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The death of Christopher Hitchens hits like the 2008 death of Tim Russert. Both were men you really wanted to hear from during  a looming presidential election.

The word being tossed about in reference to the passing of Hitchens is “contrarian,” and that strikes me as a little unfair. Hitchens could be infuriating and even wrong, but there was nothing dishonest or insincere about the man. Though it’s not the perfect definition of contrarian, I don’t believe for a second that Hitchens ever once took a stand simply to be provocative or contrary.

Hitchens was a truth-teller. Whether it was the war in Iraq, Mother Teresa, or Bill Maher’s trained seal audience, Hitchens always told what he believed to be the truth.

It was never as simple as opinion with Hitchens. What he was for or against rose above opinion. Again, he wasn’t always right (especially when it came to Mother Teresa), but his arguments never failed to be so beautifully designed that even when he was wrong, you had to respect the fact that so much study and thought and reasoning went into them.

Hitchens was incapable of lying and of insincerity, which is more complicated than being a contrarian, and that’s why I both admired and respected him.

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The hardest person to shop for on your Christmas list can usually be placated with the right book or CD.

Yes, people still buy those shiny silver disks, especially since it’s hard to wrap up a digital file and stuff it in a stocking. With that in mind, here are some recent book and music releases which could be just the right gift this holiday season.

BOOKS

• “Arguably” by Christopher Hitchens – The great writer may be battling cancer, but his rapier wit remains unchanged. “Arguably” assembles some of his thoughtful essays for easy consumption.
• “Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark” by Brian Kellow – Conservatives may know Kael best for her infamous quote regarding President Richard Nixon’s re-election vote tally, but for movie buffs Kael’s prose represents a thoughtful, albeit typically left-of-center, voice.

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My recent observations on Christopher Hitchens received impressively varied responses. Most, however, or most of those I’ve read so far, acknowledge the vitally important test of a human being’s honesty: the presence or absence of hypocrisy.

I attribute the vitality of the comments entirely to the power of Christopher Hitchens. Such lively discourse is the fruit of Hitchens’ indisputable right to be taken seriously by anyone with any common sense at all.

Though the speed of his eloquence and the size of his vocabulary, not to mention the impeccable King’s English he can wrap it in, are intimidating, the sincerity of his insights into this American Epoch of Progressive Lies and Hypocrisies are most welcome.

This demands the greatest respect, even from Hitchens’ enemies.

There are actually only two British-trained intellects living today I respect more than Christopher Hitchens and they are Paul Johnson and Mark Steyn.

When you consider how Hitchens’ body of work contains a bit of both Johnson and Steyn, in both historical range and humor, that achievement alone is worthy of tribute, particularly given the circumstances Christopher Hitchens now finds himself in.

I’m turning 71 next Spring. After a bout of heart failure and subsequent surgery, I find myself much closer to the end of my life than I had ever imagined. However,  I do not face Death’s Door with such close proximity as Mr. Hitchens.

Then again, who knows?

Life, or in my case, God may have other plans than I do.

I’m presently staring at a rather savage looking wolf on my computer screen. His eyes are “in the hunt” and visions of my helplessness before his teeth possibly locking around my throat?

Just a thought.

But then again there are the wolves of the intellect, equally as savage and merciless. I’ve met a few.

One in particular, Tom Wolfe, author and owner of many “mounted heads on his hunting wall”. He might not even remember the luncheon meeting arranged by a mutual acquaintance.

Conversation was cut short before the appetizer.

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Odd how many Americans can agree with Christopher Hitchens on many issues, i.e. his rage at Henry Kissinger. I sympathize totally with such disgust.

The Hitchens contempt for the Tea Party, however, is the grandest dividing line, largely due to the tea Party’s fervent belief in God and its faith in Sarah Palin whom Hitchens repeatedly heaps fear and loathing on.

Hitchens, however, warns the world to not patronize Sarah Palin!

He points out that his favorite film on American Presidential politics is Gore Vidal’s The Best Man.

With an almost bottomless irony of ironies, he further adds that at one time Ronald Reagan was considered for a role but he was dismissed as “insufficiently Presidential”.

Therein lies the substance of his concerns about Sarah Palin and her Presidential Insufficiency.

It also strengthens my faith in the fact that Sarah Palin will, indeed, be America’s next Ronald Reagan and more.

The “more”, I’m certain, is what most terrifies Christopher Hitchens.

His contempt for America and anything classically American is so deep it makes him blind. He traipses out the history of the 19^th Century Pledge of Allegiance, smugly noting that the words “under God” didn’t reach the Pledge until the 1950’s. He finds it “funny” that Palin cross-referenced the Pledge of the Allegiance with the Declaration of Independence.

“God” reached the Declaration of Independence in the 18^th Century. In that profoundly obvious sense she was totally correct in saying she stands with the Founding Fathers.

A smirking history professor who is also a repeatedly self-described atheist would consider the ultimate truth of her statement irrelevant in the face of her historical liberties.

More the pedant he.

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A curious aspect of the Bond legend is that Ian Fleming’s socialite wife despised the character. She went so far as to host upper-crust parties at which she and her lettered friends — literary giants such as Cyril Connolly, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Evelyn Waugh — cattily disparaged her husband’s popular creation as embarrassingly lowbrow, the English equivalent of American pulp fiction (and thus the modern heir to the “Boy’s Weeklies” of Orwell’s famous essay). “Utterly despicable,” was Muggeridge’s quoted verdict in Time magazine soon after Fleming’s death. “[Bond is] obsequious to his superiors, pretentious in his tastes, callous and brutal in his ways, with strong undertones of sadism, and an unspeakable cad in his relations with women, towards whom sexual appetite represents the only approach.”

During the same period, various Leftist writers began penning spy stories of their own in reaction to Fleming’s potent brew of unapologetic clubhouse masculinity (smoking, drinking, gambling, golfing, seducing) and unqualified patriotism, favoring a more, shall we say, morally nuanced look at the Cold War. Author John “The United States of America has gone mad” le Carré, then finding fame with The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963 — good guys die, bad guys win, yay!), considered Fleming’s books “cultural pornography,” and mused that in the real world Bond’s “misty, patriotic ideas” would hardly prevent him from betraying his country at the first opportunity. “Because if the money was better,” le Carré snickered with certainty, “the booze freer, and women easier in Moscow, he’d be off like a shot.”

Into this maelstrom of anti-Fleming derision came a little volume called The James Bond Dossier (1965), penned by a more notorious member of the English literati, academic-cum-novelist Kingsley Amis. A savagely witty writer, a world-class drunkard, and a conflicted serial adulterer (all qualities shared, you may recall from our previous installment, with Bond’s creator), the overarching critical statement of his book was simple enough: “Inside that conservative dark-blue worsted suit and under the same skin as a bearer of the hard-earned double-o prefix there lurks an intruder from another age,” a “Byronic hero,” who “is lonely, melancholy, of fine natural physique, which has become in some way ravaged, of similarly fine but ravaged countenance, dark and brooding in expression, of a cold or cynical veneer, above all enigmatic, in possession of a sinister secret.” (more…)

Double standards are often nothing of the sort, and charges of double standards are often dodges by the disingenuous designed to convince the sophomoric that adhering to any kind of standard is inherently unjust.  But then there are some actual double standards that are so shamelessly transparent that one should be embarrassed to even utter them.

Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com does not seem to be embarrassed.  He recently unleashed the full power of his ire upon the Pope over the recent child abuse accusations.  And his ire is awesome to behold, as we can learn from the plugs and testimonials his website continuously flashes – plugs testifying to his influence from the very same Hollywoodoids whose toes he claims to be willing to tread upon with abandon.

In short, Wells supports the wacky idea that a couple of well-known atheists should somehow arrest Pope Benedict on his trip to England:

I for one would be impressed and delighted if author and noted biologist and author Richard Dawkins and author Christopher Hitchens could manage to actually arrest Pope Benedict for crimes against humanity during a planned visit to England in September. The Pope “is not above or outside the law,” Hitchens has said. “The institutionalized concealment of child rape is a crime under any law and demands not private ceremonies of repentance or church-funded payoffs, but justice and punishment.”

Certainly, the spectacle of the doddering Dawkins and the perpetually pickled Hitchens (who is not a dumb guy, is a tireless advocate against dictators and thugs, and really ought to know better) trying to cuff and stuff the pontiff would be amusing – especially watching the Pope’s unforgiving security team go to town upon them.  Advantage Hitchens – he’d be unlikely to feel a thing.  (more…)

The London Times recently ran an article about Katherine Heigl and her comments indicating that the ire directed at her by the press (especially the Internet) is the result of sexism. The article wasn’t particularly enlightening, but it did call to attention the bad rap this young actress has gotten from the media. It also made some commentary about the general condition of women in Hollywood. The closing paragraph defended Heigl, but didn’t go far enough.

While its fun and all to smack Hollywood people around (as I did with Megan Fox), it is occasionally important to do the opposite. The plight of Katherine Heigl in the media has a lot to do with her background and what is expected of actresses in today’s Hollywood cesspool. In broader terms it speaks volumes as to what the left expects from women in our society. (more…)

So for the second time in about as many weeks, I’m hearing from Brad Pitt on religion. First, there was the absurd, “Eighty percent agnostic, twenty percent atheist” comment, and now he jokes that he’s running on the “no religion” platform in the New Orleans mayoral race. The leap from being atheist to being against religion fascinates me.

Why can’t you simply not believe in God? Surely atheism can exist without a hatred of religion. It’s particularly disturbing that the disdain atheistic non-religionistas have for religion is pretty much limited to Christianity – from my experience. I knew an atheist who was offended when someone at work played a CD by Christian rock band “Third Day.”

But I can sympathize to a degree, after all my son believes in this nut that dresses in a red outfit, is friendly with reindeer, and gives kids presents. Crazy, I know, but my kid runs around singing about this obese clown coming to town, or some nonsense — and IT JUST OFFENDS THE CRAP OUT OF ME!!! (more…)

John Nolte’s review of “Brüno,” a film I haven’t yet seen, tackles Sasha Baron Cohen’s previous film “Borat,” a film I have seen about twenty times. That being said, Nolte is dead-on in his appraisal of the film: it found favor with the left-wing elitists because it poked fun at us regular folk. But in praising “Borat,” they revealed something about themselves, something I’ve known to be true since the summer of 1994.

That was the best year for movies that I can recall. That summer alone we had “Forrest Gump,” “True Lies,” “Speed,” and everyone was eagerly awaiting the arrival of Cannes winner “Pulp Fiction.” And we also had “The Lion King.” I remember the critic for my campus newspaper, The Red & Black (Go Dawgs!), panned the film, noting that the “Circle of Life” song, sung by a gay man, was really about keeping groups of people, particularly minorities, in their place. I thought this was bizarre and brought it up with some of my classmates. (more…)

Recently, I was called cranky in an article posted at the Huffington Post.  The good news is that it’s one of the few times that anything approaching the truth has been posted there.  The part I resented, though, was having my crankiness attributed to age.  The fact is I was a precocious curmudgeon.  But the question that springs to mind is why more people aren’t cranky these days when there is so much to be cranky about.

For instance, it used to irk me that Carl Bernstein, a rather minor footnote in America’s history, who only came to prominence because an anonymous snitch chose to pass along secrets to him and Bob Woodward, was depicted in two major motion pictures, “All the President’s Men” (Dustin Hoffman) and “Heartburn” (Jack Nicholson), when so many more deserving people haven’t been featured in any.  But that pales when compared to the number of movies that have glorified Che Guevara, a blood-thirsty villain.  In addition to numerous TV productions, he has shown up in “Che!” (Omar Sharif), “Evita” (Antonio Banderas), “Motorcycle Diaries” (Eduardo Noriega Gael Garcia Bernal) and “Che: Parts One and Two” (Benecio Del Toro). (more…)

I had the opportunity to see Christopher Hitchens debate Dr. William Lane Craig on the topic “Does God Exist?” at BIOLA University. The gymnasium was packed with 3,000 people, most of whom were Christians but some non-believers made a showing. Without the home court advantage, you might think Hitchens would be the Lion cast into Daniel’s Den. Surely the reciprocal of the secular university would happen; he’d get pies thrown at him, and he would be regularly booed, shouted down and mocked. Hardly.

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens is a kind of celebrity, even among Christians because he is an interesting character. If anything, he was warmly embraced by a crowd who generally disagreed with him even as he hurled the worst insults at God, which we consider the holiest, highest being imaginable. This is the demonstration of class and restraint I’ve noticed from a conservative Christian culture that has a much better record of tolerance than the liberal non-Christian culture. (more…)