Author: Ophelia Benson

  • Richard Dawkins on Hitchens

    A writer and an orator with a matchless style, commanding a vocabulary and a range of literary and historical allusion far wider than anybody I know.

  • Francis Wheen on Hitchens

    His sobriety was perhaps disguised by the frisky playfulness of his language, the extravagance of his invective, the fearlessness of his risk-taking.

  • Terry Glavin on Hitchens

    Orwell had hoped that political writing might be one day be transformed into an  art, and if anyone can be said to have accomplished that, it was Hitchens.

  • Hello darkness

    And as twilight falls, a last goodnight…

  • It’s a poisoned chalice

    Via Jim Houston in comments, a fitting valediction from Hitchens.

    www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwgYYxfpPC0

    To me, the offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can’t give way, is an offer of something not worth having.

     

  • Ian McEwan on Hitchens

    His unworldly fluency never deserted him, his commitment was passionate, and he never deserted his trade. He was the consummate writer, the brilliant friend.

  • Meanwhile, in Bangladesh

    A woman pursued higher education without her husband’s permission. He (according to police) tied her up, taped her mouth, and cut off all five fingers on her right hand.

    Hawa Akther Jui recovering from the attack

    She is learning to write with her left hand.

  • Bangladesh: man cuts off wife’s fingers

    Because she pursued higher education without his permission, police say.

  • Hitchens

    More on Hitchens, in no particular order.

    Michael Weiss at the Telegraph –

    The last few days had been, for those of us who knew he hadn’t much time left, a strange bundle of suffering commingled with the joy of recollection. We got to relive what endeared him to us from the start: the hilarious tabletalk, the Borgesian library of political and literary arcana that he kept inside his head, and the writing. Of course the writing, particularly the put-downs that never let their subjects get back up again: “No one has a higher opinion of Alexander Haig than I do, and I think he is a homicidal buffoon,” “a herd of antis in search of a climax,” “not only a bore, but the cause of boredom in others.”

    It is undeniable that the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it. Significantly duller and less amusing.

    As for the politics, his critics always got him wrong on the supposed evolution (or devolution, as they’d argue) from Left to Right. There was the same foundational principle throughout, and if you think the hatred of the clerics and the censors and the commissars began after 9/11, you weren’t really paying close attention.

    Christopher Buckley in the New Yorker –

    One of our lunches, at Café Milano, the Rick’s Café of Washington, began at 1 P.M., and ended at 11:30 P.M. At about nine  o’clock (though my memory is somewhat hazy), he said, “Should we order more food?” I somehow crawled home, where I remained under medical supervision for several weeks, packed in ice with a morphine drip. Christopher probably went home that night and wrote a biography of Orwell. His stamina was as epic as his erudition and wit.

    …

    Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me tell  you—Christopher was one tough grader. Oy. No matter how much he loved  you, he did not shy from giving it to you with the bark off if you had  disappointed.

    …

    The jacket of his next book, a collection of breathtaking essays, perfectly  titled “Arguably,” contains some glowing words of praise, including my own  (humble but earnest) asseveration that he is—was—”the greatest living essayist  in the English language.” One or two reviewers demurred, calling my effusion “forgivable exaggeration.” To them I say: O.K., name a better one. I would alter  only one word in that blurb now.

    Of course he was. People who demur can’t have been paying attention.

    Rick Warren on Twitter –

    Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.

    Tim Minchin on Rick Warren on Hitch, on Twitter –

    Nauseating condescending clown RT @RickWarren: Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.

    Neil deGrasse Tyson on Twitter –

    Gone too Soon: Christopher Hitchens 62. Tireless supporter of human rights and fighter of dogma under any guise.

    Center for Inquiry on Twitter –

    Hitchens was a columnist for Free Inquiry for 10 years. “The Return of Indulgences” Read this op-ed piece.

    You know what? I’m a columnist for Free Inquiry. I’m a colleague of Hitchens’s. That’s quite something.

    Nevertheless –  the world will be duller and less funny without Hitchens in it.

     

  • Michael Weiss on Hitchens

    If  you think the hatred of the clerics and the censors and the commissars began after 9/11, you weren’t really paying close attention.

  • Peter Hitchens on his brother

    I have another memory of him, white-faced, slight and thin as we all were in those more austere times, furious, standing up to some bully or other in the playground.

  • Christopher Buckley on Christopher Hitchens

    Intellectually, ours was largely a teacher-student relationship, and let me  tell you—Christopher was one tough grader.

  • Hitchens the writer

    Another repost, this time of a repost – metametapost. I wrote it in 2002 or early 2003 when B&W was new, and reposted it last year, on

    July 1, 2010

    I wrote this about eight years ago for “In the Library.” It hints at why I hope Christopher Hitchens stays around.

    Christopher Hitchens is a standing reproach to people who write the odd essay now and then. He is like some sort of crazed writing machine, he seems to average three or four longish essays a day, along with reading everything ever written and remembering all of it, knowing everyone worth knowing on most continents, visiting war zones and trouble spots around the globe, going on television and overbearing even noisy Chris Matthews’ efforts to interrupt him, and irritating people. And what’s even more painful is that this torrent of prose is nothing like the torrents of people like Joyce Carol Oates or Iris Murdoch, badly written in proportion to the torrentiality – no, this is a torrent of learned, witty, informed and informative, searching, impassioned history on the hoof. If Hitchens is a journalist then so were Gibbon and Thucydides.

    Unacknowledged Legislation is a collection of essays on writers in the public sphere, as the subtitle has it. The essays are many things, but one of the most noticeable is that they are unexpected. The essay on Philip Larkin for example entirely declines the opportunity to express easy outrage, and instead digs much, much deeper. The one on Martha Nussbaum’s Poetic Justice wonders why she didn’t mention Mill’s autobiography and then at the fact that she seems unaware of the element of caricature in Dickens’ Hard Times. ‘When the utilitarian teacher M’Choakumchild – perhaps a clue there? – tells Sissy Jupe etc.’ Hitchens misses nothing.

    Christopher Hitchens, Unacknowledged Legislation, Verso: 2000.

  • The Hitch

    Update: a couple more. I didn’t include Salman Rushdie’s because it was more personal, but I see it’s also on Twitter where anyone can see it, so –

    Goodbye, my beloved friend.  A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011.

    And Richard Dawkins –

    Christopher Hitchens, finest orator of our time, fellow horseman, valiant fighter against all tyrants including God.

    My thoughts exactly.

    Francis Wheen at Facebook –

    BBC radio news at 7am reports the death of Christopher Hitchens, “an alcoholic”. How I wish Christopher was still here to challenge imbecile reporter Nick Higham over this lie. His epitaph, he once told me, should be “He never missed a deadline”. Farewell, dear old fruit.

    Nick Cohen ditto –

    The editor is letting me write about the Hitch. The fact that I had a gun to his head at the time is neither here nor there.

    Also, a few minutes earlier –

    Anyone who wishes to raise a glass of whisky in memory of an absent comrade can join Padraig Reidy and me at 5.30 at the King’s Head Islington.

    That’s two hours from now, you have plenty of time.

    Martin Robb ditto –

    Now it’s up to the rest of us to stay on the case of Galloway and all the other friends of tyrants.

    And on the case of the ultimate tyrant, Colonel God.

  • How dare you ask for evidence?

    Nice piece about Rhys Morgan in the Guardian.

    So why does this floppy-haired teenager bother? Wouldn’t it be less hassle to focus on becoming even better at Team Fortress 2 or just kicking back and listening to his favourite bands, Muse and Radiohead?

    “It can be nerve-wracking but I think that getting the message out there is a lot more important than me being sued,” says Morgan. “I think there’s a need for more people to speak out. I hate the idea of anyone being taken for a ride.”

    And there you go. That’s what a lot of speakers-out think, and that’s why they speak out. Most of us weren’t clever and together and dedicated enough to do it at age 17, and if we had we wouldn’t have been worth listening to anyway, but the reasons are still the same.

    But it was when Morgan was diagnosed with a serious illness – Crohn’s disease – that he plunged deep into the world of scepticism. While off school last year, he set about researching the disease and was alarmed at some of the “miracle cures” on offer. One particularly grabbed his attention: Miracle Mineral Solution (MMS), which is described on its website as the “answer” to Aids, hepatitis A, B and C, malaria, herpes, TB and “most cancer”.

    Morgan looked into MMS and was alarmed to find that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had warned that, when used as directed, the solution produced was “a potent bleach” and urged anyone using it to stop immediately and throw it away. Similar warnings have been issued in this country.

    Bleach. Bleach!! People are peddling bleach as a treatment! That’s scary. (And puts me in mind of a horrible story about a volunteer at the zoo and some mice and a jar and some bleach…)

    “A few people on support forums seemed to be pushing MMS on others. I started telling people on the forums, look, this treatment doesn’t seem to be that great.” He got “kicked off” one forum. “They told me I was being rude and inflammatory by questioning other people’s choices.”

    Because medical treatments are just a matter of “choices,” and choosing the wrong one – say, bleach – won’t do any harm. Wouldn’t it be nice if people could learn to stop thinking that way?

    So what does he believe in? Morgan does not hesitate: “Evidence-based medicine. If evidence can support something, I’m all for it. One thing that really gets me is when people claim sceptics have closed minds. That’s not true: a true sceptic will be convinced by evidence. And even if the evidence supported the most absurd claims, the sceptic would agree that it’s true.”

    Is that rude and inflammatory or what?!

     

  • MRAs respond to fraternity’s “who would you rape?” survey

    “We should be celebrating young men who stand up against misandry. We should be celebrating the frat that said ‘no means yes’.”

  • Killing of Dagestani journalist must be investigated

    Today’s murder of Gadzhimurad Kamalov, founder of the independent newspaper Chernovik, is a lethal blow to press freedom, said the Committee to Protect Journalists.

  • The Guardian talks to Rhys Morgan

    “They told me I was being rude and inflammatory by questioning other people’s choices.”

  • More weasels

    I’m starting to think it’s a pattern. I’m starting to think it may be that only opponents (or at least non-fans) reported this particular bit of legislation honestly.

    Here’s the CNS version:

    The legislation would prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions and bar  women from using subsidies under the Obama health care law to buy  health insurance that covers abortion, except in those cases involving  rape or incest or when the mother’s life is endangered. Also, the  legislation would protect health care providers who are opposed to  abortion for moral or religious reasons.

    Again: that’s it. It doesn’t spell out that that means the legislation would make it legal for health care providers – including hospitals, not just individuals – to refuse to do abortions even to save the woman’s life. Given the preceding sentence about funding, which does include that exception, readers are primed to assume the opposite.

    This probably helps to explain the lack of outrage, and the people like the staffer in one representative’s office who say “oh no, of course hospitals won’t let women die.”

  • Weasels

    Interesting. The supporters of the “Protect Life Bill” aka the Let Women Die Bill are so ashamed of the let women die part that they conceal it in their press coverage; at least, the people at LifeSiteNews do.

    The measure would amend President Obama’s Affordable Care Act to reflect the Hyde amendment by prohibiting taxpayer dollars from funding any health plan that includes coverage of elective abortions. The measure retains Hyde’s exception for abortions performed due to the child’s conception in rape or incest or to save the mother’s life.

    The bill also makes clear that no health insurance carrier may be forced to provide coverage of abortion in any of its health plans, and strengthens the conscience rights of health care workers and institutions to reject abortion training, procedures, or referrals.

    That’s it – that’s all it says. Notice the complete failure to mention that this “strengthening” means legalizing the refusal to do an abortion to save a woman’s life. Notice it and think about what it implies. It implies that they’re ashamed of it, or at least realize that other people would think they should be. It means they don’t want their readers to grasp that that’s what the bill would do if it became law. It means they’re hiding what the law actually does.

    Disgusting.