Ugly Little Charlatan

Christopher Hitchens confounds me.

A few days ago, he wrote a full of shit piece for Slate in which he called the "attacks" against Shaha Riza "the nastiest and dirtiest and cheapest campaign of character assassination I have ever seen." The offense seems to be that people are calling her Paul Wolfowitz' "girlfriend", when she is in fact his "partner". WOW.

I have yet to see anyone call Riza unqualified or anything less than brilliant, yet Hitchens acts like she's the lightning rod of the story. She's not, it's Wolfowitz' actions that are the problem. It's the Wolfowitz, stupid.

It's typical Hitch of late: confuse the issue. Focus on any petty slights rather than the actual issue, and do so as arrogantly and hyperbolic as possible. . It's why I can't stand the man.

But then Jerry Falwell dies, enter the Hitch of old, who I loved.

• Cooper: Christopher, I'm not sure if you believe in heaven, but, if you do, do you think Jerry Falwell is in it?

Hitchens: No. And I think it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to.

• Hitchens: "The empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing, that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you will just get yourself called reverend. Who would, even at your network, have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the attacks of September 11 were the result of our sinfulness and were God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification? People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup."

• Hitchens: "...[T]he country suffers, to a considerable extent, from paying too much, by way of compliment, to anyone who can describe themselves as a person of faith: Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, Chaucerian frauds, people who are simply pickpockets..."

• Cooper: Do you believe he believed what he spoke?

Hitchens: Of course not. He woke up every morning, as I say, pinching his chubby little flanks and thinking, I have got away with it again.

Cooper: You think he was a complete fraud, really?

Hitchens: Yes.

Cooper: You don't believe that, I mean, in his reading of the Bible, you don't think he was sincere in his—whether you agree or not with his reading of the Bible—you don't think he was sincere in what he spoke?

Hitchens: No. I think he was a conscious charlatan and bully and fraud. And I think, if he read the Bible at all—and I would doubt that he could actually read any long book of—at all—that he did so only in the most hucksterish, as we say, Bible-punding way.

It was nice to see you again, Hitchens I Agree With, if only for a moment.