[beckett]

Hitchens gets his jollies by being exceptionally nasty. It's a serious character flaw. On the flip side he is a highly gifted writer who can marshall the facts in defense of an argument with a degree of skill that is almost unmatched among contemporary writers.

So his intellect is not to be trifled with, but his personality is rife with flaws. That's how I approach him. One might argue that the two, intellect and personality, cannot be separated, but I would suggest that with a little careful navigation, they can be. He seems to take particular delight in personal attacks like this one on Reagan or the one you mention on Mother Theresa. He's also attacked Henry Kissinger with incredible vehemence.

I take what I want from Hitchens. Where he's instructive, I listen to him. Where he's a nut, I ignore him.

[Republicus2001]

can you tell when he's hungover from his writ?

[Badeye]

"So his intellect is not to be trifled with, but his personality is rife with flaws. That's how I approach him. One might argue that the two, intellect and personality, cannot be separated, but I would suggest that with a little careful navigation, they can be."

Given he apparently has trouble with such intellectually challenging topics like Basic Math, I'd say what you have is a mean, bitter, exceedingly vindictive personality that suffers from self loathing.

Like a blind pig, Hitchen's finds the occasional acorn, but who has the time to watch for hours on end for that seminal event?

Not me. I've got grass growing that needs, and deserves, far more attention than Christopher Hitchens.

[Eva]

I was thinking the same thing about Hitchens, he takes particular delight in personal character assassination. He knows he has a gift with words and gets little attention for a lot of his writing, but his caustic personal attacks always get a lot of press.

[CasearianDaoist]

On the flip side he is a highly gifted writer who can marshall the facts in defense of an argument with a degree of skill that is almost unmatched among contemporary writers.

You cannot be serious, unmatched?

It is the standard prose of a British public school journalists cum essayist straight out of the LT Review or any of the Oxford/Cambridge rags which, incidentally, are the inspiration for the NY Review of Books, a rag that was a constant conduit for Hitchen's writings. It is all mostly style dressing up a great many polemics, much disinformation and very little fact or reasoned analysis and discourse. He made it at The Nation only because the American staff over there can hardly write at all.

This is the sort of style that while untented for only the clique of insiders pretends to be "objective," to flatter the vanity of its audience. It is a form of moral turpitude.