Christopher Hitchens

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Beck Rally the ' Waterworld of White Self-Pity'
Beck Rally the 'Waterworld of White Self-Pity'
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

Beck Rally the 'Waterworld of White Self-Pity'

Nativist demonstrators voice anxieties of the coming white 'minority'

(Newser) - What was it like to be at Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally? Like visiting a political event in the not-so-distant future when white people are a minority in America, writes Christopher Hitchens for Slate . The prescriptions offered by speakers and attendees for restoring "honor"—and exactly what...

Mosque Foes: Stop Catering to Feelings of 9/11 Families

 Mosque Foes: Stop 
 Catering to Feelings 
 of 9/11 Families 

Christopher Hitchens

Mosque Foes: Stop Catering to Feelings of 9/11 Families

Cordoba House isn't wonderful, but opponents are unhinged

(Newser) - The dispute over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque”—which is actually several blocks away, mind you—“has now sunk to a level of stupidity that really does shame the memories” of the 9/11 victims, writes Christopher Hitchens in Slate . As an arch-atheist, Hitchens doesn’t much like...

Christopher Hitchens: My Fight With Cancer

Essayist writes of battling a 'blind alien'

(Newser) - Christopher Hitchens writes of his entry into the strange land of "sick country"—in his case a cancer diagnosis—with its accompanying bouts of "sentimentality and self-pity" and "gnawing sense of waste." But the renowned atheist has it in perspective: "To the dumb question...

Author Hitchens Has Esophageal Cancer

He has to scale back book tour to get chemotherapy

(Newser) - British author and famous atheist Christopher Hitchens says he must undergo chemotherapy on his esophagus and has canceled some engagements. The 61-year-old Hitchens, whose most recent book, Hitch-22, is on Publishers Weekly's best-sellers list, posted a message on his publisher's website that he had been told by his doctor that...

Atheist Academic Wants to Arrest the Pope

Human rights lawyers hope to prove 'crimes against humanity'

(Newser) - A prominent atheist campaigner is working on a plan to have the pope arrested when he visits the UK in September. British academic Richard Dawkins tells the Times of London he's enlisted human rights lawyers to help prove a case of "crimes against humanity." If his plan works,...

Christopher Hitchens: Bicurious Youth
 Christopher 
 Hitchens: 
 Bicurious 
 Youth 
MEMOIR LEAK

Christopher Hitchens: Bicurious Youth

Author had quite a few same-sex romps at prep school, Oxford

(Newser) - Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens is straight—twice-married, in fact—but that didn’t stop him from steamy prep school sex with his male classmates. Below, a sampling of leaked excerpts from his upcoming memoir, courtesy of Gawker and an earlier article in the Times :
  • “Most boys decided quite
...

'Like' Is, Like, Not Going Anywhere... Um, OK?
 'Like' Is, Like, Not Going 
 Anywhere... Um, OK? 
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

'Like' Is, Like, Not Going Anywhere... Um, OK?

Yes, it's an annoying verbal tic—but it can also be useful

(Newser) - “Like” is, like, the biggest filler word since, um, “you know,” and it, basically, gets on Christopher Hitchens’ nerves. But though “it’s true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as...

Media Airbrush Did Kennedy No Favors: Hitchens

Camelot replay overshadowed real accomplishments, redemption

(Newser) - The Kennedy “legacy” is not pretty, precisely because it requires so much media “airbrushing” to stay intact. “One of the many dreadful aspects,” Christopher Hitchens writes for Slate, “is the now-unbreakable grip of celebrity politics, image-doctoring, stage management, and ‘torch passing’ rhetoric in general....

Parthenon Gets the Museum It Deserves
 Parthenon Gets the 
 Museum It Deserves 
MUSEUM REVIEW

Parthenon Gets the Museum It Deserves

(Newser) - The Parthenon has been called the one “absolutely right” building on the planet, and it now has a fitting memorial, Christopher Hitchens writes in Vanity Fair. Hitchens is among the first to visit the new Acropolis Museum in Athens, and it does not disappoint. Artifacts, expert reproductions, and a...

Slate Scribe Gets in Syrian Street Brawl

Hitchens, two others jumped during junket

(Newser) - Three journalists—including columnist and author Christopher Hitchens—were jumped by thugs during a press junket in Beirut, reports Lawrence Osborne in a column for Forbes. Hitchens “rather gallantly insulted the swastika flag” of a “Syria-loving skinhead party called the SSNP” by scrawling an obscenity on it. He...

Fatwa Against Rushdie Set Off Self-Censorship
Fatwa Against Rushdie Set Off Self-Censorship
OPINION

Fatwa Against Rushdie Set Off Self-Censorship

Edict brought Muslim culture war to the West: Hitchens

(Newser) - When Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens knew what it meant: "This was not just a warning of what was to come,” he writes in Vanity Fair, “it was the warning.” A global culture war, between Muslim fundamentalists and everyone else, had...

Hitchens: We're Now a Banana Republic

Accountability is nil, the president useless

(Newser) - The credit crisis has laid bare the failings of US government, writes Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair, putting us on par with other banana republics such as Zimbabwe and Venezuela. How else to describe this "collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can...

Hitchens Agrees: Waterboarding Is Torture

Controversial writer puts his money where his mouth is, takes plunge for Vanity Fair

(Newser) - "You may have read by now the official lie about this treatment, which is that it simulates the feeling of drowning," Christopher Hitchens writes of waterboarding in Vanity Fair. "You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning," concludes the author, who experienced the controversial...

Protect Her Like You Promised
Protect Her Like You Promised

Protect Her Like You Promised

Dutch must keep free-speech advocate alive, Rushdie and Harris argue in the LAT

(Newser) - Former Dutch MP Ayaan Hirsi deserves “the freedoms of speech and conscience we take for granted," argue Salman Rushdie and Sam Harris—who urge the Dutch to keep protecting her from Islamic killers. The Dutch promised protection in 2002, and should “recognize a scandal in the making”...

Editor's Murder Shows Failure of Tolerance

Hitchens hits cops for abetting criminality in religious guise

(Newser) - The notoriously irreligious Christopher Hitchens decries the Oakland police's tolerance of Your Black Muslim Bakery, one of whose employees has been arrested for the murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. In an op-ed for Slate Hitchens writes that the bakery is in fact a front for jihadism and that...

Hitchens: Stop Fearing (and Coddling) Islam

'Threat of violence' behind Muslims' demand for religious respect

(Newser) - Unflappable contrarian Christopher Hitchens asks why he's accused of "insulting 1.5 billion Muslims" whenever he challenges their faith in public. Arguing that no other group takes such umbrage when its empirical beliefs are questioned, the militant secularist concludes that the appeal to Muslims' feelings has an "unmistakable...

Hitchens: Lay Off Wolfie!
Hitchens: Lay Off Wolfie!

Hitchens: Lay Off Wolfie!

(Newser) - Unflappable contrarian Chris Hitchens casts a sympathetic eye at beset World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. Cries for Wolfowitz's resignation have crescendoed since revelations that he had a hand in getting his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a big promotion at the poverty-fighting organization last year.

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