right were we want them".
General George Armstrong Custer:
" My friends, We’ve got them right were we want them"
libarbarian
BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bogus lesbians ‘causing emotional damage’
uila
Eh. I used to like Hitchens’ columns in the Nation, before he had his big terrorist freakout. I suppose you can call this a form of intellectual honesty, but does anybody else see him writing this if McCain is 10 points up in the polls instead of 10 points down? This to me is just one more rat scrambling to get off the sinking ship. I mean, Christopher Buckley beat him to the punch for chrissakes. That these men value their egos over partisanship comes as no surprise.
For me, the money quote (re Iraq):
Just STFU
boonagain
@Dennis – SGMM:
Damn, I would give anything to read Molly’s take on Palin.
Dork
Fixed.
Paul
While I continue to be disapointed in Clinton getting a blow job and then lying about it, I personally don’t see this as such an atypical character flaw for a man.
Rickey Ray Rector. Lest we forget.
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
McCain must’ve started serving possum and groundhog at those press barbecues, and now he’s reaping the whirlwind. A single tear rolls down my cheek.
Cruel Jest
@DrDave: I’ve been thinking for a while that this is crunch time for all right-leaning pundits. If you want to pretend that you have any intellectual honesty remaining – if you want to have any hope for credibility on Nov. 5 – you have to abandon the blind obedience in the face of this disaster and, for once, admit reality. It’s just too egregious to ignore. We’re finding out who has been selling the kool-aid and who’s been mainlining it.
Also, I’d like to add Wolcott to the list. He can be devastating.
The Grand Panjandrum
OT: Mark Foley’s successor now accused of having an affair while campaigning to replace Foley. Jesus! This lying bastard should resign. The last thing the Democrats need is to give ANY ammunition to Republicans.
The Moar You Know
I think that’s likely true. When my girlfriend stops bringing over her friends for all-nighters on my meter-long meat manatee, I’ll be crushed.
The Other Steve
Was he drunk when he wrote this?
Litlebritdifrnt
I know most of you don’t listen to him (and I only do so in the car while running errands) but Rush is having a meltdown today (so much fun to listen to). He is laying into Kristol for suggesting that McCain become more "centrist" screaming that "the people" do not want him to be centrist, they want him to be right wing, really right wing. A few other gems, claiming that all "independent" and "undecided" voters are really democrats who are too uninformed to make a decision and the best bit, going on a 15 minute rant about "small business owners" making alot more than $250,000 a year in gross receipts and who will all be taxed out of existence by Obama, then not five minutes later admitting to a caller that he has no idea what Obama’s tax plan says vis a vis "gross receipts" as opposed to "net income" "Someone should ask him" he roars at a caller. Ya’ll really aught to listen just for the entertainment value. As someone said on another thread, watching them eating their own is fun.
Soylent Green
To be fair, that line is from the script of Arthur Penn’s "Little Big Man" (1970). What Custer reportedly said was "Hurray, boys! We’ve got them. We’ll finish them up and then go home to our station."
But it’s close enough.
Cruel Jest
@The Other Steve: I believe the standard response is: when is he not?
"… it takes a whole lot of medicine, baby,
for me to pretend that I’m somebody else."
– Belushi
Octavian
Gore Vidal (Christopher’s former hero, and a man who once declared Hitch his dauphin, a title presumably revoked) is a better writer with a better wit, but sadly he’s not very active lately.
Napoleon
I love that movie. One of my all time favorites.
"It’s a good day to die."
The Other Steve
It must be something in the water down there in florida.
CJ
Driftglass
Soylent Green
Then in the long term Limbaugh is doing us a favor. To launch the progressive initiatives the nation desperately needs–what people have been calling "the New New Deal"–the Dems will need broad public support. They’ll have to find it beyond the base of registered Democrats. During Obama’s first term, the more that the über-right-wing blowhards rage, the easier it will be for the party to offer people in the middle a better path to follow.
Xanthippas
Hitchens is an ass. As Aaron notes above, he concludes his article with a comment about Obama-Biden isn’t so bad despite the support they get from the "surrender faction" of the Democratic party. He simply can’t resist getting in one shot at them, lest he mistakenly thought to be on their side, eh? Fuck him. The fact that even Hitch figured out that McCain’s a joke and Palin’s a snake simply means that even a tool like Hitch can smell shit when it’s shoved right up under his nose.
Xanthippas
Rich is an apt comparison, since like Hitch he also has an outrage-boner when it comes to the Clintons. I’m willing to bet that the world is full of as witty, sharp and scathing of writers as Rich and Hitch, who also happen to be fair, even-handed and don’t obsessively fixate on a particular politician’s penis. I suppose that’s why they don’t get columns at Slate or the NY Times.
Marshall
Mr. Hitchens, can you tell us how you really feel ?
Comrade Colonel Ivan Ivanovich Renko, Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti (ret.)
Love him or hate him, that sumbitch can write.
Don
Comparing McCain to Stockdale is a terrible slight against Stockdale. Stockdale flew hundreds of missions, was highly decorated, and bore up under his imprisonment in Vietnam infinitely more bravely than McCain.
McCain admits in his biographies that he squealed facts to the Vietnamese out of fear and promised them information in exchange for medical care (which he subsequently claimed was a ruse, but since they declined to cooperate we’ll never know). Stockdale beat his own face in to try to keep them from using him in a propaganda film.
McCain slutted his way around the world and picked up wife #2 while still married to wife #1. Stockdale published a book based on the love letters he wrote to his wife from Vietnam, the same wife he was still married to when he died a few years ago.
There’s not enough time in my day to list the ways in which Stockdale’s career shows integrity and devotion to public service and knowledge far superior to McCain.
McCain isn’t worth a squirt of Stockdale’s piss.
JimPortlandOR
I also vote for Wolcott and Gore Vidal. We need a new generation of these warriors with a vocabulary and raw outrage.
Hitch is one of those variable stars the astronomers ponder. We should enjoy him on those occasions that his artillery is pointed in the correct direction (and to mix a metaphor) and hope his liver lasts a bit before passing him through the event horizon into his own black hole.
That One - Cain
Fully agree. I read that story and it seems pretty shady. He should just pack it in. The DNC shouldn’t be helping this guy get elected, instead we should be looking for a replacement. We need better leaders and putting a high standard on what we expect will keep these fools in line. Moron.
Check out the audio transcript on TPM. The guy is a first class dick. Get that fucker out of there.
cain
Notorious P.A.T.
Which of Hitchens’s criticisms of Palin don’t apply to the president he has supported for the past 8 years? Seriously.
Notorious P.A.T.
I second that (if no one else has). Joel Osteen is "a human haircut" = Pullitzer Prize material
Stuck on Stupid Rommie
A bit off-topic, but here’s the kind of, um, stupid we’ve had to deal with in Michigan the last 8 years.
Teh Stupid
The political Thunderdome between Granholm and the GOP Legislature is a preview of Obama vs. the Senate if the Democrats fail to get close to 60.
For all the fail the elephants love to pile on Dear Jenny, she’d be the VP nominee right now if she hadn’t made the mistake of being born in Communist Canada. She did something right to get under their skin so deep, heh.
Notorious P.A.T.
How many Oxycontin has he taken so far?
Civilization itself–not just that in America, but in general–is in danger from a diabetic malcontent hiding in a Pakisani cave?
On the other hand, if you haven’t read Hithcens’s book about Mother Theresa, you should.
Totally. In addition to his glowing war record, Stockdale is a respected professor as well.
Notorious P.A.T.
I dare him to say that to my face.
Ash Can
Beats me what Hitchens’ problem with Palin is. I mean, my gosh — she is SO ready for prime time.
Crusty Dem
I hear a lot of criticism of Hitchens, he’s a warmonger, he’s a chickenhawk, he’s wildly unpredictable and lacking in any internal consistency (probably a reason he likes W so much). This is patently unfair, coming from people who’ve never taken a shot for their country. Hitchens’ takes endless shots for his country. Usually whiskey, sometimes scotch. Occasionally tequila, often vodka. Typically gin, regularly brandy, generally Armagnac, commonly rum, mostly rye, ordinarily awamori, rarely rubbing alcohol.
dmak
Agreed.
Of all the writers mentioned, Taibbi comes closest to the combo of wet-your-pants hilarity, blinding insights and rapturous invective that Dr. Thompson offered at his apex. Alas, Uncle Duke burned too brightly to last.
Molly would indeed be loving this, and we would be loving her loving it. I hope she’s watching, soaking in a hot bath of schadenfreude, with a smoke and a manhattan. (Indeed, the believers among us could be forgiven for thinking maybe she’s had a hand in it).
O’Rourke was funny, once upon a time; but then again, so was Dennis Miller. Insightful? Not so much.
Frank Rich can connect the disparate dots of cultural detritus into a well-argued rage against the machine, but I can’t recall ever laughing out loud reading Rich – which I do, religiously.
Never got the MoDo thing. You’ve got to dig through far too much horseshit to get to the pony with her stuff; not worth the trouble, imho.
Taibbi is indeed pissed-off and excoriating, but then again, so are the others, at their best; and unlike his present competition, his funny occasionally crosses over to actual LOL territory, followed by minutes of residual involuntary giggling.
So if the range of funny and rage of his stuff don’t always reach Thompsonian heights (and depths), that seems a small price to pay for longevity.
harlana pepper
Nice, but no amount of ‘superior’ and somehow suddenly ‘enlightened’ writing, or quasi-deaths during a waterboarding dunk, can make me forgive the slug known as ‘Christopher Hitchens’ for his Bush-fellation and war pimping.
Bill Arnold
I suppose a staggering drunk will stumble in the correct direction some small proportion of the time..
There is a technical term for this, the drunkards walk.
SamFromUtah
@Soylent Green: Then in the long term Limbaugh is doing us a favor.
He keeps doing that, doesn’t he? I think the petty Michael J. Fox impersonation in 2006 helped the Democrats win the Senate; his "Operation Chaos" crap may have led some number of wingnuts to vote for Hillary Clinton in the primaries – which not only EPIC FAILed, it must have made those ‘nuts feel really dirty later on.
Batman
I met Chris at an airport, he stunk and was overloaded
with liquor oozing out of his body
I would call him Body Odor