Invite a drunk to your dinner party and this is what you get. Christopher Hitchens coming unglued.
Parker relates a dinner party attended by Hitchens and
his wife. Relaxed occasion, Hitchens and some women are shooting the
shit over Gavin Newsome’s good looks and Iranian politics, when one of
the attendees makes a “passing but sympathetic remark” about Howard
Dean, saying he felt Dean was unfairly maligned by the media. Hitchen’s
reply:Dean was “a raving nut bag,” [Hitchens said]…then he
corrected himself: “A raving, sinister, demagogic nutbag…I and a few
other people saw that he should be destroyed.Hitchens then recalls a time when Dean spoke against
mandatory parental notification laws by telling of 12-year-old child
who’d come to his office seeking an abortion. The baby was her
father’s. But Dean hadn’t told the authorities of the incident, and it
seemed that it may have happened to someone else, or been exaggerated,
or something. Hitchens uses this to brand Dean a “pathological liar,”
and when some at the table protest, Hitchens turns his shotgun full of
crazy on the assembled:“Fine, now that I know that, to you, medical ethics
are nothing, you’ve told me all I need to know. I’m not trying to
persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I’m
telling you why I disagree with you. That I do
care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There’s
nothing you wouldn’t make an excuse for. You know what? I wouldn’t want
you on my side. I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a
psycho and a fraud , and you say ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean it:
fuck off. I’m telling you what I think are standards and you say, ‘What
standards? It’s fine, he’s against the Iraq War.’ Fuck. Off. You’re
MoveOn.org. Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bush. Fuck off…Save it
sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you
suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what
mine are, and that’s all the difference — I hope — in the
world.”
I’m sure Hitchens’ wife was mortified. There’s nothing like your spouse getting soused and telling a whole dinner party to go fuck themselves.
Such a fine drug, alcohol — guaranteed to gradually eliminate any manner of social skill you may possess(including potty training), depending on dependence.
Just the thing to lift our public discourse, too, since vomitus of this nature generally does become public.
There is no source for this. The one link goes to BooMan’s earlier post about Bush and Cheney being criminals. How did anyone reproduce such extended direction quotations from Hitchens? Was he taped?
One detail here surprised me: the mention that he had a wife. Somehow that doesn’t seem plausible.
Oops. Link is fixed.
was he taped or was there a court stenographer at the party?
“Raving nut bag” = Hitchens.
That dinner party story reminds me of his performance on Bill Maher not too long ago. I guess he was totally soused then too.
I guess he was totally soused then too.
I think that Hitchen’s alcoholism has reached the point where one would be hard pressed to find a point in his day when he wasn’t totally soused.
The thing in this story that horrified me was the (apparent) fact that there is a Mrs. Hitchens. I’m assuming this is the reason he is still alive. When they reach the point where they have a buzz 24/7 they don’t usually last very long and as far as I can tell Hitchens reached that point about a decade ago.
If Foley is a scumbag regardless of alcohol abuse what about Hitchens? Drunk or not he’s psycho, right? I’m not trying to defend drinkers-I’ve been physically and emotionally abused by alcoholics-but maybe we shouldn’t blame this all on the juice. Alcohol might make these tendencies worse but it can’t create something that’s not latent.
I think I saw Hitch one time on Bill Maher’s Real Time actually sober (and he had his hair combed, unbloodshot eyes, a clean suit jacket…etc) –But even IF he was the picture of sobriety and I can’t say as he was any better! He was still obnoxious, lying through his teeth and a monster. That was the episode where he flicked of the audience for booing him – and they returned the love!