Like any keyboard ranter, I regularly have a metaphorical sharpener at Hitch's Bar. Christopher Hitchens is always satisfying, often inspiring, frequently amusing and for many, essential reading. More recently, thanks to the workers' paradise that is YouTube, he's become the downloader's master pundit, debater and scourge of fighty interviewers of all media.
The fact that his enemies so often fall into one, or both, of two caricatures - the hurt lover or bewildered centre back - makes him all the more entertaining. Throw in poetic offence, delivered with an actor's voice employed with the effect of a kidney dagger, and it's no wonder Hitchens (major) sells out any hall with his name on the bill.
He was on good form at The Garrick this week, where a half pint of diluted malt failed to compromise an hour's eloquence on the evil of religion to a packed house of the faithless.
He was, understandably, on a roll. Three weeks earlier - just as the 'god is not Great' tour shed is godless shadow over the deep South - the almighty chose to smite down Jerry Falwell, prompting the networks to offer Hitchens his finest hour; the opportunity to broadcast a Falwell obituary that resembled disco fever, and simultaneous prime time promotion of his anti-theist masterwork. The timing must have confused the great sage as to whether there really was a God, Kharma or Kismet. Or maybe Old Nick was repaying him for his pro bono work as his 'advocate' in the case of Mother Teresa. Either way, seldom has Kismet presented a more deliciously ironic opportunity and Hitchens seized it with both hands as he savaged Falwell's legacy on CNN. The following night he was bacj for more as he savaged Fox TV's Sean Hannity - himself a believer and Falwell apologist. The contrarian is nothing if not an opportunist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IDfKKWBEZk
Having been loathed by anti-war liberals for the ultimate apostasy of mutating from leftist poster boy to Gulf War Standard Bearer, suddenly Hitchens was top of the best seller list and darling of hitherto silent atheists everywhere. In a relay of fiercely argued, anti-religion best sellers, the baton has been passed from Sam Harris to Daniel Dennett to Richard Dawkins and now to Hitchens in the anchor role, his lunching of religion widely 'praised' and flying off the shelves in a godless reaction to America's unseemly lurch towards unfettered religiosity.
For those liberals who supported the Iraqi campaign and Hitchens' lonely arguments for the liberation, it has been a welcome respite from the tedious squabbling with those from the left for whom the word solidarity has been sadly erased from their collective conscience.
And then, in a response to our guilty pleasure at the incarceration of Paris Hilton, a sort of deliverance from our own hopeless obsessions, who should improbably and perversely defend the indefensible? Step forward the not so young contrarian.
Hitchens' odd 'defence' of Paris Hilton (http://www.slate.com:80/id/2168128/fr/flyout) is more an attack on the genuine schadenfreude in the face of a widely welcome reality check. Indeed, never was apparent injustice so deserved in the eyes of the hoi polloi. It escaped no one that she was hoisted by her own petard. A gentle spell inside was a fair price for La Hilton's relentless drive to subvert the youth of the world.
In this instance, however, Hitch is uniquely out of touch. In dipping his immaculately styled pen into the mire of celebrity sleaze, he oddly misses the point. He was, as ever, on the mark about the sex tapes, ('I could almost have believed that she was drugged.') the Kingsley Amis reference (even as he wanted a certain spectacle to go on, he also wanted it to stop) was au point, but his portrait of her as a victim of the vindictive was disingenuous, and betrays a bizarre sympathy, and a distance gifted to those of higher pursuits from the reality beneath. Whatever slings and arrows he suffered for bravely following a point of principal that, for many, cast him as traitor, Hitchens' scourge is in no way eqitable to the relentless hold this pointless woman has over the mass media in general, and female youth culture in particular. If controversy was his intention, it was a poor afternoon's work.
Ultimately Paris Hilton was as guilty as any rich and powerful person who believes themselves above the law, and it has been obvious to all that the evidence clearly showed signs of this. Wonderful as his barracking on FoxTV of creepy Christian republican Ralph Reed was, there was little difference between the arrogance of Reed's friend, convicted fraudster, Jack Abramoff and that of Paris Hilton.
But, oddly, in his support of Paris, Hitch seemed completely unaware that in the modern celebrity age, a modest downfall offers unlimited opportunity. Perversely, Christopher has ignored Paris' hilariously brassy discovery of god and her cell-bound transubstantiation into Mother Teresa. Depressingly, the world still awaits St Paris of West Hollywood.
At risk of over-egging the irony pudding, if Hitch needs any evidence that bad behaviour begets great opportunity, he need look no further than his own disgraced ex-editor, and now fledgling US superstar, the truly grotesque, but apparently irresistible, Piers Morgan.
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