Anyone remember when a British PM named Goerge Galloway was hauled before the Senate for questioning, and he shocked the U.S. political class by speaking frankly? One senator sought to confront him for meeting with Saddam Hussein as part of a food-aid campaign. "Did you not meet with Saddam at such and such time, etc. etc.," the senator thundered. Galloway replied something like, "I've met with Saddam the same number of times as has your defense secretary. The difference is, unlike Rumsfeld, I wasn't trying to sell him arms." An impolite observation!
Well, this Galloway fellow last week in New York debated Paul's hero, the reformed leftist and pro-war hack (who's recently sounding more confident about the war in Iraq than GW Bush himself) Christopher Hitchens. Here is a link to the BBC's recording of it. I haven't listened to it yet, but it promises to be interesting.
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Yeah, I heard it. Hitchens won the debate in a rout. Galloway did nothing but act like the abusive, foul, frothing at the mouth, Islamic terrorism apologizing lunatic that he is. Meanwhile, Paul's boy Hitchens was calm, cool and collected and had facts to back what he said. Believe me, it was no contest.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/18/ngall18.xml
Here's another debate that took place the same night between Victor Davis Hanson and Arianna Huff-n-puff;
http://www.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/
Tom: You called Hitchens a "hack". Do you consider everybody with whom you disagree a "hack"? If some of your ideological opponents are not hacks, please name some, and explain how Hitchy is a hack. If all of your ideological opponents *are* hacks, please explain how this could be.
Tom: My dictionary defines a "hack" as a "worn out horse for hire. I have always used the term to describe a person whose opinions and allegiances were for hire.
Do you consider Hitchens' writing to be "worn out"? I consider it to be vigorous.
Do you consider himself to form his opinions and allegiances based on who hires him? I do not.
Tom: I've read about Galloway's testimony before the Senate. I disagree with your description of testimony as merely representing "frankness," a word I believe you use to mean anything that you agree with. He got "hauled" into chambers to answer charges that he profitted from the "Oil for Food" scandal. As part of his testimony he issued the Martin/Cindy Sheen "America is the cause of all suffering on earth today and in the past" view. Sure, that is "frank" speech. But so would be a contrary view.
I do, in fact, think C. Hitchens is a hack. I think he's found issuing shrill polemics on behalf of the Bush administration much more popular among big-time editors than his shrill leftist stuff. (For the record, I thought his act was tired 10 years ago when he was issuing tedious polemics in The Nation.) I think history will regard him a cheap substitute for Orwell, whom he would like to emulate. Send me a recent text of his and I will shred it, just as I shredded his apology for Abu Graib several months ago.
For the record, I disagree with almost everything William Safire has written, but find him the master of the 1000-word column. I agree with Molly Ivins often, I assume; I'm not sure, because I find her unreadable. I can't read those media-obsessed writers in the Nation: Eric Alterman, David Corn, et al. I object to Robert Kaplan's idea fixe that U.S. power is the answer to all the world's problems; but find him an honest, clear-eyed writer from who one can learn things. He has the sense of history, of tragedy, that so much right-wing writing lacks, including the stuff here. I think Jared Diamond places way too much faith in corporations as engines of change, but I think everybody should get their hands on Collapse and read it.. I think the greatest newspaper in English is not the NY Times or the (London) Guardian, but rather the Wall Street Journal--followed not so closely by the Financial Times. (The left's allergy to learning about economics/finance is crippling.) The philistinism of the WSJ's editorial pages is more than outweighed by the brilliance of its news coverage.
But all those guys who come on Fox TV and shout? Don't be embarrassing. They're hacks.
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