Letters on “Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp”

10 October 2002

Below we post a selection of letters to the WSWS in response to the October 7 article, “Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp” by David Walsh.

Dear David,

Hooray! I loved your article on Hitchens. He and The Nation have been disappointing me for years. I used to be a subscriber (I still read it now and then and visit the web site). I confess to having been a fan of Hitchens in his more lucid and balanced incarnation. So, perhaps I am either one of the novices or one of the cynics. I don’t like to think so. However, over the past few years I have been distrustful of his rhetoric, especially after he got his high-profile gig on Vanity Fair. And it is true that he has become rude and pugnacious at personal appearances where he is challenged on his opinions, even to the point of insulting members of his audience with racial slurs and suggestions that they are too stupid to live. Boorishness is its own reward, I suppose.

I’m glad you wrote this article.

7 October 2002

Hi David,

Hope you’re well. For this:

“In the 1970s Hitchens was apparently a member or supporter of the state-capitalist International Socialist group (the forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party) in Britain and makes much of having sold their newspaper on London streets at the time.”

There’s a portrait of Hitchens in the 1970s (and Kingsley Amis’s “crossing [of] the floor” during this period too) in Martin Amis’s recent book Experience.

Best,

8 October 2002

To David Walsh:

Right on. The Nation had received thousands of emails from displeased subscribers ... me included ... who had cancelled their hard copy subscriptions because of Hitchens’s screed. Unlikely we will suddenly re-subscribe. The damage is done.

Now all we have to look forward to is the marriage of Chris and Anne-thrax Coulter!

7 October 2002

Dear Mr. Walsh,

Thank you for your no-holds barred article on C. Hitchens. I felt the brunt of his narrow, mean side a few years ago when sitting at an adjacent table in a Manhattan restaurant. We had gone there for a reception after CH took part in a debate on capital punishment at Town Hall. He argued eloquently in behalf of sparing people’s lives, against capital punishment. Then in the restaurant next to us he was smoking. I went over and asked him to please refrain because the smoke was bothering my wife and myself and others. His response? “Piss off!” Ever since then I have always felt this man spoke with forked tongue. I am glad such a mean, two-faced person has gone over to the thugs; at least now he is in the open.

Thank you again for your brave, honest article.

7 October 2002

What a pathetic figure. Anyone who can line up with the Bush regime and its pursuit of oil in Iraq has to be demented. Agree that The Nation should have kicked him out long ago, and its failure to do so does not reflect well on that publication to which I am a long-time subscriber.

7 October 2002