The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Xanthippas — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 13:20:04 -0000

I'm just now coming to this post. Fantastic take-down. It's very easy to criticize Hitchens and some of his ramblings, but to do so thoroughly and precisely takes a little bit more work. Well done.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Max Renn — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 03:08:56 -0000

"Hitchens lost his compass on the way to Iraq and has never again found it. Lately he's been reduced to getting facials for Vanity Fair and taking aim at any politician his old friends at the The Nation support."

Hitchens lost his compass on the Clintons and his friend Sid Blumenthal. He's never recovered. Sure, he's right about Pinochet, and largely right about Mother Teresa, but that's beside the point.

As to . . . views expressed by trolls of the Cobb variety, less said the better. I guess militarized urban death squads operating under color of authority 'rock' for them in the same way Navy Seals do for Katie Couric.

Nice.

Great blog, btw. I got here through 'The G Spot.'

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

El Cid — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 02:35:16 -0000

Well, I hate to be one of the Dirty Friggin' Hippies that Mr. Orwell-without-the-Decency Hitchens tries to portray as one of those evil simplistic leftists 'who think John Ashcroft is a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden', but (a) I wasn't one of the nutbags who were giving bin Laden's closest warlord terrorist allies guns, money, and protection to wage a fundamentalist terror war throughout the 1980s; and (b) Osama bin Laden wasn't the one with whom we had invested the only powers we have in a democratic society to protect ourselves from people such as bin Laden.

In the end, crude simplicity though it may be, Osama bin Laden required Bush and Cheney and Rice and, yes, Ashcroft, in order to carry out his terror attack on 9/11/2001.

There are always murderous gangsters in the world. To be effective, though, they require the intentional or unintentional collaboration of governments.

Without their complicity via their rigid arrogance and commitment to dismissing everyone who could have averted the attack, bin Laden's attack would have failed.

See, Hitchens' version is a pathetic fake polemics about the Left that Hitchens now likes to hate, rather than any argument.

Hitchens began deranging himself with a personal, not political, obsession with Bill Clinton. Back when he was writing, say, Cyprus, he could make a tremendous argument.

But that's when Hitchens wasn't at all writing about what a huge threat Osama bin Laden was to us all -- instead, he was obsessed with what a threat Bill Clinton was to us all.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

BradyMoss — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 12:38:09 -0000

Alex,

Hitch's column represents the worst kind of dog whistle punditry. He hasn't the courage to actually call Mrs. Obama a black separatist, so he "politely" asks the question, which injects the poison into our discourse noetheless, thus achieving the original objective.

Additionally, you wrote this:

"(H)er thesis (albeit from over 20 years ago) did show a preoccupation with race and did seem complimentary to certain separationist figures." And your evidence of this is what, exactly? Do you consider the mere act of writing about such people to be "complimentary?"

Near the end of your post, you wrote this:

"Hitchens' second point was that we should be asking her husband about how much influence she might have on his policies if he is elected. Another fair point, especially given how the Clinton White House functioned. Barack does seem genuinely unsympathetic to Wright's views which suggests he may always have been and it doesn't seem at all unlikely that a wife might influence her husband's choice of church. So to suggest this as a possibility is hardly controversial."

First, the question of Michelle's policy pull simply does not gibe with the vast majority of the column. Hitch is saying...er, "asking" if Mrs. Obama is a racist. How this translates to the policy agenda of a candidate who is manifestly not racist is worth another essay altogether, which Hitch hasn't written yet.

Finally, what is this borderline sexist bullshit I keep hearing about how I woman has the sole say over a family's choice of church? It wasn't that way in my house, where it was a mutally agreed-upon decision. I suppose you think those chicks love to belt out the spirituals on Sundays, while we guys periodically rush out to the car to get sports updates.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

melissa — Mon, 26 May 2008 21:27:02 -0000

This thread seems to be getting attention from new readers like me, who came here through Yglesias.

When I read the HItchens' article, my reaction was to the hypocrisy. He is holding MO responsible for 20-year old opinions, but he is famous for having changed his political stance as a mature adult,

As for the influence Michelle may have on BO; let's respect him as an adult. She may have helped him understand the Chicago Black community; that's better than if he didn't care or didn't understand.

Ta-nehisi, you've really helped me here. I can now give (your words) to the efforts to un-black the bi-racial candidate. It's a great & horrible convergence of racism & sexism.

(By the way, I'm a white 50+ woman from Virginia now living in Canada)

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Rhondacoca — Mon, 26 May 2008 20:21:15 -0000

Obama met Wright in 1985. He didn't met Michelle untill 1988. They got married in 1990.

The End=)

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Barry — Sun, 11 May 2008 11:35:37 -0000

"This is what happens when you don't much care about what you do or who you're doing it for, when you mistake your ability to be really smart about a few things, for the ability to be really smart about anything. "

I think that it's more mistaking one's ability to make witty comments with being really intelligent, or having wisdom.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Alex — Sat, 10 May 2008 13:42:19 -0000

I'm afraid you've completely missed Hitchens' point and merely knocked down a straw man. He didn't claim (as you suggested) that Michelle Obama was responsible for the Wright fiasco, he ASKED whether she might bear some of the responsibility for it. You might say that this is splitting hairs, but to confuse a question with a claim is no small mistake.

Far from making a case against her, he merely suggests that we should be asking about her opinions of Wright and liberation theology. Aside from the fact that this is a fair question to ask regardless, her thesis (albeit from over 20 years ago) did show a preoccupation with race and did seem complimentary to certain separationist figures. It had a personal tinge to it which I frankly don't see how you could've missed and which, had it accompanied a paper on Nazism, would've probably creeped you out. But again, there was no claim made about Michelle's current views, only a suggestion that we ought to ask (and her thesis is a good reason).

Hitchens' second point was that we should be asking her husband about how much influence she might have on his policies if he is elected. Another fair point, especially given how the Clinton White House functioned. Barack does seem genuinely unsympathetic to Wright's views which suggests he may always have been and it doesn't seem at all unlikely that a wife might influence her husband's choice of church. So to suggest this as a possibility is hardly controversial.

Now, are you really going to argue that Hitchens is wrong that we should ask this line of questions?

But I'm really baffled by your conclusion that "there is something really creepy at work here, a continuation of a refusal to accept the fact that Barack Obama is what he says he is--a biracial black man." It's quite a far-fetched idea which you've put forth that Barack Obama's "blackness" is somehow related to his decision to stay at Wright's church, and that as Hitchens implicates Michelle in this decision, he holds on to the (apparently common) delusion of Barack as "un-black".

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Fri, 09 May 2008 11:53:53 -0000

I don't get my ideas from Heather McDonald, I have come to them independently. I'm going to give you a pass on the self-hating ad hominem because I don't need to be getting mad at strangers.

What I think you fail to recognize is that the very idea of politicizing Sean Bell's death serves no good purpose. It is counter-productive to black community politics. Nobody disagrees that it is a tragedy. But we disagree on the reasons why. Your version is anti-cop. You think the system is rigged. But in order to prove that, you would have to show that cops essentially do relatively no work against the guilty and torment the innocent. I ping McDonald because she has the stats.

I have a standing grudge against the Coalition of the Damned, poeple who take every opportunity to paint the interests of police as opposed to the interests of black communities. And there is something about politicizing a funeral that annoys the hell out of me. Aside from that, I look at the interests of the community and I recognize in the politics to bash police, the necessity of whitewashing the fact that these three officers were on an undercover operation to shut down a strip club. The idea that you brazenly say that there is nothing wrong with a strip club is what shocks and astounds me. Yeah in princple, all Las Vegas is a strip club, but this is one that was the subject of a vice investigation. You make it sound like Bell was shopping for apples, and that the police had no business being there in the first place.

And so this is how I come to the issue, by asking the fundamental question of what two black men who ended up in mortal conflict were doing and how each were or were not contributing to the health of the black community.

You can pretend that McDonald promotes ignorant white racism, and you can pretend that people who don't agree with you hate black people, that's your fantasy world. But you can't pretend that black men who frequent strip clubs are good for the black community, unless their specific purpose is to shut them down.

As for the details of the event, it has had its day in court. All we can do is politic people towards what we believe are proper interpretations of events. I'm mostly impressed by those offered by black cops who recognize sub-par training when they see it. But anti-cop politics undermines the very safety of communities and that is the purpose you appear to be serving. I don't hear reform in your voice, merely outrage.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Killa4luv — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:15:47 -0000

Of course Heather McDonald makes perfect sense to you. There is something about you that is self-hating when you justify a police killing by talking about a trip to a strip club. Some of the points she makes about black on black violence make sense, but this isn't an either or thing. Its not, be upset with the police but happy when thugs do it, or vice versa. The police shouldn't be killing unarmed people and getting away with it. 50 shots? Thats ridiculous. If it was 4 or 5 shots, people would respond differently I'm sure, but 1 cop fires 31 shots and thats all good?

BLack on Black crime is an issue that needs to be addressed, I think all black people agree on that, but the idea that you can shame it away implies a childish understanding of why it exists in the first place. Furthermore, I dont take my cues on what my community should do from a woman whose writing does a great deal to distort reality and promote ignorant white racism.

She also said: When one of the undercovers identified himself as an officer, the car holding the party twice tried to run him down. The officer started firing while yelling to the car’s occupants: “Let me see your hands.” His colleagues, believing they were under attack, fired as well, eventually shooting off 50 rounds and killing the driver, Sean Bell. No gun was found in the car, but witnesses and video footage confirm that a fourth man in the party fled the scene once the altercation began. Bell and the other men with him all had been arrested for illegal possession of guns in the past;"

this whole version of events has been largely debunked, and she, like you, blames their criminal records for why they were shot.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:23:08 -0000

Heather McDonald makes perfect sense to me. She writes:

“Stop the killing!” Since 1993, 11,353 people have been murdered in New York City. The large majority of victims and perpetrators have been black. Not a single one of those black-on-black killings has prompted protest or demonstrations from the city’s black advocates. Sharpton, Barron, et al. are happy to let thousands of black victims get mowed down by thugs without so much as a whispered call for “peace” or “justice”; it’s only when a police officer, trying to protect the public, makes a good faith mistake in a moment of intense pressure that they rise as vindicators of black life. (As for caring about slain police officers, forget about it. Sixteen cops—including several black policemen—have been killed since 1999, not one of whom elicited a public demonstration of condolence from the race hustlers.)

If the city’s black advocates paid even a tiny fraction of the attention they pay to shootings by criminals as they pay to shootings by police, they could change the face of the city. If demonstrators gathered outside the jail cell of every rapist and teen stick-up thug, cameras in tow, to shame them for their attacks on law-abiding minority residents, they could deglamorize the gangsta life. Think you’ll find Sharpton or Barron patrolling with the police in dark housing project stairways, trying to protect residents from predators? Not a chance. Among the crimes committed in minority communities since last week’s police shooting of Sean Bell there has been a 26-year-old man fatally shot in the Bronx; another man hit by stray bullets; a sandwich shop in Brownsville robbed by thugs who fired a gun; and three elderly men robbed at knifepoint by a parolee in Queens. Those minority victims who survived will have to rely on the police and the courts, not the race “advocates,” for vindication.

http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2006-12-04hm.html

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Fri, 09 May 2008 01:04:45 -0000

Of course police should be held accountable. But that becomes awfully difficult in an environment when people have political incentives to call misfortune like this 'murder' as you clearly have no problem doing. We are both free to place moral judgments. But the police wouldn't have been involved in an undercover investigation of the strip club if it was all perfectly legal. You can feel free to excuse the existence of strip clubs and I'll feel free to excuse the mistakes of cops. After all, they had their day in court and it was all found perfectly legal.

In the long term, cops are better for black communities than strip clubs. And you say I make no sense.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Killa4luv — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:55:20 -0000

Cobb you make no sense at all, the question isn't whether we should have more Sean Bell's or more police, the question is should the police be held accountable for killing black men who were doing nothing wrong. If things were done appropriately no one's life would be lost.

Furthermore, what you imply about Sean Bell, is that he is a bad person unworthy of our sorrow because he had been arrested before, and that a cop, by virtue of his occupation, is more worthy or always worthy. These are assumptions I'm not willing to make. Yes thats what you imply, if you mean something else please do share.

Aims of the community in mind? A community takes many things, there is nothing inherently wrong with a strip club, it serves a purpose, and its legal. If you want to place your moral judgments on its existence or people who go there that is on you. The fact is, going to the strip club is not a crime nor a reason why people should be shot and murdered by the state. It isn't even a reasonable part of the discussion, unless you are trying to blame these men for being shot.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:19:12 -0000

You know, when Bill Clinton announced his national conversation on race, our pre-eminent historian Dr. John Henrik Clarke showed up as did every great mind the Democrats could muster. Clinton did so *as President* and said it was going to last an entire year. There is a reason why all y'all have forgotten that and that there has been no reference to it whatsoever. That's because national conversations on race don't matter. And that is why Obama's speech matters even less. So don't go badmouthing Hitchens because he sees through farce of your hopes. He may be faithless, but that beats being a fool three times. Let's not forget the ecstacy produced by Howard Dean when he promised to talk to whitefolks about race without blacks being around.

None of that matters. It doesn't work. You ethics on race are your responsibility. No politician is ever going to make you moral. Anyone who believes differently is a sucker.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Dan Hale — Thu, 08 May 2008 11:10:26 -0000

I just finished reading your piece in The Nation (19 May 2008), "A Deeper Black." So intelligent, so uncommon, so critical to the survival of humans as evolving, self-correcting information processors, your article is one reason I thank God that I learned to read.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Doug Power — Thu, 08 May 2008 03:20:52 -0000

Nice job with this article. I particularly like the jujitsu at the end with the "good sir" --very smooth.

It's refreshing to see someone finally point out what an asshole Christopher Hitchens has turned into, which is dispiriting, because for a while he was an entertaining and decent iconoclast. I disagree with you on God is Not Great, though- I read a couple excerpts on Slate when it came out, and while there were some interesting points in there (and religion in general seems to get a pass on getting called on its bullshit, so every little bit helps), by and large it was a sign of the jackass he was turning into- the kind that wants to tear down everything anyone has any kind of faith in, just for the sake of showing how much smarter they are that they caught all the bullshit before everyone. The kind of cat that gives wiseasses a bad name.

His writing on Obama, however, has just been execrable. I thought the Philadelphia speech by Obama was a knockout, addressing aspects of race and politics in America that most people are too chickenshit to touch, while remaining eminently classy, and Hitchens' dismissing of it as "second-rate hucksterism" was despicable. Frankly, I think he there embodied, somewhat more flamboyantly and shamelessly, a kind of (to borrow an expression from Chris Moltisanti) pussy-assedness that seems to have caught on in the white liberal press, which seems to feel it has to find fault with Obama to not seem like namby-pamby white liberals, which a lot of them are anyway and should just accept. It was like they woke up from the early Obama fever with a terrible hangover that they can't shake, or something. I don't really feel like figuring it out, but today's word is, if you're gonna bitch and moan for 40 years about how government's corrupt and irrelevant, and then you can't even get behind the one politician in 40 years with the makings of a legitimate leader, then fuck you (which is to say them).

That's how I've started to feel about Christopher Hitchens, particularly with this article, and particularly with his dismissing of a younger Michelle Obama's writing as "no known language" on the basis of a few dropped commas and "obligation that" instead of "obligation to", which is all I could find wrong in a quick read of the first few pages of her thesis. This in particular seems more like borderline racism than anything else. Wait, maybe that should have been "quick reading" instead of "quick read"? Fuck, I guess I'm an idiot too . . .

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Wed, 07 May 2008 12:14:43 -0000

My point about Bell is contrasting his life with the black officer's and asking the black community which it values more. Are we better off with more Sean Bells in the world or more. Now tell me have you ever seen a national headline or one week story about a black officer killed in the line of duty?

I know it's difficult for people to read what I write for what it says rather than what they think I'm trying to imply, but the question remains. If you have the aims of the community in mind, what would you have a black man doing at a strip club at 4 in the morning, policing or partying?

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Wed, 07 May 2008 11:02:30 -0000

I think you should call him on it. He'll elide his mistake and rejigger the priority of his argument the next time he speaks, but I think he will adjust when corrected. I imagine TC that you have access to Lexis, et al. I couldn't find the details.

The Mrs is fair game as she has been stumping for him, and the UCLA speech set up a lot of hackles. I think she's a more appropriate target than the Weather Underground. But I think the basic thrust of Hitchens' argument is right, she helped hook him up in Chicago. I say his connection to the poor and needy is a significant part of the sort of blackness he needed. As Baldilocks is taking apart black liberation theology, as will Jimi Izrael at some point, Obama's blackness gets the third degree it deserves & at a far more serious level than I think anyone expected.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Killa4luv — Wed, 07 May 2008 10:55:09 -0000

Hitch also wrote the missionary position, about Mother Theresa and her bs, I couldn't believe what i was reading, but it was documented well, and I show it to others often.

Cobb is the same man who made a number of dumb arguments about the Sean Bell verdict, mainly blaming Sean Bell for being in a strip club at 4 in the morning, and devaluing the lives of those shot because they had criminal records.

exhibit a: Sean Bell was a twice arrested drug dealer, a third time for firearms possession.

His friend who was also shot, was arrested over a dozen times.

I think the cops overreacted and that’s it.

They did not kill some innocent college kids having a night out.

They killed fledgling career criminals.

If any of us were in that situation, we would not have talked sh*t about "go get my gat" and therefore we would not have been shot to death.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:33:23 -0000

Cobb,

It ain't a graduate thesis. It's her SENIOR thesis. She didn't spend several years writing it. At best, she spent a school year when she was 22. Moreover, she never claimed in the thesis to be influenced by Stokely. Hitch was just dishonest.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

ewkpates — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:31:05 -0000

1. Rev. Wright, whether or not he was making well reasoned arguments (and he doesn't appear to have done that), appeared to use his relationship with a Presidential candidate to gain attention on the national stage. Whether or not he was using his relationship with Obama is beside the point, he appeared to be using it. One of my objections about the politics of the last eight years has been that right or wrong, people in positions of power (any kind) must maintain the appearance of propriety in their political lives... they must not appear to influence, must not appear to bend the rules, they must not appear to misuse their relationships for personal gain.

2. The Obama Campaign is not about Rev. Wright, has little if anything to do with the subject of Rev. Wright's speech or with Rev. Wright's personal views. Yet Rev. Wright places himself directly in that dialogue. He quotes, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." When you call a man a liar, I think you should do it to his face, not in a press conference that you claim has nothing to do with him.

3. Which brings us to Michelle Obama. I know nothing about her. She's not running for office. I haven't read her essay. I don’t' particular find Mr. Hitchens a reliable analyst. Yet the public has a problem. How to explain Obama and Wright? How to reconcile a relationship between two men who obviously see the world very differently, value different things, hope for different things? I think Hitchens is grasping at straws trying to find an answer. I don't know if he's right, I don't care. I'm focused on one of the most significant ideological movements in our nation's history.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

sfsinger — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:54:56 -0000

I'm not even going to bother reading it because he's such an asshat. When all else fails such as recognizing that Rev. Wright is correct in his assessments if not the timing and means of his delivery blame a Black woman? I don't think so. And Cobb, I'm not really sure what your point is about criticizing the study of Black people but everyone should! I took an African-American women studies course thinking it would an easy A, well our teacher expected essays for every homework assignment and test and a lot of research and an oral history report from a woman who was 30 years older than the student. That one course changed my entire perspective on the lives of African-American women in this country, their struggles and often how society operated. I thought I knew what it was like seeing that I am one, but I learned so much especially when I verified things such as pay scales and types of work available with employment reports and census records. There is no one in this country, especially a white man, who has ANY RIGHT to unfairly criticize a Black woman in this country with no basis than his narrow-minded myopic viewpoint instead of addressing the real issues and sources behind the results he sees fit to judge.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

Cobb — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:49:11 -0000

How exactly is it that you spend several years writing a thesis and it has no effect on your personal views? Please explain that one to me.

I know there are plenty of people who would argue with me but it seems to me that Brent Staples has demonstrated a much more mature way to be a graduate student who is black than Michelle Obama. And quite frankly, were I inclined to hear somebody out, it would be the presumptively black janitorial staff at Princeton, not the grad student. Let us not forget Marcus Mabry, and every other black who attended great universities to study something other than their own blackness.

Re: Christopher Hitchens On Obama and Rev. Wright: When All Else Fails Blame Women

nepat — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:30:02 -0000

Hitchens lost his compass on the way to Iraq and has never again found it. Lately he's been reduced to getting facials for Vanity Fair and taking aim at any politician his old friends at the The Nation support.

Meanwhile, in the real world, there's this great post from Al Giordano about today's primaries: http://208.76.84.21/thefield/?p=1160