The New Gaffe

How the Republican presidential candidates are benefiting from their “gaffes”: They’re not unforgivable, just
imprudent. 

By Christopher Hitchens

“OK, that’s it,” said my guest a few nights ago. “That’s what?” “The Perry campaign: It’s officially over. Look, I’ve found the moment.” Together, in mild stupefaction, we watched as a fellow-creature, accoutred with gorgeous mammalian hair that is fully the equivalent of Mitt Romney’s, and fashioned in the very image of god, failed repeatedly to remember the names of the federal agencies that he had sworn to put out of their misery.

Read more (Slate)

Hitch’s Rolls-Royce mind is still purring

The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but perhaps not as he would like.
By George Eaton

"Nothing concentrates the mind more than reading about oneself in the past tense", quipped Christopher Hitchens on discovering that his death had been prematurely announced by the National Portrait Galler. A catalogue previewing an exhibition entitled "Martin Amis and Friends" had included a photograph of the polemicist, erroneously captioned, "the late Christopher Hitchens". A month later, he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer, lending his words a haunting new resonance.

Read more (New Statesman)

Stephen Fry and Friends on Hitch

Edited (45 minutes) version of the event.

In God They Trust

How the conservative belief in American exceptionalism has become a matter of faith.
By Christopher Hitchens

A small group of colonies manages to break away from a large empire in the closing years of the 18th century. The resulting state would probably be not much more than the Chile of the Northeast—a long littoral ribbon between the mountains and the ocean—if it were not for the imperial rivalries that allow for the rapid growth of the new republic’s influence.

Read More (Slate)

Because Our Fathers Lied

Remembering our veterans and reflecting on the glorious ambiguity of Rudyard Kipling's war poetry.
By Christopher Hitchens

I spent much of this weekend, as I often do this time of year, confining myself to writing and thinking about Rudyard Kipling. This may seem like a pretentious thing to be saying, but if you care about war and peace and justice and life and death, then he is an inescapable subject. The same is true if you care about modern English literature, which for no less inescapable reasons is intimately bound up with the great catastrophe of mortality that overcame British families between August 1914 and November 1918.

Read more (Slate)

Stephen Fry and Friends on Hitch, reviews

An evening for Christopher Hitchens
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/blog/7380393/an-evening-for-christopher-hitchens.thtml

Stephen Fry and Co. on the Life, Loves and Hates of Christopher Hitchens http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/harry-cockburn/stephen-fry-christopher-hitchens_b_1085689.html 

Christopher Hitchens night: a review
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/11/christopher-hitchens-fry-penn

HitchFry Clips

Clips from the HitchFry event at Royal Festival Hall, Nov 9.

Martin Amis, Salman Rushdie, Richard Dawkins
http://www.newslook.com/channels/fora-tv1

Cheers!

'Arguably' on PW's Best Books of 2011 list.

Publishers Weekly
"We’ve just released our Best Books of 2011, the 100 adult and 40 children’s titles of 2011 we think everyone should read. Now we want to know what you think.

Vote on which of our top 10 picks is your favorite in the poll below, or write in your favorite 2011 book. We’ll announce the winning book in an upcoming issue of PW." Vote here.

Herman and Hamid

Why is it so hard to speak honestly about allegations of sexual harassment or our corrupt ally in Afghanistan?
By Christopher Hitchens

There were two generally depressing controversies last week, in both of which an exercise of free speech might have done more harm than good. The first concerns our disordered policy in Afghanistan and the second our ongoing and increasingly dishonest discussion of sexual harassment.

Read More (Slate)

Widow of Opportunity

Vanity Fair December 2011
By Christopher Hitchens

If you were to set a competition for the headline most unlikely to appear in an American magazine, the winning entry would surely be jackie tacky or tacky jackie. In her life and even posthumously, it always somehow fell to Jackie Kennedy to raise the tone. An exacting task in her case, and exquisitely so when one appreciates that she had to raise the tone without ever actually admitting that the tone could use a bit of raising.

Read More
http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/12/hitchens-201112