Gibson and Hitchens: Two Idiots Let Sauce do the Talking

Steve Sailer quotes an email of mine about the egregious born-again one-sixteenth Jew named Christopher Hitchens:

A reader who was an old drinking buddy of Christopher Hitchens points out that Hitch regularly had his own Mel Gibson Moments after a dozen scotches:

"When I knew him, he claimed to be the "world's biggest anti-Semite" and a great friend of the Palestinians. Then he "discovered" a Jewish great-aunt and began a reassessment of his antecedents, or just decided to give the flip-side a spin or two."

It's obvious that Gibson and Hitchens are two very different kinds of drunks: Mel seems to go on binges or benders into blackout mode. Hitchens is a "steady state" drinker like bottle-a-day man Churchill, who once famously opined "I got a lot more out of Scotch than Scotch ever took out of me." or words to that effect.

Gibson type drunks on the right, like Texas Senator John Tower, tend to pay dearly for their indiscretions under the influence, whereas Hitchens-type winos/druggies like Alec Baldwin, who once called on an audience to murder Cong. Henry Hyde on national TV, or Sen. Hatfield from Oregon, who pleaded alcohol made him pick up girls and then slobber disgustingly all over them to the point they blew the whistle, the lefties or Repubs who are near-lefties like Hatfield, get free passes.

But Mad Mel must have been on robot-blackout mode to spew garbage like he did. Or perhaps he was sick of the whole Kabuki farce of Hollyweird PC and acted out his outlandish imbecilities [did the Jews start WWII, or WWI, or Korea, or Vietnam, or Gulf War I? Which wars, Mel?]

Perpetually hung-over Hitch [who drinks water to re-hydrate the morning after rather than a bit of the hair] hates Mel 'cuz patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel, Hitch is a scoundrel, and Mel's attack on the Brits in Braveheart and Patriot got scoundrel Hitch's dander up.

I personally went more or less down the same path Hitch took from left to right, but for somewhat different reasons. Last time I saw him in the mid-nineties, he was still a compleat Bolshie, but mellowing with age toward his self-discovery as one-sixteenth [or eighth?] Jewish. I was already succumbing to the evils of capitalistic profit-motives at Amoco, and Hitch was a bit curt during our last conversation.

His first wife now [early 2006] avers that he has become a very caring papa to his children by her. But Christopher is one of those fellows who limits himself very closely, having never learned to drive a car at the time I knew him, he was [and is?] chauffered by cab whereever he goes [unless the public transportation network in LA has turned him into a late-life convert to self-driven vehicular mobility].

His reversion to a Trotskyite trope might be spurred more by his hatred of religion than any remnants of ideological affinity. With the fall of the Wall, Islamists and Islamism have perverted the humane aspects of Islam and energized the aggressive recessive aspects of the religion, whose basis in the Arabic Quran, a language which has no future tense, demands total fanatical loyalty and harks back to the past almost as a grammatical imperative. Hitchens senses that atavistic aspect of the religion, and his atheistic background, coupled with some sense of blood loyalty with the Jews, probably motivates him to ever more murky eclecticism---There is no God and Mary is His Mother---in his pronunciamentos.

I got to know Hitchens through our mutual admiration for Evelyn Waugh and Brideshead Revisited. The book ends with the wanton Sebastian in a monastery, Julia or Cordelia [who served in the Spanish Civil War] as a settler in the Palestine of the Jewish Pale, and as Lord Marchmain doing a deathbed conversion. We had a long talk about the book and Waugh's scurrilous send-ups like Black Mischief, Scoop, et al., which the British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia had lent me while I was at the US Embassy. Caution: Boring Memory Lane Promenade;[the Brit Amb was, believe it or not, of Irish heritage and agreed with me when I drunkenly confronted him in '76 with the Democratic Party's plank on a United Ireland! He had a country house in Dublin, where US Ambassador William Porter had been born.] I often wondered whether Hitchens' admiration for Brideshead derived from some wish to believe. Even Capt. Ryder says a prayer in the end. Strangely, I seem to recall Hitchens also liked Graham Greene, another of my fave raves, and another Brit Catholic with deep doubts.

Later, we also talked about a less improbable subject of Hitch's admiration, Orwell, and I continued always marvelling at his trenchant insights, especially on the decline of language. We were by then usually deep into the Dewar's as my own cortex and lobes were slowly sinking under the lapping waves of Scottish soma. But his hollow leg was demanding continued replenishment from my dwindling credit card [These wassail-sessions sometimes started at noon at the Iron Gate, across from the Middle East Institute, where I was then a Fellow, and sometimes local celebs like Lally Weymouth and Joe Fitchett would drop by and join the apres-dejeuner festivities. Once darkness had fallen before I left with over $100 bill on my card. My wife was not pleased.]

Mad Mel was actually partly responsible for my getting married, as my wife and I were watching Mad Max at a local bar in Adams-Morgan, which ran the flick continuously while pitchers of beer with pizza were consumed. I proposed while in a great mood. Later, I thought Mel's Hamlet was excellent, with Glenn Close and Alan Bates and Helena B. Carter making it better than Kenneth Branagh's epic four-hours.

Hitchens' criticism of Mel was hypocritical, and the Seattle shooter of six women at a Jewish Community Center should be getting a little more publicity than the ravings of a religious-nut drunk at 3AM. But Gibson has got a severe case of the stupids.

Actually, knowing Hitchens and seeing that Michael Moore is a big admirer of Mel, all three could find a nice nook somewhere and perhaps would get on like wildfire. Well-watered wildfire, if you know what I mean. Unless, of course, the subject turned to religion.