Question about Christopher Hitchens.

I know he's a big supporter of the Iraq War, but did he say he was voting for Bush in 2004?

He said Bush at first, but then backed away from it. Slate magazine incorrectly put him in the Kerry column. He then stated that he would make no endorsement.

He's a certifiable neo-con, but like some neo-cons, he has liberal to moderate views on a lot of social and even economic issues.

http://slate.com/id/2108714/

Christopher Hitchens, Contributor: No Choice*

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one's subjective vote, one's objective vote, and one's ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.

The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan's anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry's pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can't compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.

but here's his post-election statement:

Why I'm (Slightly) for Bush

Christopher Hitchens

The election season is always hellish for people who fancy that they live by political principles, because at such a time "politics" becomes, even more than usually, a matter of show business and superficial calculation. Ever since 1980, when I bet the liberals of New York that Reagan would win easily (and didn't have to buy my own lunch for months afterward), I have sympathized with the "prisoners' dilemma" that faces liberals and leftists every four years. The shady term "lesser evil" was evolved to deal with this very trap. Should you endorse a Democrat in whom you don't really believe? Is it time for that deep-breath third-party vote, or even angry abstention, of the sort that has tortured some Nation readers ever since they just couldn't take Humphrey over Nixon? This magazine prints columnists who regularly describe the terms of the captivity with more emotion than I can now summon.

But absent from this triangular calculation is the irony of history. Do you know anybody who really, deeply wishes that Carter had been re-elected, or that Dukakis had won? Implicit but unstated, in the desire of the prisoner to escape, is the banal, unexciting assumption of our two-party oligopoly: Sometimes it's objectively not so bad that the "other" party actually wins. Thus I ought to begin by stating my reasons to hope for a Kerry/Edwards victory.

Given my underlying stipulation, which is that this is a single-issue election and that that is a good and necessary thing, I have no formal quarrel with the Kerry/Edwards platform. It ostensibly calls for military victory over the alliance between autocracy and jihad. It does not shade the moral distinction that has to be made between "our" imperfect civilization and those who want to turn Islamic society into a medieval but still-lethal dust bowl. (Not even by MoveOn.org are we being told, of the racist janjaweed death squads in Sudan, that they are the expression of pitiable, deep-seated Muslim grievances.) The Kerry camp also rightly excoriates the President and his Cabinet for their near-impeachable irresponsibility in the matter of postwar planning in Iraq.
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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20041108/hitchens

"Should the electors decide for the President, as I would slightly prefer" - Christopher Hitchens

popinjay!

One of the best slams I have ever heard!

He used to write the occasional column for Vanity Fair magazine. Maybe he still does, I'm not sure.

In one of his columns he said that back in the 60s he was a leftist radical who spent at least one summer living with a bunch of other student radicals from all over the world in a commune in Cuba.

I assumed from that and from some of his other columns that he was a liberal. Imagine my surprise when he became the conservative pundit of the hour.

I don't think he has any real convictions of his own. I think he's for sale to whomever wants to pay for him. Hey, don't they call people who sell themselves prostitutes? A pejorative term which certainly has application to Hitchens.

although he did write an article for Vanity Fair about election fraud in 2004 IIRC. Regardless, thankfully he rarely graces British screens so I tend not to bother with him.

While all things are possible, I still think he's just, um, for hire.:toast:

Off topic, but where did you get TIRECHEWER? It's amusing as hell! I have a small dog who chews damn near everything; she has wasted at least one pair of shoes for each family member--and I'd bet she'd try for a tire if she could get ahold of one!!!

Thanks, I'm glad you like it.:)

Each stage of frustration inspires me to do something to release tension without harming anything living.

In the very early stages I throw my shoes at the closet door. After having taken them off, of course.

As the frustration increases the desire to bite something non living increases. So at times I am tire biting mad, or carpet biting mad or as mad as a wolverine in a trash can which can and does chew through metal.

So I selected tirechewer for my user name. It's sounds better than shoethrower which might be mistaken for a peculiar fetish, carpet chewer which would make me feel like I am perpetually face down, or trashcanbiter which would make me worry about germs. It also has a tenacity that makes me think of gila monsters which grab on to something and do not let go until sunrise. Kind of like determined small dogs.:hi:

Tirechewer is just right. If I can take a little bit of rubber of the Bush administration's tires when I post here, then I'm a happy human.:rofl:

Thanks for giving me the genesis!

:toast:

You don't have to be fans of either to see that someone who actually hates two people who--depsite having flaws--did a lot of good, just ain't normal!

How the hell could you hate either one?? OMG.

Mother Teresa was pushed ahead for sainthood, someone posted what he wrote about her. He's a crackpot.

odd icon, and work to tear them down. It's almost a schtick with him at this point, or an attention-seeking strategy. He's contrary for it's own sake.

THere alot more money to be made cheering for Repubs than Dems

and I couldn't believe it was so right on from Hitchens!!!

is pretty much the answer to any Hitchens question one might ask.

the besotted fool suffers from dementia