Absolutely - in the last decade since his death. As a man of the left, he pissed off plenty of lefties in his time - his support for the Iraq War for instance. (Which more of them supported at the time than now like to admit - which I remember keenly since I wasn't so hot on it myself.) But if Hitchens, who was a friend of mine, pulled h…
Absolutely - in the last decade since his death. As a man of the left, he pissed off plenty of lefties in his time - his support for the Iraq War for instance. (Which more of them supported at the time than now like to admit - which I remember keenly since I wasn't so hot on it myself.) But if Hitchens, who was a friend of mine, pulled half the stuff he used to now, in the cancel-culture era, it would've been tough sledding for him. I have a hard time seeing him even being a regular columnist for Vanity Fair or Slate, both of whom he wrote for for many years, in the new climate. God help us if he would've been relegated to Newsmax, or something. But I don't discount the possibility that he'd probably be running the world's most successful Substack, because a lot of his former editor friends just wouldn't have had the balls to publish the dissents he was so fond of writing. He once wrote an entire piece for Vanity Fair on how women weren't as funny as men. It was an entertainment - a deliberate provocation. But if he did that with today's Vanity Fair, there'd be mass staff resignations, if they didn't outright burn him at the stake, first. Much as New York mag did to Andrew Sullivan. Everybody's lost their sense of humor. It's awful. And Hitch never did, which is why I liked him so much. And even when I thought he was wrong, which I did plenty, I always thought he came by his wrongness honestly. Which is more than I can say for most people.
Oh, if it wasn't clear, I admire(d) Hitchens very much (anyone who was willing to criticize Mother Teresa gets props for cojones), though I didn't know him personally as you did. And the world is a worse place for him being gone from it, and the fact that there is no room in the ecosystem anymore (I'm trying to think of who the best right leaning equivalent to Hitchens is and coming up a bit blank - Kevin Williamson perhaps? - not enough of a provocateur)
I recall Hitchens as being more cancelled toward the end of his lifetime than you do, but I'll defer to you on that. Quickly checking his bibliography, I see that Atlantic posthumously published his Vanity Fair essays about his cancer. I think I was thinking more of relative cancellation versus absolute - how many standard deviations out of cancellation was he versus the median?
I also recall, maybe incorrectly, that Hentoff was not cancelled on the left in the same way after leaving the Voice for Cato and the WSJ, so perhaps there is another variable in there in addition to abortion. Hentoff's sincerity and general aversion to bomb-throwing might have played a role.
And I agree all too much about how more than half of the left and almost all of the right (a few paleocons excepted) were nice and gung for Iraq II, and almost all of those who are still either in office or still punditing have managed to memory hole the whole thing without ever looking at how/why they were wrong. I don't forget though.
I agree that he'd very likely be running his own Substack - watching him and Sullivan go at it would in duelling Substacks would be entertaining at least, and possibly enlightening as well.
Where I think we (you and I) differ is what the epistemological standard is for coming by one's wrongness honestly in assertions of fact.
In that particular case the gender distribution of prolifeness in the US in and shortly before 1988, I think he failed the standard for due diligence and badly. I have no idea if anyone ever questioned him on it (his brother was unlikely to do so in that interview at that time): I did some quick searching and found nothing.
To be honest, I don't know. I don't have access to the pro-life 1988 gender breakdown data. Though I don't doubt it exists. (What doesn't exist?) But I think you might be losing the forest for the tree. The more important point was he wasn't afraid to buck what was then his own tribe, which you don't see much anymore, because even if he didn't believe in God, and therefore had no religious convictions on the matter, he kind of believed that abortion was killing babies, even it's not then, or now, fashionable to say so.
Absolutely - in the last decade since his death. As a man of the left, he pissed off plenty of lefties in his time - his support for the Iraq War for instance. (Which more of them supported at the time than now like to admit - which I remember keenly since I wasn't so hot on it myself.) But if Hitchens, who was a friend of mine, pulled half the stuff he used to now, in the cancel-culture era, it would've been tough sledding for him. I have a hard time seeing him even being a regular columnist for Vanity Fair or Slate, both of whom he wrote for for many years, in the new climate. God help us if he would've been relegated to Newsmax, or something. But I don't discount the possibility that he'd probably be running the world's most successful Substack, because a lot of his former editor friends just wouldn't have had the balls to publish the dissents he was so fond of writing. He once wrote an entire piece for Vanity Fair on how women weren't as funny as men. It was an entertainment - a deliberate provocation. But if he did that with today's Vanity Fair, there'd be mass staff resignations, if they didn't outright burn him at the stake, first. Much as New York mag did to Andrew Sullivan. Everybody's lost their sense of humor. It's awful. And Hitch never did, which is why I liked him so much. And even when I thought he was wrong, which I did plenty, I always thought he came by his wrongness honestly. Which is more than I can say for most people.
Oh, if it wasn't clear, I admire(d) Hitchens very much (anyone who was willing to criticize Mother Teresa gets props for cojones), though I didn't know him personally as you did. And the world is a worse place for him being gone from it, and the fact that there is no room in the ecosystem anymore (I'm trying to think of who the best right leaning equivalent to Hitchens is and coming up a bit blank - Kevin Williamson perhaps? - not enough of a provocateur)
I recall Hitchens as being more cancelled toward the end of his lifetime than you do, but I'll defer to you on that. Quickly checking his bibliography, I see that Atlantic posthumously published his Vanity Fair essays about his cancer. I think I was thinking more of relative cancellation versus absolute - how many standard deviations out of cancellation was he versus the median?
I also recall, maybe incorrectly, that Hentoff was not cancelled on the left in the same way after leaving the Voice for Cato and the WSJ, so perhaps there is another variable in there in addition to abortion. Hentoff's sincerity and general aversion to bomb-throwing might have played a role.
And I agree all too much about how more than half of the left and almost all of the right (a few paleocons excepted) were nice and gung for Iraq II, and almost all of those who are still either in office or still punditing have managed to memory hole the whole thing without ever looking at how/why they were wrong. I don't forget though.
I agree that he'd very likely be running his own Substack - watching him and Sullivan go at it would in duelling Substacks would be entertaining at least, and possibly enlightening as well.
Where I think we (you and I) differ is what the epistemological standard is for coming by one's wrongness honestly in assertions of fact.
In that particular case the gender distribution of prolifeness in the US in and shortly before 1988, I think he failed the standard for due diligence and badly. I have no idea if anyone ever questioned him on it (his brother was unlikely to do so in that interview at that time): I did some quick searching and found nothing.
To be honest, I don't know. I don't have access to the pro-life 1988 gender breakdown data. Though I don't doubt it exists. (What doesn't exist?) But I think you might be losing the forest for the tree. The more important point was he wasn't afraid to buck what was then his own tribe, which you don't see much anymore, because even if he didn't believe in God, and therefore had no religious convictions on the matter, he kind of believed that abortion was killing babies, even it's not then, or now, fashionable to say so.