Hitchens has cancer

[Lothar_Brightblade]

Hitchens's best debate since being stricken:

(2/9) Munk Debates: Tony Blair vs Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens vs. Tony Blair

I was amazed at how well he looks and sounds. I really hope he sticks around for a while.

[Sarah]

Hitchens won the debate, I see.  Good.  (Sorry, believers.)

[Kormod]

R.I.P.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

[nec13]

R.I.P.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/In-Memoriam-Christopher-Hitchens-19492011

I'll miss Hitchens. I may not have agreed with everything he had to say, but he possessed an amazing intellect, and he was always engaging and thought-provoking. Hitchens was the last of a dying breed, a man who could thoughtfully articulate and defend his positions without stooping to the empty-headed partisan rhetoric that is so commonplace today. We could use more pundits like him now.

RIP Hitch.

[Smelodies]

Looking forward to reading Chomsky's and Vidal's quotes on this.  If they have anything to say, it will be acidic, just as Christopher would have wanted!

[Smelodies]

Hitchens scrapping on a Malcolm X panel (he comes in at :45):

Malcolm X, The Movie: Cinema as History (7/9) - Christopher Hitchens vs. Peter Balley

And a wonderful swan song clip:

Christopher Hitchens Drops the Hammer

[cavorting with nudists]

I'm not as inclined to piss on Hitchens' corpse as much as some in the left blogosphere--I think he was an obnoxious asshole with some genuinely good points. But this is really funny:  http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/i_knew_christopher_hitchens_better_than_you/

Christopher Hitchens and I were friends for 40 years, plus another five when we were enemies. He took ideas so seriously that if he disagreed with you on a matter that he deemed important, he’d literally throw you in a ditch. It was 1972, the height of our mutual virility. He and I went to a pub to celebrate his most recent intellectual victory over the establishment press. I intimated that sometimes women could be funny on purpose. Even back then, the thought enraged him. Hitchens threw a drink in my face, pressed a lit cigarette into my neck, and hit me over the head with a barstool. The next thing I knew, it was two days later and I was lying hogtied and naked beside the M5. Hitch had already severely damaged my reputation in a vicious essay in the Guardian. But that’s how he operated, and that’s why we loved him.

More at http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/i_knew_christopher_hitchens_better_than_you/