"Virgin" - Manchester Orchestra
- There has been an awful lot of words written about Christopher Hitchens over the last twenty-four hours. I don't have too much to say that would add a lot to what I wrote about Hitchens last year (back in more convivial times around the blog by the looks of the comments). He seemed to have faced the horrors of his illness in an incredibly resolute way. But I think that the last thing Hitchens would want is to be white-washed beyond recognition. And to me, he remains a dubious thinker -- a guy with a sharp tongue and pen and a gift for insult, but not really someone whose work really holds up all that well. And for fuck's sake, he was no George Orwell. To me, he will always be the guy who gave aid and comfort to those who were trying to impeach Bill Clinton, was contemptuous of Al Gore during the 2000 election -- he really was the original firebagger -- and was an unending enthusiast for the disaster that was the Iraq War. None of these mark him as either a terribly serious thinker or practical man of the left. He was a bit of a wrecker and a vandal, albeit a sometimes entertaining one. Anyway, I think Kevin Drum and Amanda Marcotte both have useful correctives to the general hagiography. Steve at No More Mr. Niceblog concurs.
What else is going on? I am going to decorate the tree tomorrow with the family and then settle in to watch the Patriots ask Tim Tebow "where's your God now?"
