By Allah, what balls

[sweet_sweetback]

It seems Khamenei and his cronies photoshopped the Ahmadinejad rally yesterday to inflate the crowd numbers, which had already been inflated by Basij militiamen and other Regime ringers. It's not surprising, really: manipulation of images has long been a trick of authoritarian regimes (now you see Trotsky, now you don't). But they may have more

Comments

[evil_mr_tim]

Every piece of writing that, as part of the 'atheist book surge' of a few years back, likened Christopher Hitchens to the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and (worst of all) Daniel Dennett, always used to irritate me to no end. I used to think it was a subtle prejudice of mine, that I thought a journalist had no business (or rather, nothing to contribute) commenting on a domain that rightfully belongs to scientists and philosophers of science, but in retrospect its quite clear that he irritates me because he writes like a character-assassin. He never quite seems to be wrapping insightful points in insulting language, but rather seems to fumble points in simply to justify and prop up his desire to insult.
Perhaps that's why Robert has always loved the guy whereas I have not, it's his love of a good 'zinger' that makes Hitchens' writing entertaining rather than a waste of attention.
Good post.

[bastard_king]

I also really enjoyed his accounts of foreign travel in the "Love, Poverty and War" collection, and he has a reverent storyteller kinda grasp of history that I really like. But yes, besides all that, I do enjoy it when he enters 'insult-mode' - but at that point you just have to be careful to check yourself to ensure you are reading for entertainment rather than enrichment or information. He often has plenty of nasty people in his sights, but his zeal in whipping them is cheapened by some of his other targets who seem perfectly okay to me. His single-minded zeal for flat out exterminating Islamic extremism keeps leading him to advocating brinkmanship, and slamming anyone that doesn't want to play like that as some sort of miserable coward

[sweet_sweetback]

Oh, I know the history. He's long pelted the Clintons with obloquy, impelled by a zealous disgust that most other observers (including many who never much liked them) found hard to fathom. But my point here wasn't the hatred itself; it was the crude use of language. 'Pathetic' is such a catch-all, diluted term of abuse, the kind people use when they can't be arsed thinking up something more original or accurate. This, from a hitherto sympathetic blogger, gets it right:

Writing is really hard work--mostly because thinking is really hard work. When you don't want to do that work, but you want the meager payment it offers, the fleeting fame it brings, than you resort to thinking on the cheap. You go for shock. And you do it that way because you have nothing to offer except your rep as contrarian, and a provocateur. You do it because you are lazy.