Christopher Hitchens votes for Bush

Lots of articles here Julio. (I agree with Justyn's assessment)

That whole contrarian shtick of his is a bit tiresome... there is nothing inherently big and clever about railing against all conventional wisdom, unless the particular instances of conventional wisdom are not overly wise.

He is a good writer. Entertaining and thought-provoking. Good for him leaving the Nation.

Voting for Bush 'his business' - well, I guess it is. And if he hasn't, then good for him. Nor have a lot of people. But a fact like that (supposing he did, and announced it) is the sort of fact that would seem... 'relevant' to a subsequent political analysis of him. It seems strange to discuss the political views of a figure like this, but then announce that his voting intentions (if publicly announced - which I take it they are, hence this discussion) were off-limits.

first few shots of the chomsky-hitchens scrap here, snowy.

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041108&s=hitchens

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

still, nothing like such a ringing endorsement

Steven Landsburg, Economic Writer: Bush

If George Bush had chosen the racist David Duke as a running mate, I'd have voted against him, almost without regard to any other issue. Instead, John Kerry chose the xenophobe John Edwards as a running mate. I will therefore vote against John Kerry.

Duke thinks it's imperative to protect white jobs from black competition. Edwards thinks it's imperative to protect American jobs from foreign competition. There's not a dime's worth of moral difference there. While Duke would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of skin color, Edwards would discriminate on the arbitrary basis of birthplace. Either way, bigotry is bigotry, and appeals to base instincts should always be repudiated.

Bush's reckless spending and disregard for the truth had me almost ready to vote for Kerry—until Kerry picked his running mate. When the real David Duke ran against a corrupt felon for governor of Lousiana, the bumper stickers read, "Vote for the crook. It's important." Well, I'm voting for the reckless spendthrift. It's important again.

The Nation article is pretty conclusively pro-Bush.

oh and the anti-outsourcing stuff isn't unproblematic, since the most easily legible way of stating it is provincialism...

Add to that his turnaround when he discovered that he was of Jewish descent. Hence his reactionary Israeli cheerleading and his insatiable lust for Arab blood. He's one sorry fucking case.

I saw C. Hitchens on some cable news network talk show last week, in which he slurred (the guy was drunk off his ass) that he was not yet a U.S. citizen, though he hopes to be one eventually, blahblahblah, So how can he vote for anybody at this point?

The Brits ought to be jubilant that they've rid themselves of this bloated fucker.

he lost the plot somewhere, definitely. it's not just his "new" politics but the tortured rhetoric he's been using lately, wherein (like alan keyes) he struggles to impress upon you his incredible powers of reason, but punctuates this effort with ad hominem asides and other red herrings such that it's difficult to reason out the actual logic being used. pathetic.

i really don't buy the drunk angle. he's still plenty smart. and he seems to have been boozing for a long while, so the effects would have shown themselves long before.

what does annoy me about hitchens: how when he appears on a talk show, he lights a cigarette, presumably because the standard rules of decorum don't apply to him--or rather, he has to keep up his schtick.

Have I missed something? Wasn't he just quoting someone else?

Can you take his brother, too?