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Hitchens was obviously more urbane and well-written than the average neocon faux-warrior, but he was also often more vindictive and barbaric about his war cheerleading. One of the only writers with the courage to provide the full picture of Hitchens upon his death was Gawker‘s John Cook, who — in an extremely well-written and poignant obituary – detailed Hitchens’ vehement, unapologetic passion for the attack on Iraq and his dismissive indifference to the mass human suffering it caused, accompanied by petty contempt for those who objected (he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being “sluts” and “fucking fat slags” for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief). As Cook put it: “it must not be forgotten in mourning him that he got the single most consequential decision in his life horrifically, petulantly wrong”; indeed: “People make mistakes. What’s horrible about Hitchens’ ardor for the invasion of Iraq is that he clung to it long after it became clear that a grotesque error had been made.

- Glenn Greenwald in a worthwhile salon.com post built around this idea: “To allow significant political figures to be heralded with purely one-sided requiems — enforced by misguided (even if well-intentioned) notions of private etiquette that bar discussions of their bad acts — is not a matter of politeness; it’s deceitful and propagandistic.”

To start, as this 11/18/2010 post will show, I realize how stubbornly wrong Hitchens was about Iraq. What I’d somehow missed was that “he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being ‘sluts’ and ‘fucking fat slags’ for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief.” I’d say that this made my blood boil. But blood can’t boil. Not while you’re alive at least. What’s real is that my pulse sped as my body tried to cope with a squirt of fight-or-flight hormone.

The main way I try to cope in these situations is to click some links, get closer, and give my indignation a chance to deepen, dissipate, or grow more complicated. So I did.

I started by clicking the words “fucking fat slags” in Greenwald’s post. It led to the Google Books version of a book I don’t know, The Left At War. This passage, specifically:

At a debate a few hours earlier, he lost his temper when someone asked about the country band the Dixie Chicks and the flak they copped for criticising George W. Bush’s Iraq policy.

“Each day they dig up dead bodies in personal death camps run by a Caligula dictator,” Hitchens shouted, “and I’m being asked to worry about these fucking fat slags—do me a favour!”

Then I clicked “sluts,” which led to a YouTube clip. I’ve transcribed what feels like the relevant part:

One must show some contempt and some defiance, and the best means of doing that that I know of: irony and obscenity. Which is why it was a mistake for that guy to ask me about those slut Dixie Chicks and the hideous holocaust to which they’ve been subjected.

Greenwald’s post is about the perils of creating “false history.” But it’s false history to summarize these two Hitchens quotes as “he denounced the Dixie Chicks as being ‘sluts’ and ‘fucking fat slags’ for the crime of mildly disparaging the Commander-in-Chief.”

The most Hitchens-friendly reading of the quotes is that he wanted to bludgeon audiences into understanding that nothing in the jingoistic backlash against the Dixie Chicks  came close to “dead bodies in personal death camps.” A slightly better man would have made the point while dismissing Natalie Maines and her band mates as rich pop stars, rather than “sluts” and “fucking fat slags.” A vastly better man would have made his point and then pivoted to warning that mass demonization of dissenters — from Dixie Chicks to atheists — can lead to Orwell’s “Two Minutes Hate” and, in turn, to the hell of ”dead bodies in personal death camps.” 

But, as Hitchens said in the same YouTube clip, “I may look friendly and meek and so on, but I have a mean streak a mile wide.”

Notes

  1. davidquigg posted this