Posted on 12/01/2008 9:21:44 AM PST by angkor
I hope I am not alone in finding the statements about Bombay from our politicians to be anemic and insipid, and the media coverage of the disastrous and criminal attack too parochially focused on the fate of visiting or resident Americans.
[snip]
Not to romanticize it overmuch, it is a huge and officially secular federal democracy that is based, like the United States, on ethnic and confessional pluralism. Its political and economic and literary echelons speak English better than most of us do.
[snip]
It would be good to hear from the president and the president-elect that we regard attacks on the fabric and society of India with very particular seriousness, as assaults on a close friend that was battling al-Qaida long before we were.
[snip]
An impressive thing about India is the way in which it has almost as many Muslim citizens, who live with greater prospects of peace and prosperity, as does Pakistan. This comity and integration is one of the many targets of the suicide killers, and it is another reason why firm, warm solidarity with India is the most pressing need of the present hour.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Read the whole column, it's a proper Hitchean tribute to India and to freedom.
So, should we still sell arms to Pakistan?
I like ol’ Hitch. He’s the only atheist I will allow to play ‘devil’s advocate’.
Good article.
Hitchens is a great writer but I marked him off my list when he came out for Obama.
He campaigned for, and said he voted for Hussein.
An anti-American, radical, terrorist sympathizer, and racist.
But I digress...
Hitchens is what he is, and I for don’t read his atheism screeds, or other stuff where I know he’s gonna’ be an idiot.
But in this one he’s on the mark.
Bingo. That said, he is right on this one. India is a huge counterweight to China and Russia.
I think if you were to wake either of them up they would sound just like you or me, but after the first cup of mocha they recover those plummy accents.
And see Henry Kissinger: he’s lived here a half-century but still sounds like a kraut right off the boat.
Well, this jerk supported Obama for president, so now he’d better start learningn to live with it.
Anyone who hated Mother Teresa (because she totally embraced Life) so much he actually wrote a entire book trashing her...is too mentally unstable to pay attention to.
That’s Hitchens...he’s got some powerful blinders on some issues, but can be a really sharp cookie when those issues aren’t the ones he’s talking about.
I believe that Hitchens was the role model for the drunken whore journalist( I know , I know, both terms imply the other when describing a journalist) played by Bruce Willis in Bonfire of the Vanities. If he wasn’t, he should have been.
I’ve met plenty of Swedes and Germans, Vietnamese and Cambodians and Malaysians who speak English like they came from Iowa. No accent, or only a very slight one.
Agent Olivia Dunham on Fox’s “Fringe” is an Australian actress who has mastered “American English” for her role.
So why can’t Hitch, Kissinger, and Amanpour do it?
Answer: They can but it’s not fashionable.
That's rich given Hitchin's support of 0bama (who lukewarmly "denounced" Rev. Wright) while remaining strangely silent on ZERO's support of a murderous Kenyan government.
Maybe Hitchins can row his hypocrital @ss to Kenya and put his money where his mouth is.
Tom Wolfe had plenty of drunken whore journalists to model for Bonfire.
“So why can’t Hitch...do it?”
Your women dig our accent (if not our teeth :o).
Yo! Hitch! You backed ‘Zero’bama. STFU!
We keep hearing that this is another 'wake-up call'. . .clearly it cannot be heard if one's head is buried in the sand. Simple truths are not elusive; they just seem that way; when we refuse to face them.
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