Christopher Hitchens has a mind I have admired for a long time, primarily after reading his book, God is Not Great. He is a brilliant historian and writes well (since he agrees with me) on God. However, after seeing him on TV panels I have to confess his personality is as fetching as Ann Coulter's. When I heard that he is a neocon/warmonger, he immediately toppled off the pedestal.
He is not, by far, the first to take a dive. Some people talk well and make interesting points. This is wonderful to help the rest of us think out of our box. He is provocative and his expressed thoughts really push the envelope. However, it was surprising to hear that this pro-Iraq war supporter has taken this length of time to change a view that the majority of Americans have held for a long time. It took him only 11 seconds to realize that waterboarding is torture. Perhaps he should experience more directly before he forms such authoritative opinions about which he so pedantically lectures on panels.
An article by Alexander Linklater, having interviewed him, writes more accurately than anything I could write. Now I understand why I unconsciously related him to Ann Coulter. Both of them like to stir up controversy and shock. While Coulter is petty, nasty, and even more insulting than he...it seems he is taking lessons from her by such comments (to quote Linklater) as: "His aptitude for the iconoclastic flourish—describing Princess Diana and Mother Teresa at their deaths, for example, as, respectively, "a simpering Bambi narcissist and a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf"—sustained his currency as an intellectual shock troop of the left."
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