Vanity Fair, Indeed
I picked up the latest Vanity Fair because 1) it didn't have a semi-naked in soft-porn-pose airbrushed-beyond-humanity actress on the cover; and 2) it did have a picture of Jacki-O and JFK in their all their legendary Camelot glory on the cover.
Well, shiver me timbers, too, if there wasn't a piece by Christopher Hitchens in it covering the death of a young American soldier in Iraq.
I won't name the soldier because after having read the piece, I think maybe the almost-too-good-to-be-true young man would have said in life that he didn't think soldiers should be singled out as individuals - whether it's for an award or whether it's for a eulogy. I dunno. Or maybe he wouldn't've. In any case, it's what I believe - that soldiers are a unit and as such should be given equal credit for their tour of duty regardless of the outcome.
Christopher Hitchens, however, clearly feels otherwise and in fact wrote the piece because he sincerely believes that the dead soldier, who comes from a movie perfect family (indeed, there is a picture of the young man - several accompany the article - smoking a cigar, and I'll be damned if he isn't a dead ringer for a young Tom Cruise), and who had lots of friends, a wife, and fellow soldiers who thought highly of him - enlisted because of an article Christopher Hitchens wrote as to why it was a moral imperative that young men do just that.
Yes, Dear Reader, Christopher Hitchens has finally succeeded in making the War on Terror - all about him.
But that's just it, isn't it. To write such loingirding bombast is one thing, but to pretend that you actually have an effect on the world in writing it, well, O! My! Gawd! I mean, I have no great and special insight into this young man who apparently wrote that, yes, Christopher Hitchens had inspired him to join up, but I can practically guarantee Hitch that - no, he didn't really. More likely is it that he decided to join up, and, having taken that step, decided to put a little promotional spin on his actions by attempting a correspondence with the "inspiration" for his decision - the famously bombastic and loingirding pundit - Christopher Hitchens.
Of course, the attempt failed because Hitchens, so he claims, never received the e-mail. Instead, poor Hitch found out only after the young man's death that this indeed had been the case.
I dunno. Personally? Had it been me? I think at that point I would have quietly retired to gaze upon my reflection in the backyard pond, for my public never again to read my deathless prose.
Such is the state of American celebrity, though, that I guess it is now de rigeur for pundits to fall victim to believing their own press and thusly cast themselves out of their private torture and upon a waiting public - or in the case of this one dead soldier, his privately grieving family - and if not admit to any possible negligence on your behalf for any damage done, at least to appear to do penance should anyone of note be watching.
But really, back to the world of the practical, what DO you do when Christopher Hitchens calls, distraught, that he was the inspiration for your son's decision to enlist, that now he is dead and that he feels... what, exactly? Surely not... guilt. Why? The War on Terror is absolutely right and just and what young man wouldn't be proud to die in it.
Well, Dear Reader, I guess you graciously shepherd him around as you go about dealing with the tragic and untimely and heroic (because of this young man's actions, another young man is still alive) death of your son/brother/husband/friend, and assure him that, while your very much alive son may have been inspired by Christopher Hitchens' call to arms, your now dead son had really and truly and please believe us and go home now enlisted because he had wanted to, because there was a war on that he wanted to be a part of, because he believed he could make a difference in its outcome.
(And personally, I felt that the pictures accompanying the article told a story probably typical to many young men who enlist. There's a certain glamour still/again in going off to war, a certain sense of adventure in being there that may transcend the reality of it, and as much as we know that war isn't supposed to be any of that, I'm not altogether sure that to lots of young men it's anything else. To be honest, the first thought that came to mind was that someone will see those photographs and get the idea to make a movie of this young man's tour and death in Iraq and it will be a great hit on the big screen starring Ryan Phillippe.)
(My next thought was, "Oh dear... Of course... That's exactly what will happen." You heard it here first on SooeySays, Dear Reader.)
I don't know what it is that makes me so cynical that had I been there to witness Christopher Hitchens blubbering at this young man's funeral amongst his friends and family I would have said, "There, there. Save a little for the talk show circuit."
I know, I know. Now you think I'm awful and Christopher Hitchens was right to think women can't be funny and George W. Bush is smart and the War on Terror is right and just and that if it weren't for him, that young man with so much potential for good in this world wouldn't have been blown to bits by a roadside bomb or whatever half a world away from where his life should have been taking place.
Really, Christopher Hitchens, everything is not about you. Maybe, in fact, nothing is.
Feel better?
