Not really film related but I'd be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the death of my favorite contemporary writer, Christopher Hitchens. Ordinarily I wouldn't bother you with an off-topic post, but as I spent countless hours of my college career perusing his essays, books and Youtube videos, I feel a need to comment.
Love him or hate him, Mr. Hitchens was one of the truly interesting minds of our era. He's one of the few writers who could nimbly navigate the political, historical, theological, philosophical, cultural and literary with ease. Read his demolishing of Pat Buchanan's World War II revisionism, his perceptive take on The Baader-Meinhoff Complex or pondering the importance of Martha Stewart for just a taste. Best of all, I've recently discovered he's another fan of the Flashman novels, and has written several interesting pieces on them.
In my conservative youth (say, three years ago) I always appreciated his intelligent defense of the Iraq War. While he did buy into the Bush Administration's line about WMDs etc., Hitchens framed the war in humanitarian terms: Saddam Hussein is an irredeemable, dangerous villain who was better off dead, and that Iraq deserved a right to govern itself. Ignoring the guilt-tripping of other leftists, Hitchens argued our history of propping up Saddam's regime only increased our responsibility for setting it right. If Hitchens was wrong about Iraq, and one can certainly argue that, he was articulately and earnestly so.
This is not a slide from left to right. It fits in perfectly with Hitchens' support of humanitarian, internationalist foreign policy and longtime aversion of Islamic fanaticism. Hitchens condemned the Ayatollah Khomeni's fatwah against Salman Rushdie while others saw righteous indignation. He championed American engagement in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo before it became fashionable to do so. He loves America (as evidenced in his memoir Hitch-22) and angrily savages it for not living up to its ideals. That the likes of Noam Chomsky cannot drop their reflexive America-bashing to see other evils in the world is their fault, not Hitchens'.
In recent years Hitchens has become known as an atheist activist, with his best-selling book God is Not Great and innumerable debates and lectures on the topic. I'm more ambivalent than hostile towards religion and generally find Hitchens strident on this topic. My own beliefs aside, I've known too many good people of fatih to share his views, and believe secular ideologies are capable of the same evil. Still, it's always a pleasure to see him tear into religious insanity, be it Jerry Falwell or Osama Bin Laden, and admire his consistency on the topic.
Of course, Hitchens loved debating, even if it devolved into mean-spirited argument. Always ready with a quip or a cutting jab, he never shied from confrontation or insult. Who can forget his dismissal of Jerry Falwell: "give him an enema and he could be buried in a matchbox"? Of course, his best moment may have been flipping off Bill Maher's audience on live TV. No one's mastered the sound bite better than Hitch.
Certainly there's much I disagreed with. His campaign against Mother Theresa always struck me as ridiculous and deliberately provocative. His tireless screeching about Henry Kissinger ceased being interesting after the 5,000th identical article. Whenever someone confronted him with the secular tyrannies of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, he engaged in excrutiating semantical gymnastics to prove they were either religious states or "like religions." And yes, his lack of decorum - calling Ronald Reagan a "cruel and stupid lizard" on the occasion of the latter's death - was occasionally a bit much.
These differences of opinion, however, only highlight my admiration. Somehow he managed to be unpredictable without being inconsistent, and never gave a damn what anyone thought about him. I often hated what he had to say, but when we agreed I was proud to have someone like him on my side.
Expect at least two new reviews by next Monday!
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