Not Even A Hedgehog: The Stupidity of Ronald Reagan

Slate ^ | 6-7-2004 | Christopher "Loved By So Many on FR" Hitchens

[LincolnLover]

*Excerpt*

"...only saw him once up close, which happened to be when he got a question he didn't like. Was it true that his staff in the 1980 debates had stolen President Carter's briefing book? (They had.) The famously genial grin turned into a rictus of senile fury: I was looking at a cruel and stupid lizard..."

[CasearianDaoist]

He is not brilliant, he is garrulous. He just rew up in an era where jounalists where expected to write decent prose.

[Egregious Philbin]

Someone filled with hatred for both Mother Theresa and Ronald Reagan who is cheered by some on this site?

Having actually read his book about Mother Teresa, i'd say he made a pretty good argument against her canonization. In fact, the Catholic church asked him to be devil's advocate.

[meandog]

Hitchens is a mean drunk...

...he's even a meaner homo!

[Walkingfeather]

these idiots have obviously never have read the Reagan Papers. If you folks dont know about 3 years ago the found thousands and thousands of hand written letters,speaches, and policy papers of President Reagan covering decades of thinking. He pulled off the aloof dope and made a huge change in the world. He was an intellectual thinker.

[dead]

Hitchens is often a very scathingly funny and/or insightful writer who I sometimes agree with and sometimes disagree with.

I disagree 100% with his views on Ronald Reagan.

I don't know why you feel the need to ensure that everybody is in lockstep agreement their assessment of Hitchens. Seems an odd crusade.

[Nonstatist]

It is perhaps relevant that his first wife dumped him.

How do you mean?

[zarf]

I disagree. His book reviews alone are absolute gems.

[alloysteel]

Christopher Hitchens is what he has always been, a left-of-center iconoclast. From where he sat, the "Former Occupant of the Oval Office, 1993-2001" and Ronaldus Magnus had similar profiles. And this troubled Hitchens, because he knew there was a distinct difference, but he could not see what it was. The failure lay in Hitchens, not in Reagan. So what was his interpretation? That, somehow, Reagan was "stupid". And we all know that was not the case.

[elhombrelibre]

There is a difference between Buchanan and Hitchens. Buchanan is nasty to the Republican Party and basically works to help the Democrats. He's done for the Democrats what Nader does for us. Hitchens is funny some times and trenchant, and he's frequently very hateful. But he is largely inconsequential in election politics.

[Mr. Bird]

I'd love to drink a bottle of bourbon with Hitchens and debate until one of us passed out. I have no sympathy for his causes, but I believe he has the sort of integrity completely absent in most Leftists. Of course he thinks Reagan was stupid; the alternative is a complete refutation of everything Hitchens believes in. It's intellectual self-preservation.

Imagine if Bill Clinton solved all of our country's ills by implementing racial quotas, same-sex marriages, raising taxes, and decimating the military. What on earth would we say? Luckily, we are not in the position the Left finds itself in; we get to say "I told you so".

[xm177e2]

In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

This is pretty pathetic, if true.

[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.

[Restorer]

Hitchens is attempting to smear RR for dumping his first wife.

Although all evidence is that the divorce was definitely not his idea and that he may have even contemplated suicide in his despondency over it.

[Undertow]

"...the dog is dead but the tail still wags...I'll save it for my review of Christopher Hitchins' next book."

P.J. O' Rourke

[Nonstatist]

This is pretty pathetic, if true

Given Reasgan wasnt in Europe at the time, its hard to believe he told many (any?) people this story. Its the first Ive heard of it, and Im sure the Press wouldnt keep it a secret.

[CasearianDaoist]

I find them an absolute waste of time.

[CasearianDaoist]

untented=intended

[kellynla]

The man is not even in the grave yet and liberals like Hitchens fail miserably to have any respect for the dead.

I pity those sorry excuses for human beings.

God bless and keep Ronald Reagan, a great man and an even great POUS.

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[Restorer]

This was covered in much detail in Morris' biography. He apparently said it but may have been referring to the fact that he was among the first in America to see the movie and still footage of the camps' liberation. He was undoubtedly talking about his emotional reaction to the images and may perhaps have gotten a little hyperbolic. After all, he knew he hadn't really been there and so did the people he was talking to, so a real attempt to deceive seems unlikely.

[stylin19a]

Hitchens takes a not too shabby shot at kerry in the same writing:

Sen. John Kerry waited until the first week of June 2004 to tell us that he met Ahmad Chalabi in London in 1998 and that he didn't care for him then. That makes six intervening years in which the senator could have alerted us to this lurking danger to national security. But something kept him quiet. One must hope that that something wasn't the tendency to pile on. Cheer up, though. At least this shows that Kerry has no pre-emptive capacity.

What,(besides 3 fingers of anything in a dirty glass) or who, does Hitchens like...if anything/anybody ?