No Hope For Hitchens, But Hope Springs Eternal

Hollywood Halfwits ^ | 08/04/03 | Mike Austin

[slomark]

Boy, I hope Chris Hitchens can give the eulogy at my funeral!

I mean, I’m kinda normal, pretty routine, probably not the most spellbinding story here. But in the hands (or keyboard) of Mr. Hitchens, who knows what kind of exciting or outlaw life I will have ended up living? I’d love to see! For surely, Hitchen’s tacky, curmudgeon portrait of Bob Hope in his article (Slate, 8/1/03) is such an off-target, vindictive exercise in below-the-mudline journal-ooze-im that you almost want to see what muck he concocts out of your own life experiences. Put in a diamond, out comes a coal. Creative if nothing else.

Hitchens’ 'counter' style is to his type an exercise in 'cool.' “Yeah, I get it man, it’s 'cool' to write a hatchet job on Bob Hope, just when no one expects it – yeah, irreverently 'shock-cool!' (congratulates himself). Totally counterculture! Yeah, Chris, your notion of 'cool shock' is just like TommyDeVito’s greaseball notion of 'cool class' in Goodfellas, Gordon Gecko’s self-absorbed notion of 'cool rich' in Greed, or Kirsten Arnesen’s self-denying notion of 'cool drunk' in Days of Wine and Roses. No man, if I say it’s cool, it’s cool! So then, how 'cool' was it to whack Hope’s grieving family with your literary axe (assuming it made its way that far, which I know is a huge assumption!), chopping another fresh wound into the raw, recent first one? Yeah baby, pain is cool! No problem, man! The dude was 100, I mean, it’s not like he wasn’t due for a good knock anyway! Style, class, cool! Hitchens even knocks 'class' out of the park by boldly if not morosely taking on two departed at once, with his mawkish attack on the late Times’ critic Vincent Canby’s Hope pre-obituary (oh well, at least Canby’s family had three years, not days, to grieve before getting his hack job)!

[slomark]

Hitchens's hit piece on bob Hope in Slate was one of the most disgusting articles I'd ever read. This article gives him his due.

[wideawake]

Hitchens did a live, on-the-air hatchet-job tirade against Mother Teresa DURING the telecast of her funeral.

[Ronin]

Thanks for posting this.

[Thebaddog]

As I understand it, Hope damaged his career by going to visit the troops all those years in the sixties. He lost his audience in the cultural wars that he was on the wrong side of. That alone makes him stand even taller in my opinion. He stood up before all those lonely kids and gave of himself for others.

[Polonius]

Pillory me if you will, but I think Hitchens had a point. Hope may be well-remembered for entertaining the troops throughout the decades, but as a comedian he wasn't all that funny.

[Scenic Sounds]

If Hitchens’ tackiness hits a home run,

It's nearly always a mistake to speak ill of the recently dead. I see it all the time, though. ;-)

[miss marmelstein]

My husband saw him on stage in the 1980s and thought he was BRILLIANT. And my husband knows comedy. Hope's Road pictures were marvelously entertaining and funny as was his later movies without Crosby. No one played the cowardly, skirt-chaser better than Hope. And watch him sing and dance in films like "The 7 Little Foys" or "Beau James." The 60s weren't kind to Hope but that era wasn't kind to many stars of that generation. Hope influenced Woody Allen, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart and a host of other comics & writers. Even Warren Beatty paid homage to him with his road picture, the well-meant, but embarrassing "Ishtar."

P.S.: Any baby-boomers out there remember Bob Hope comic books in the early '60s?

[Paleo Conservative]

Thebaddog:

As I understand it, Hope damaged his career by going to visit the troops all those years in the sixties. He lost his audience in the cultural wars that he was on the wrong side of. That alone makes him stand even taller in my opinion. He stood up before all those lonely kids and gave of himself for others.

Polonius:

Pillory me if you will, but I think Hitchens had a point. Hope may be well-remembered for entertaining the troops throughout the decades, but as a comedian he wasn't all that funny.

I think it is generational. I don't think most people born after World War II found Bob Hope to be funny. One of his problems was he outlived his audience.

[Ann Archy]

D you remeber what he said about Mother Teresa?? My gosh...the man is an athiest and has NO MANNERS or good taste.

[Ann Archy]

As a society, we became very crass and like our comedians to be raunchy....Bob Hope was not raunchy....thankfully. He also told a lot of political jokes....which meant if you were a typical airhead you wouldn't understand them.