The Accidental Institution

August 9, 2011

By Christopher Hitchens

"At whose expense comes the mild irony when, this fall, the cheaply produced scandal sheet Private Eye will have an exhibition of its cartoons and pictorial covers at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a building consecrated to taste and restraint?"

Read More (Vanity Fair)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

the link ain't workin' and VF doesn't show the article

Tom said...

should work now..

Anonymous said...

As he's an old friend of the Private Eye lot, I've always wondered why Hitchens never appeared on 'Have I got News for you'.

Tom said...

@Anonymous

I think having lived in a different country for the entire run of the show might have something to do with that. That said, Hitch has done Question Time at least once, so perhaps it's more to do with HIGNFY being too lowbrow for him.

Anonymous said...

For any Brits - The Eye is an absolute MUST read.

My hour on Friday evening in the Nelson with a pint or two of Hardys and Hansons bitter and the Eye is something I look forward to all week.

It makes your hair stand on end... and can hilariously funny too.

Anonymous said...

'CH' would scarely dismiss something as lowbrow. Hitch is cool. He gives interviews on street corners for god sake. He has appeared on TV with (inarticulate) rappers like Mos Def and posed for photos with (and written about) Paris Hilton. You'll find photos of him half naked in the shower online. He doesn't give a shit. Anyway, Peter Hitchens did appear on HIGNFY. I'd say Hitch wasn't available. It would be great if he did it in the end.
- C

tim said...

Hitchens is the business. I don't agree with everything he says, but I love his advocacy of reason.

Karen Olsen said...

This was a fun column, a bit more light-hearted than some of the recent Slate articles about things like Turkey and the Gaza Flotilla. I'm not familiar with the Private Eye (being a Yank and all; I was last in the U.K. in March of 1985); but it sounds like something Hitch had a good time writing about...

--Karen Olsen

你好嗎 said...

@Karen its best to keep maps away from children until they learn to properly experience worlds. :)

Anonymous said...

@我很好 and how or what exactly do you propose to teach of how to 'properly experience worlds...'? really. i'm curious to hear. :)

你好嗎 said...

@我很好
don't know, just fishin'

 
 
 

Christopher reads from Hitch-22: A Memoir