The Hitch
I read a great piece in the New Yorker on the weekend. It was called "He Knew He Was Right" and it was penned by a certain Ian Parker.
???
I mean, it was one of the best celebrity pieces I've ever read and I've never even heard of Ian Parker. And yes - I think of Christopher Hitchens as a celebrity - the Madonna of the writing set. Remember how Madonna would re-invent herself every time she felt a sag in her bosom? Well, I think Christopher Hitchens is THAT clever, too. When the masses are taking you for granted - come up with a grand, brand, new entrance.
Don't believe me? What do you think the Pope was getting up to with that Byzantine Emperor quote? Eh? Well? The Pope's no publicity fool, either, you know. Although, if you're Catholic, you probably don't know. Catholics, it seems to me, are always the last to know what the Pope is really up to when he makes a public statement. Or private statement, for that matter. Gawd. If it weren't for Catholics, the Pope would have to look to the Muslim world for his ignorant masses, I guess.
But back to Christopher Hitchens. I always knew he was a rightwinger trying to break out of a lefty straitjacket - a jacket he'd strapped on himself the moment he realized the financial benefits of attention whoring in print. The thing is - he didn't even bother to suck in his gut when he did it. Who, let me ask you, dear reader, did not always see the rightwinger peeking out from behind the curtain of his lefty prose? I haven't even read that much Hitchens and I certainly knew the man was no lefty. Not for a second. And not just because he's a British boy NOT to the manor born who must have really resented every upper-class twit he encountered at public school and beyond but who, like our own Lord Crossharbour, would have sold his soul for acceptance by his betters. And who was, at heart, an upper-class twit, himself. I mean - who but the British think these class distinctions are real and matter, anyway? Certainly a middle-class girl from the colony of Canada looking across the pond would be hard pressed to tell one British twit from another - regardless of class.
But enough about girls. Sort of...
Interestingly, the piece reads like a bit of a psychological study. It's not at all difficult to see the source of his drive. It's Mommy. His deepseated love/hate for his Glorious, but ultimately Bad, Mommy. I expect it is the common theme of the rightwing pundit, actually. Gloriously Bad Mommies. As a gloriously bad mommy (note the lack of capitals), myself, I guess I could tell them that the love/hate is quite unrequited. That once a child reaches his/her teen years, the gloriously bad mommy has pretty much let go of their affections and moved on to fulfilling her own. It's terrible, I know, but children who go on in life to NOT be rightwing pundits happily accept this reality and sally forth, not just not caring if mommy is watching, but actively not wanting mommy to be watching.
That is where our rightwing pundits come from - the damaged psyches of poor little boys in short pants abandoned by their Gloriously Bad Mommies.
It's mean, really, to keep this revelatory information from the rightwing pundit, but I'd hate to not have them around to keep on writing what I so love to read. Because that was my other realization after reading the piece by Mr. Parker - that almost all that I know of history has been gleaned from reading the columns of the rightwing pundits in my life.
That I nevertheless despise their arguments so fully is what, I suppose, makes me feel so vastly superiour to them all, too...
Heheh - that and the fact that I am a gloriously bad mommy who knows something about them that'll they'll never ever know about themselves.
Anyway, I don't want to leave off Hitchens without making one of my famous predictions (you didn't know that, perhaps, but I make famous predictions). Apparently he has just finished a book about God. To the effect, essentially, that he doesn't believe in Her. Now, it was noted in the Parker article by Mr. Hitchens himself that he doesn't like to go to sleep. As a gloriously bad mommy, I know that he's really just afraid of missing something. Something about himself, of course. And also that he's afraid that, because he is a deliberately cruel creature, God might not let him wake up.
So here it is - Christopher Hitchens will decide he deserves a good night's sleep and will convert to Catholicism to be forgiven his deliberate cruelty by a Christopher Hitchens loving God. It'll happen either this year or next. Publication date and book sales depending.
