The more I think about this the more it seems that this loss to genuine journalism and critique-as-art is just staggering. Hitch hated totalitarianism in every form it took, from the left and the right and from the religious. He wasn't scared of anything or anyone. And he never hesitated in calling out a punk or a scumbag, ranging from the Clintons to Jerry Falwell to Henry Kissinger to Ralph Reed to Sean Hannity to Mother Teresa, when they so clearly deserved it.
Some of his very best:
And yes, Mother Teresa WAS a scumbag:
$1:
"[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?" - Hitch, in a rant called Mommie Dearest.
xerxes
CKA Uber
Posts: 19939
Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 5:03 pm
Ah you beat me to it Thanos. Still, this is a loss. A shame that there aren't more like him.
RIP.
Proculation
CKA Super Elite
Posts: 6584
Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 6:05 pm
Scape Scape:
He was on a death watch for the last year. Surprised he lasted this long. He must of been in agony when he died.
He was a great debater with razor wit. None were like him.
I would say RIP but would see that as an insult. So life well lived then.
Scape
CKA Moderator
Posts: 35283
Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 8:53 pm
ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:
Well, if he harboured any doubts, they've been confirmed.
To be fair I don't think he did. He abhorred the evil that organized religion manifest itself into being more often then not by unquestioning faith and reinforced with the cycle of repetition until it became a boot on the face of humanity over and over again. A very hateful practice indeed.
BRAH
CKA Super Elite
Posts: 9445
Posted: Fri Dec 16, 2011 11:45 pm
Christopher Hitchens (1949 - 2011) idontlikeyouinthatway.com December 16, 2011 Excerpt: Christopher Hitchens, the polarizing genius and author best known for his acerbic wit, excoriating and scathing critiques of anyone you felt was off limits, and the ability to drink Godzilla under the table, died yesterday after a year long battle with esophageal cancer.
Love him or hate him, if you were ever on a stage or a television across from him about to engage in a debate, you should have thought about putting on a propeller hat then <censored>ting in your hand to save yourself from the real embarrassment.
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RIP
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