Hitchens: Laughably awful
Peter Hitchens is one of those people, like Melanie Phillips, who would be laughed out of any national newspaper office if they attempted to apply for a job anonymously with some byline-free articles sent in as evidence of their writing skills. It's not just that they don't make sense and are crushingly ignorant; they're almost deliberately dumb.
You have to wonder, deep down, if beneath the pathetic rants they churn out every week, is some semblance of humanity, someone who actually knows that what they're coming out with is demonstrably false and utter nonsense; but then, you see Melanie and Peter being interviewed on television and it strikes you: No, they actually think they're right about stuff. They actually believe this shit they come out with.
The left-wing equivalent of Melanie and Peter are those ravers who believe that the whole world is run by a big bad Jewish conspiracy, possibly lizard-based but not exclusively so, and that 9-11 was a great big pantomime involving remote-controlled planes confected by the US and its masters to try and justify an attack on the Muslim world. These people quite rightly never get put into national newspapers, because they're rather unfortunate characters, but then why are the right-wing equivalents welcomed with open arms, despite the fact that their views are so astonishingly simplistic, wrong and based on bonkers assumptions?
Who knows. Anyway, here's a link to a lovely article decimating the Hitch on his various ejaculations of pure shite over the weekend. And jolly good it is too:
It's one thing to say the Earth is flat, quite another to say that the evidence doesn't allow you to call the debate either way.
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February 16th, 2009 - 12:27
I almost entirely agree, but I dissent on PH being stupid. He’s more just odd and unpleasant than he is stupid.
Relatedly, on the difference between writing for the Spectator and standing shouting at a bus stop.
February 16th, 2009 - 23:43
Indeed. It is curious isn’t it, that right wing conspiracy theorists like Mel, who believes that global warming is a massive fraud, that MMR causes autism and that Iran is a plotting a second Holocaust is considered sane enough to appear on the likes of the Moral Maze when someone with the opposite opinions wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near either a microphone or a newspaper column.
February 17th, 2009 - 00:32
He’s an alright journalist when they send him off somewhere or other to do a bit of reportage. There’s an article he did on Belarus recently that’s worth a read. But then again, Belarus is at least as mad as he is, so they suit each other.
His opinion stuff is obviously mad. I took to reading it regularly a few months ago, but it got too much. He’s literally insane. You know how when you read a columnist you can imagine the kind of people who are reading, nodding in agreement? Mung bean eaters to Moibiot, white van men to Jon Gaunt, lower middle class people to Littlejohn.
Well, when I read Hitchens I can’t imagine anyone, anywhere in the world, nodding in agreement. His opinions and his prejudices are uniquely his, which is why it’s so strange that they give him a page in the MoS every week.