Posted on 06/07/2004 10:44:19 AM PDT by LincolnLover
*Excerpt*
"...only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard..."
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
Someone filled with hatred for both Mother Theresa and Ronald Reagan who is cheered by some on this site?
Truth is stranger than fiction, indeed.
Hitchens is a mean drunk.
Someone filled with hatred for both Mother Theresa and Ronald Reagan who is cheered by some on this site?Dude. What we cheer on this site is reasoned, intelligent discourse. Hitchens sometimes provides it.
Hitchens as we all know was apoligist for the Khmer Rouge and claimed Kissinger killed 500,000 civilians by bombing remote, unpopulated areas where lo a behold KR units and NVA bases were located.
He also used soem pretty dishonest math.
Peter Robinson blew Shawcross and hitchens' ass away in a American Spectator article back in 1980.
Time and again you'll see "reasoned, intelligent" commentary dismissed on this site because of the source and the source alone (e.g, the publication in which an article appears, the member join date if it's a comment made by a member/"disruptor", etc).
This, however, doesn't seem to apply to Hitchens, who gets a free pass for his willingness to bash Bill Clinton a few years back.
Pat Buchanan, for example, makes excellent points from time to time but you won't get 5-10 replies deep into one of his posts without someone dismissing his points soley because of who the source is. Why such a despicable person as Hitchens gets a pass is quite...odd.
Excuse me?
My understanding is that a ballistic missile's path is determined strictly by ballistics - weight, firing time, firing angle, engine power, etc.
A guided missile's path can be adjusted by sensors, on the missile or on the ground. It is thus not a ballistic missile.
Am I wrong?
So his intellect is not to be trifled with, but his personality is rife with flaws. That's how I approach him. One might argue that the two, intellect and personality, cannot be separated, but I would suggest that with a little careful navigation, they can be. He seems to take particular delight in personal attacks like this one on Reagan or the one you mention on Mother Theresa. He's also attacked Henry Kissinger with incredible vehemence.
I take what I want from Hitchens. Where he's instructive, I listen to him. Where he's a nut, I ignore him.
I often look upon him the same way I fondly remember the late radical lawyer William Kunstler. He was as far to the left as anyone I've ever come across in modern times, but he had a certain way of framing issues -- and an absolute loathing of government in general -- that made him quite a fascinating character.
What do you expect from a political group which believes Carter was a good Presient?
Where is it?
Kind of makes Hitchens the Fred Phelps of the moment -- a guy saying mean things at a funeral. How tacky.
can you tell when he's hungover from his writ?
Tou have to admit even though he goes off the deep end on a regular basis He is a great writer. He has also proven that even a blind pig finds an acorn every once and a while.
You're correct. That's why we have ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.
That is the distinction. You are correct, the "opposite" of ballistic missile is guided missile.
More importantly, a ballistic missle's course includes fre-fall - ballistics. A guided missle's path involves none.
He's a Marxist. And makes no bones about it.
"So his intellect is not to be trifled with, but his personality is rife with flaws. That's how I approach him. One might argue that the two, intellect and personality, cannot be separated, but I would suggest that with a little careful navigation, they can be."
Given he apparently has trouble with such intellectually challenging topics like Basic Math, I'd say what you have is a mean, bitter, exceedingly vindictive personality that suffers from self loathing.
Like a blind pig, Hitchen's finds the occasional acorn, but who has the time to watch for hours on end for that seminal event?
Not me. I've got grass growing that needs, and deserves, far more attention than Christopher Hitchens.
I was thinking the same thing about Hitchens, he takes particular delight in personal character assassination. He knows he has a gift with words and gets little attention for a lot of his writing, but his caustic personal attacks always get a lot of press.
Comparing hitchens with fred phelps is an insult to................Nevermind
Wow! Talk about mean spirited! Imagine being married to this guy!?? Time for a quick annulment!
There you go!!!! exactly right.!!!
This, however, doesn't seem to apply to Hitchens, who gets a free pass for his willingness to bash Bill Clinton a few years back.Hitchens was on of the few center-left voice to take a principled stand on the Clinton presidency--yes, and for that he deserves great credit. I personally agree with his defense of the Iraq war part II. He is a rare creature in this political environmnet: an independent thinker.
Pat Buchanan, for example, makes excellent points from time to time but you won't get 5-10 replies deep into one of his posts without someone dismissing his points soley because of who the source is. Why such a despicable person as Hitchens gets a pass is quite...odd.Patty-Patty Buke-Buke is his current incarnation is an unreconstructed nativist: anti-free trade and anti-globalist to a degree redolent of the Seattle anti-WTO prostestors, anti-immigration to a degree redolent of France's Jean-Marie Le Penn, and often anti-Israel. He used to be different: I used to enjoy him before he went over to the dark-dark-dark side.
If Thompson's not ghost writing this stuff he deserves a royalty check.
I used to like Thompson even though I disagreed with his politics. He's now just a limosene liberal who once trained his dog to bite Nixon's balls. Now he's just a mean drunk who pays someone else to train his dog not to piss on the stuff he's bought.
Sure there are, every fighter jet in the world carries non ballistic missiles. There are also theater ballistic missles as well as ICBMs.
Just one more example of how ignorant these people are.
Anti-Administration polemics where Hitchens main bread and butter during the Reagan years, and, as always, focused on the usual 80's hobbyhorses: Latin America, South Africa, Communism and, as it goes without saying, those rascally capitalists. How silly even the issues look now and how right Reagan was about them. I imagine that in 20 years the Lefts caterwauling about Palestine, Kyoto, GM crops and the UN will look just as silly. Chris does not realize it but he just write his own epitaph.
Never forget the Comrade Chris and his ilk think the USSR an anomaly in the world historical development of Socialist Man. With it gone there is just one less bit if contrived evasion and rhetoric they need not arm themselves with. Though it is wrong to say that ?many on the left" were glad to see it go - they where (and are) heartbroken.
Like all mean drunks, he is also a sentimentalist and a self righteous blowhard.
Why do you post this crap on this site? Have you no shame?
You know, I really think we need to consider a ban on Slate like the one DU has. The fact is, you guys have helped keep the site afloat.
I would've hoping he'd manage to hold his tongue on the occasion of The Great One's passing. Guess I'd given him a little too much credit.
I think Hitchen's star here rose when he came out very pro-war on terrorism. He left The Nation. His book on Clinton, No One Left to Lie To, was extremely good. Nasty, but it's not like Clinton didn't deserve it. (In the book, Hitchens details the Juanita Broderick case and alludes to another such incident.)
A ballistic missile refers to the fact that the trajectory is largely defined by ballistic mechanics. Steerable re-entry vehicles like the MX are still referred to as ballistic missiles, since the amount that they can be steered is fairly small. The gross profile of the flight is determined by the angle, strength and duration of boost.
The other type would be cruise missiles, which fly in air and are completely controllable.
Have another glass of scotch and contemplate the 'cruise missile,' Mr. Hitchens.
>>... I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard. His reply was that maybe his staff had, and maybe they hadn't, but what about the leak of the Pentagon Papers? Thus, a secret theft of presidential documents was equated with the public disclosure of needful information.<<
The Pentagon Papers were needful information?
It is perhaps relevant that his first wife dumped him.
It's by Christopher Hitchens, posted in Slate. If you need a barf alert on top of that, it's time to check into some AA meetings, or something :^)
Patti Davis wrote a lovely article about him that's on pmsnbc, but she also wrote an earlier one (I think it was for her father's birthday?) that was also touching.
She concedes that she demanded something more than what he could give and couldn't appreciate until the end what he could and did give.
So it sounds as though Patti grew up and became a tolerant and caring person.
Too bad for Hitchens. Tolerance means that he thinks that we are at liberty to obey him or suffer the consequences. He has a long wait.
Mr.Hitchens, it's not the "Democratic Party". It's the Democrat Party. I have no idea why some people who are professional journalists insist on using such a phrase? My daughter claims it's because the more letters a word has, the more stock it has with the ignorant.
Intelligent discourse is ordinarily not prefaced by, "Dude".
...he's even a meaner homo!
these idiots have obviously never have read the Reagan Papers. If you folks dont know about 3 years ago the found thousands and thousands of hand written letters,speaches, and policy papers of President Reagan covering decades of thinking. He pulled off the aloof dope and made a huge change in the world. He was an intellectual thinker.
I disagree 100% with his views on Ronald Reagan.
I don't know why you feel the need to ensure that everybody is in lockstep agreement their assessment of Hitchens. Seems an odd crusade.
How do you mean?
I disagree. His book reviews alone are absolute gems.
There is a difference between Buchanan and Hitchens. Buchanan is nasty to the Republican Party and basically works to help the Democrats. He's done for the Democrats what Nader does for us. Hitchens is funny some times and trenchant, and he's frequently very hateful. But he is largely inconsequential in election politics.
Imagine if Bill Clinton solved all of our country's ills by implementing racial quotas, same-sex marriages, raising taxes, and decimating the military. What on earth would we say? Luckily, we are not in the position the Left finds itself in; we get to say "I told you so".
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