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Academic

: Essentially Contested America

Hitchens & Sullivan: Boys Will Be Boys: No Matter How Homophobic

By Robert Justin Lipkin

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I suppose even homosexuals, and their friends, can engage in homophobic jibes with temerity. Sullivan is a self-professed, proud gay man. I have no idea what Hitchens' sexuality involves. But Hitchens' homophobic remarks and Sullivan's enabling compliance is neither funny nor cute, but again reveals the dark side of Christopher Hitchens. Wait! Hitchens' dark side is the only side he has.

Hitchens' rhetorical tempo includes claiming certitude and demonizing opponents. Concededly, Hitchens is smart, but he's not that smart. Similarly, he writes well, but not that well. Why Hitchens made the move from serious, socialist commentator to a vapid, silly virtually neo-conservative buffoon, no one can say. But his arrogant and projected self-importance is becoming tedious. His reclamation, though desirable, is probably beyond the possible. And so another intellectual becomes a faux intellectual and chooses instead to be a sensationalist. To what end? Greed? That seems too facile an explanation. But then is the explanation of his transition subject to rational assessment or is it simply the breakdown of a machine? Here's the relevant portion of the exchange.

SULLIVAN: Two things. One, it's important to clear up that he [Wright] did not say "The Jews are going to get you" in some conspiratorial, classic anti-Semitic fashion. I think that's just--

HITCHENS: He [Wright] thinks only Jews are going to object to [Rev. Louis] Farrakhan and [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi. Excuse me?

SULLIVAN: No, he didn't say "only."

HITCHENS: No, but--

SULLIVAN: Again, you keep playing with that quote. We're happy to have it on the record. And now you've made me forget my second point, which is--

HITCHENS: Oh, well, don't be such a lesbian. Get on with it.

SULLIVAN: I'm sorry, I've forgotten my second point. But I do think that's important. And I don't think Wright is Farrakhan. And I don't think Obama, in any conceivable way, represents anything but racial inclusion and integration. And anybody that looks at any part of his career and can be in any doubt about that is beyond me.

The reason he went to that church, clearly, if you read his biography, is he wanted to understand what it was to be black in America. He didn't understand. He's a very polyglot person. He grew up in Hawaii, he had some time in Indonesia.

Hitchens' incorrigibility knows no limits. Why more commentators are reluctant to take him on is is a mystery. Perhaps, it's intimidation, but I would welcome the opportunity to debate him. His rhetorical deviousness is predicable and it doesn't require remarkable skills to reveal his ad hominen arguments, his petitio principi reasoning, and his constant stream of non sequiturs. not to mention is penchant for duplicitous. The real tragedy is that he still lingers on the "intellectual" scene and is not shunned by respectable media forums.

Full post as published by Essentially Contested America on April 23, 2008 (boomark / email).