At Drinking Liberally last night, I mentioned I’d run across some of Christopher Hitchens comments on Hugh Hewitt’s Hackfest. For your amusement, I’ve excerpted some of the more choice bits. He’s discussing Professor Juan Cole, probably the most visible scholar on Middle Eastern affairs, noted author, fluent in multiple languages, and a frequent subject matter expert on the News Hour with Jim Leher.
Hitchens, on the other hand, once a distinguished foreign correspondent, is known mostly for his ability to consume mass quantities, to put it euphemistically.
(via CorrenteWire)
- … he’s 10th rate, and he’s a sordid apologist for Islamist terrorism, and for Islamist terrorist regimes.
- … Professor Juan Cole does not know what he is talking about, in any language.
- His English is, by the way, very poor. I can’t believe his Persian is excellent, because his English is lousy.
- He knows no history, he has no policies. He is a complete dim bulb, and well, I must say, I took pleasure in pointing this out.
- … the embodiment of the mediocre…
- I mean, he writes as if he’s drunk, because you have to, the sentences are made up of syntactical train wrecks. But I don’t think it’s alcohol in his case. I think it’s illiteracy, simply.
Of course, Hitchens also says during the interview: “The ad hominem is widely and rightly denounced, because it shows a collapse on the part of the person who uses it.”
