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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  4756 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Christopher Hitchens dead at 62
I would modify your statement to say "Bombast isn't necessarily truth." I think one can be loud and loquacious, or even down right irritating, but still sometimes be correct. I found this with Hitchens form time to time. I think that he had a bombastic style, but at he same time he sometimes made some interesting points.

And, to the above article, Michael Moore is a propagandist. (And I say this with a heavy heart because I loathe to hate on a Spartan, but its the truth.)





kleinbl00  ·  4756 days ago  ·  link  ·  
"Christopher Hitchens - sometimes correct."

See, I'll go with that. Hell, George Will is sometimes correct. Nobody is busy flagellating themselves over someone who is "sometimes correct" however. They're all up on the wailing wall for Christopher Hitchens, Literary Lion.

Bombast isn't necessarily falsehood, either. It's just the art of writing loudly. Hitchens was a one-trick pony who was so good at that one trick that people forgive the substantial trespasses he made against journalism and literature.

Is Michael Moore a propagandist? I doubt even Michael Moore would contest that. Thing is, though, Hitchens called him a liar over and over and over again. As if the facts in FAHRENHEIT 911 hadn't been substantiated again and again and again. Hitchens wasn't the slightest bit interested in the truth, he was wholly given over to making you pissed off at the same things that pissed him off. And as a capricious and focus-poor gasbag, "things that pissed him off" changed on a daily basis with no attempt to reconcile his prior vitriol.

History will forget Christopher Hitchens for the exact reasons it remembers William F. Buckley. And I think it's important to point out that my politics are much more closely aligned with Hitchens... but my respect is wholly with Buckley.

A decent columnist doesn't need to lie to prove a point.

thenewgreen  ·  4756 days ago  ·  link  ·  
We shall see about the "remembrance". If secularism takes hold in the US he may be considered a sort of trail blazer. He has certainly dedicated a lot of time and effort in exposing religion as a force of evil in the world.

Aside: I've always enjoyed this Buckley/Hitchens conversation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0LR2mxqMNM

b_b  ·  4756 days ago  ·  link  ·  
Point taken.

And "Hell, George Will is sometimes correct." made me laugh out loud at my desk, for the record.