I could put up with that shit Michael Kelly but snitchens and sully are the reasons I’ll never buy a copy of the Atlantic Monthly again.

Huh, who knew it was actually possible to think less of him. What. An. Ass.

Shorter Drunky McSinglemalt: “Eh, they didn’t die for one of my pet causes, so fuck ’em.”

I actually thought he had something of a widdle-biddy point hidden in there, though presented in perhaps the absolutely jerkiest, most unnecessarily cantankerous and overreactive manner possible.

The point being the ridiculousness of the national pity parties (and searches for “closure”) so popular these years over all sorts of things (like Princess Di), and how those using VT for political gain are at least as crass as he is. The jerkiness involves plenty, not just what DA said but also his references to mass murder as a “non-event” (!?!?), nastily ragging on a lady who was just trying to mouth a few comforting words for people (yeah, they’re usually “piffle”, but kee-rist, most people can’t write sonnets during disasters and aftermaths, for fuck’s sake, nor would one calm down a frightened child, for example, by quoting Shakespeare instead of the Wiggles…).

That’s OK, he doesn’t give a shit about how many people die in Iraq either — after all they’re either glorious martyrs (if they are American) or our enemies. Either way, it’s cool with him!

I see Hitch in person frequently. Please don’t feature him too much here, it’s hard enough not to launch into the lush as is.
I almost wish he hadn’t joined my old department just as I was finishing that degree, tho I don’t know if I’d want to pay to have him advise me on how to write.

I guess I am ass #2. The “reaching out” has been overboard, and used as a launching pad for . What’s that saying? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

for = insert wingnut agenda

MCH: my thoughts exactly.

I actually thought he had something of a widdle-biddy point…
The point being the ridiculousness of the national pity parties (and searches for “closureâ€?) so popular these years over all sorts of things…
Hitchens could have timed his comments better, though. For instance, he could have written them in late 2001. He could have directed them against the politicians who wanted to assuage the nation’s grief and attain closure by invading other countries and killing lots of foreigners.

Shorter Herr Doktor Bimler:

All human lives have value. The taking of any of them is murder, and a tragedy. You don’t get to rank them like it’s a freakin playoff bracket…

mikey

Thanks dok!

Shorter Everybody:

Drink yourself to death and die already, Hitchypoo.

wurd

If you’ve ever had anyone close to you die then you’re familiar with the creepy, cloying sympathetic (vs. empathetic) pose that some people adopt. People who barely gave the deceased the time of day when they were alive suddenly act like the dead person was a life-long friend and their loss is just so overwhelming. Yes it creepy, yes its narcissistic; but mostly people don’t have the vaguest notion WTF to say or do when someone dies, so they do what they think is expected.

Really, though, like most everyone, Hitch is just using senseless tragedy to whip out a favorite political point: that the West is “weak” and “coddled” and doesn’t share his manly disregard for human suffering. “Suck it up”? Fuck him.

Isn’t Morgan Fairchild his wife?

Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Asshole number three over here! I’m starting to think a lot of people are addicted to tragedy; else there’d be no profit in round the clock coverage of it. Whether in the search for meaning (VT) or the search for vengeance (Iraq), a lot of mass-media junkies will take things to mawkish – yes, mawkish – excess.

Cho had a serious and untreated mental illness. There was no sense behind the murders he committed that any rational person could discern. Yes we should have sympathy for the families, but not to the point where our own issues start eclipsing theirs.

At the risk of taking it on the chin, I agreed with just about everything Hitchens wrote. I’m weary of the calculated displays of grief that we have decided are appropriate in this society: the ribbons, the reading of the names, the bells struck 33 times, the teddy bears, the roadside shrines to accident victims. People don’t really seem to know how to be sad–they just pick items of grief posturing from a list, the way one would choose items from a menu at a Chinese restaurant.

(I guess that if I really wanted to get people pissed off at me, I could have written, “…the way Dafydd ab Hugh chooses fixin’s from the wall board at a Togo’s,” but I won’t.)

Kinubu: Hitch is just using senseless tragedy to whip out a favorite political point: that the West is “weak” and “coddled” and doesn’t share his manly disregard for human suffering. “Suck it up”? Fuck him.

I don’t know. Hitchens is one of those cawk… hawks “whose conservative politics were born in the ashes of the World Trade Center — blunt, weak, spineless, and easily manipulated children seeking refuge in their mother’s skirts”, to quote a friend. He doesn’t give a shit about the chaos we’ve created, but it seems to me he has a thing for pointing out socially acceptable hypocrisy during times of mourning.

If you’ve ever had anyone close to you die then you’re familiar with the creepy, cloying sympathetic (vs. empathetic) pose that some people adopt

And that’s a peaceful death. In violent death, you can find yourself horrified by the spurting arterial bleeding, hamburger flesh and tendons, and screaming terror that was just a few minutes ago your friend. You can’t help yourself, you go out under fire to drag the mess back to safety as long as it’s breathing, but once it stops, bag it and tag it and stop thinking about it.

You can’t function if you’re paralyzed by grief, but if you can’t grieve in real time you’re gonna have to find a way to work it out later. And that’s gonna take booze and anger and you’re likely to get arrested.

So you fight like hell to save them, then fight like hell to forget them. And they haunt your dreams. Always bloody and torn, the way you saw them stuffed in a green bag, that’s how you remember them. Missing limbs, flesh torn away, but they still come. They have something to say. What is it?

Don’t forget me! As long as you remember me, as long as you love who I was, I live on…

Live on….

mikey

(I guess that if I really wanted to get people pissed off at me, I could have written, “…the way Dafydd ab Hugh chooses fixin’s from the wall board at a Togo’s,� but I won’t.)

Actually, the Dafydd fixin’s portion is the only reason you DIDN’T completely piss me off.

how about president dull normal?

Doc Washboard: People don’t really seem to know how to be sad–they just pick items of grief posturing from a list, the way one would choose items from a menu at a Chinese restaurant.

Putting Hitchens aside for a minute, though, what we’re really talking about here is what people should do in the face of tragedy that doesn’t really touch them directly. In this case, 33 people died for no reason and people know they should feel sad, but the truth is they probably don’t. Then they fell like shit for not feeling sad. Then they overcompensate to prove to themselves that they are a good person. Then they get defensive about the things they do to overcompensate, because challenging the pose threatens their sense of their own goodness.

Yeah, its fake and self-absorbed, but is it really wrong? Would society really be better off if those not directly involved said “wow, that sucks, but it doesn’t really effect me, so, meh.”?

See, our social fabric is shot through with this sort of “I’m going to make damn sure everyone sees how concerned I am about X because I hate what the fact that I don’t care says about me,” And its not all bad.

And its not all bad.

Agree. Getting choked up or wanting to get choked up over 33 senseless deaths is pretty human.

Shit, we all cry when Old Yeller dies, and he’s not human or even really dead!

Dear Jesus, why won’t that man just STFU. He has yet to understand, he will NEVER understand, what everyone else in the world understands, that half of his rantings are merely him knee-jerking to the opinion of the general hoi-poloi (except in the case of Iraq where he first knee-jerked against the general opinion of his liberal cohorts, and now knee-jerks against the opinion of pretty much the whole country.) NOBODY has ever written a decent argument that consisted merely of them over-reacting to somebody else’s stance on something because that person dared to have that stance and for no other reason, no matter how witty a writer they are, and Hitch is no exception.

Why won’t the man just hurry the f*&^ up and drink himself to death?

At the risk of taking it on the chin, I agreed with just about everything Hitchens wrote.

But he’s still a useless shithead.

What’s all this kerfuffle about piffle, anyway?

Perhaps Hitch can take comfort in the fact that when his liver finally explodes and he shuffles off this mortal coil, absolutely no one will mourn the passing of his bitter, narcissistic ass.

Mark S. – surely several distilleries will fly their flags at half mast?

i have to vaguely agree with him as well. there’s something crawly and disgusting about how much and how thouroughly this event has been covered. it’s almost like being raped- in an emotional sense. this is a bad analogy, of course, but i can’t think of how to describe the way it makes me feel other than some kind of violation. it almost seems intrusive. i guess i grew up wanting to deal with grief on my own, in my own way. making it so public and open to political posturing and fake sympathy is disturbing, to say the least.

Mark S. – surely several distilleries will fly their flags at half mast?
I imagine that Stolichnaya is already releasing special commemorative black-label bottles to mark the demise of Boris Yeltsin — the first man to be eaten by his own pancreas.

It’s only a moving death if Histopher Chritchens met in a nice cafe in a memorably exotic locale with a noble representative of a third world cause Chritchens supports and who told the Chritch of the pain of losing a loved one to a tyrant or thug whom Histopher wants the US or UK to attack.

That’s the formula, pretty much.

i normally resign most anything Hitchens says to the bin, but i liked him for a couple of points here:

1) taking (somewhat) the piss out of the Cult of Princess Di’s Death. for chrissakes what the hell were people thinking?
2) his attacks on religion, both with the local reverend and Billy Graham after 9/11. i had a cousin shot in the head at VaTech (who thankfully lived) last week and a family friend commit suicide this week. both families have heard a lot of “it’s god’s plan and we just have to deal with it because we can never know what god knows.” fuck all that. it’s not particularly comforting and frankly it’s a little fucking sick. these people want to believe in a god who is such a massive prick? hell no.

if i can count on Hitchens for one thing it’s utter disdain for all religion and the little bit he flashed in this column made me ok with some of the points here. wish he hadn’t gone into the poor WH Correspondents tho – it just negates any good stuff he wrote when he starts all whinging like that.

Yeah, at least Witchy doesn’t like religion much, but all you people wishing he’ll drink himself to death should be ashamed of yourselves. He smokes like a chimney too (ooooh, I’m so politically incorrect, I smoke on television!) so we can hope he goes from lung cancer/heart disease as well as pissing his liver out his doubtless pin-dick.
Lights Camel (non-filter, it’s the asbestos & fiberglass in the filters that kill ya) & exits stage LEFT…

Nothing’s wrong with sympathetic piffle. But does the NYT have to report it as though it’s important? Do we have to see that psychotic loser’s pinups of himself all over television day after day, or read his pathetic writings? To what end? Sure let’s talk about gun control, and security, and health care. But the shooting itself is a story that should have gone away after one day.

Hitchens absolutely loathes Americans. Naturally he lunges at any opportunity to belittle their deaths and sneer at their funerals.

Have another drink, bleary little piggy-man. And another. And another.

All human lives have value. The taking of any of them is murder, and a tragedy. You don’t get to rank them like it’s a freakin playoff bracket…
Well put, Mikey, but the real Shorter HDB would be something like this: It’s people like Hitchens who give heavy drinkers a bad name.

Kingubu: Yeah, its fake and self-absorbed, but is it really wrong?

Isn’t dishonesty always wrong? I mean, I can see the use in exigent circumstances like, say, a hostage situation. But what if you’re called on your pretend empathy, and suddenly you no longer want to express your hurt by volunteering for a petition drive or a fundraising event, etc.?

Generating grief with no honest basis just doesn’t seem worth it to me. Feeling takes energy. Do something worthwhile with it.

I’m sure part of it is that we “don’t know how” to be sad anymore. It may also be that we don’t have the time. Or at least are encouraged not to.

Since we rush through absolutely everything, and are supposed to do so confidently, competently, seemingly effortlessly—with sprezzatura, say—why not mourning as well?

Instead of messy, individualized, possibly long-lasting periods of wearing black and being down in the dumps without grief counselors at hand, we are shuttled through our socially acceptable and formalized Stages of Grief— including, as aforementioned, flowers and vigils and bells and jerkfaces in suits trying to intone solemnly—after which we Find Closure and then are supposed to Shut The Fuck Up and Move On (i.e., back to your regularly scheduled sprezzatura). Everything’s an orderly process, no messy humanity allowed, get this shit out of the way so we can get back to iPods, gettin’ jiggy and economic development. Turn that frown upside down!

Still sad after completing your Stages? Then you’re Stuck in the Past! You Can’t Get Over It! So it’s off to therapy for your Trials of Medication or Stages of CBT. That’s right, if our empty, pacifying rituals leave you not ready to face the world, then there must be Something Wrong With You.

Hitch is not an ass because he believes public grief is over-played, commoditized, whatever, but because he very publicly personally attacks particular grieving people for the manner of their grieving, which is none of his goddamn business and way out of line.

Doc Washboard
At the risk of taking it on the chin, I agreed with just about everything Hitchens wrote. I’m weary of the calculated displays of grief that we have decided are appropriate in this society: the ribbons, the reading of the names, the bells struck 33 times, the teddy bears, the roadside shrines to accident victims. People don’t really seem to know how to be sad–they just pick items of grief posturing from a list, the way one would choose items from a menu at a Chinese restaurant.

Seconded.

Hitchens is a bit of a quandry for me. I love him for his violent anti-theism, but can’t connect the dots on his thinking over the last six years.

I’m starting to think a lot of people are addicted to tragedy; else there’d be no profit in round the clock coverage of it. Whether in the search for meaning (VT) or the search for vengeance (Iraq), a lot of mass-media junkies will take things to mawkish – yes, mawkish – excess.

Don’t forget the ‘displacement’ part of the human equation. There are a lot of people who spend their whole lives trying to ignore the steady background hum of approaching disaster. They’ve had terrible things done to them, they’ve done terrible things themselves, they are constantly reminded that The End IS Near. (Even if they don’t lose their crap job, the housing bubble is poised to destroy whatever remnants of their creditworthiness remains, assuming peak oil doesn’t take their house & car away, or they don’t die from tainted spinach or antibiotic-resistant staph infection or cancer caused by the 17 local Superfund sites, which would at least be better than living until the bird flu pandemic / Chinese takeover of the world economy / Rapture arrives, probably within the next couple of friedmans.) Wailing & buying teddy bears for 32 dead people that you didn’t know & can’t possibly be held responsible for is a safety vent for a lot of people who don’t have the words to explain why they’re in so much pain. And as long as ‘mental health’ is regarded by the all-powerful American insurance industry as a needless waste of premiums, I’d rather they were buying teddy bears than guns.

My twopenn’orth: Hitch is (or was) a smart guy (but not as smart as he thinks) who goes out of his way to be a shit or at the very least a contrarian, to épater les bourgeois as long as there’s someone left he can charm into paying his drink tab. I’ve always suspected he doesn’t really support the right so much as feel impelled to keeping hitting back at some real or imagined hurt the left did him.

Considering his usual crap makes me beet red with rage, I don’t find this column that big a deal. I actually agree with some of it. kingubu said it a helluva lot better than I could have.

Hiccuppens wrote

When people in America say “no man is an island,” as Joan Didion once put it, they think they are quoting Ernest Hemingway.

So is he or Joan “Oh, No She” Didion the one who presumed this bullshit? Fuckyouverymuch, sir. I know it’s Donne.

Since the slaughter raised no real issues, it was a blank slate on which anyone could doodle No real issues? Treatment of the mentally ill? Gun availability? I think he meant “no issues where I can cast myself as the noble warrior/philosopher and rain wisdom over the proles’ heads.”

The person being quoted is the Rev. Susan Verbrugge of Blacksburg Presbyterian Church, addressing her congregation in an attempt, in the silly argot of the day, “to make sense of the senseless”: And this, mocking a woman speaking to people directly affected, not another latcher on of a Di-style Mass Hysteria, makes CH a nasty brute who cannot distinguish beteween literary criticism and ludicrously dissecting a grief-stricken sermon. He’s a schmuck. No matter how you can generally agree with some points he makes, you are witnessing unhappy nastiness which no one should support.

Anne Laurie: Wailing & buying teddy bears for 32 dead people that you didn’t know & can’t possibly be held responsible for is a safety vent for a lot of people who don’t have the words to explain why they’re in so much pain.

Word.

Lesly: Isn’t dishonesty always wrong?

I think ‘dishonesty’ is too strong, here. I’m talking about people who know they should say, or do, or feel something for others when bad shit happens to them, but they don’t, so they overcompensate.

Yeah, In an ideal world everyone would be courageous, self-actualizing, and empathetic. We don’t live in that world so I guess I don’t mind so much when people fake it.

Yep, keep your emotions to yourselves. If you actually feel anything about this event, don’t express it because we’re tired of it. You don’t really feel it anyway, ya bunch of fakers.

You know, there’s such a thing as being too cynical.

To my eternal shame, I once that this asshole was an intelligent, thoughtful, commentator on the foibles of humans (and particularly, Americans). I was wrong. More wrong than I have ever been. He has forced me into a terrifying self-examination, and the wearing of hair shirts. May he dissolve into a puddle of rancid alcohol.

I think it’s amazing how Chritchens can pour out the arrogance in praise of Orwell & contrarianism, and yet entirely miss the note of simple humanity in Orwell which made it all worth while.

To my eternal shame, I once [thought] that this asshole was an intelligent, thoughtful, commentator on the foibles of humans…

Well, he was right about Mother Teresa, and Malcolm Muggeridge, and a lot of other self-congratulatory grifters and charlatans. The problem with being a Young Turk is that — unless you have Orwell’s “luck” to die young — lionization and alcohol will inevitably turn you into an Old Fart. Although I suspect that at least part of the alcohol consumption, these days, is to blunt the screams from his younger self, wailing in obscene outrage at having been reduced to an easy lay for self-pitying slobber about “women, not funny” and “semi-famous people who have seen me drunk in person” and “kids these days, pursing up their lips and banging on about ‘self-control’ every time a man shows up slightly late and a bit inebriated for some worthless ceremony or other!”