Christopher Hitchens, whose political views continue to reside in a vague hinterland between Trotsky and Irving Kristol, has joined the boring but nonetheless sonorous voice of the mainstream media in its resentment of Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally.
Though normally a fresh, if inconsistent, voice of reason, Hitchens wanders into pedestrian territory with his latest column for Slate, a commentary on the rally that draws the following conclusion:
“…the overall effect was large, vague, moist, and undirected: the Waterworld of white self-pity.”
His thesis echoes that of other media, except it is clothed in the respectable, decades-old tradition of Hitchensian chutzpah. I am actually disappointed that someone I admire so much is, on this issue, being praised by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.
When it comes to this issue, then, Hitchens is no contrarian. And that’s a shame.
