Many of you may not know who Christopher Hitchens was, and its not all that surprising. Unless you’re an avid, perhaps even maniacal viewer of political news affiliates like FOX News or CNN (they both suck), or happen to follow the heated and complicated religion debate that is taking place every day in the United States, you may never heard of Christopher Hitchens.

But he was not just a British geek who debated the existence of God – he was a contributor to magazines like Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, and Slate. He wrote a bunch of books and handed individuals like Sean Hannity and Jerry Falwell their asses on national television. Another thing: he was a party fuggin’ animal – Hitchens drank and smoked in excess. In 2006 an NPR profile said of him, “Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output.” In 2003 Hitchens said of himself, “my daily intake of alcohol is enough to kill or stun the average mule.” He often noted that many great writers did some of their finest work when “blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind.”

Many of Hitchens’ targets for critique were completely understandable: George W. Bush; our war policy in Iraq; Jerry Falwell; Hugo Chavez; Bill Clinton; and Jesse Helms. But it was his acerbic words for some others that made him incredibly unpopular at times, like: Gandhi; the city of New York; Bob Hope; and even Mother Theresa. But even if you did not drink from the same rocks glass as Hitchens’ when it came to his opinions (and many did not), it could not be denied that he was a brilliant man, a supremely intellectual rhetorician, and a fearless critic of things he saw as unjust.

In 2007, Hitchens was diagnosed with esophageal cancer shortly after his long anticipated memoir, Hitch-22 was released. He had given up drinking a year before that during a visit to Madison, Wisconsin because of what he described only as an “epiphany,” and upon being diagnosed with his disease, he quit smoking altogether.

Christopher Hitchens died December 15, at the age of 62. And although there are many human beings in the world that are happy he is out of their hair – I for one am not. Hitchens tirelessly preached the one thing that I do above all else: being critical. And he understood completely that this does not merely mean to pick at and complain about everything – but rather to use our mind and all the limitless education that surrounds us to decide for ourselves what is Truth. Of course he said it best:

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself … Picture all experts as if they were mammals.”

Tags: Christopher Hitchens, Drinking, FOX News, God is not Great, Jerry Falwell, Religion, Smoking, Writer

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 17th, 2011 at 11:31 am and is filed under LBS Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.