This entry was posted on 9/12/2006 12:01 PM and is filed under All Posts, The Lies.
It's been awhile since Christopher Hitchens has written anything that interested me in the slightest. I used to admire him quite a bit. For those who don't know, Hitchens was once one of the most eloquent writers of both the American and British Left. His brilliant, relentless attack on Henry Kissinger's foreign policy, well-documented in both the book and documentary film "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", stands apart as one of the finest human rights critiques in political literature. And his anti-Clintonite polemic, No One Left To Lie To, made me seriously question—briefly—whether I should have voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 instead of Al Gore. Hitchens served as a critic of the Left, from the Left. I thought he was an important voice to have in the debate, as infuriating and caustic as he often was.
Since 9/11, however, Hitchens has embarked on a befuddling ego war with his former liberal allies. A 20-year writer for The Nation, he ditched the magazine after endless squabbling w/the magazine's editors over how, or even whether, to criticize the Bush Administration in the wake of the terrorist attack. It also wasn't that fun for the readers to be mocked week after week by someone who kept calling himself a leftist, yet clearly no longer was.
I bring him up because I came across his latest piece in Slate today, and felt like tearing his silly argument to shreds. Of all things, he felt the need to revisit and defend then-Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer's post 9/11 remark, in response to a simple statement of fact by the great Bill Maher, that Americans "need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."
Here is what Bill Maher said on his-then talk show Politically Incorrect that set Ari off: "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly." Slice it any way you want, Bill is stating the obvious.
It's the kind of nation-neutral morality one would think Hitchens, who made so deft an indictment of Kissinger's Cambodian bombing strategy, would be inclined to agree with. And maybe he even does. However, these days he spends a whole lot more energy defending the Ari Fleischers of the world than the Bill Mahers. Hitchens on the controversy:
The first hundred or so times I was told about Ari Fleischer's supposedly chilling words, or had them brought up against me in debates, I did not know how to dispute them and believed that they had actually been uttered as quoted above. My response was to say that the job of White House press secretary is one of the most unimportant in the government, and Ari Fleischer one of the most gentle and herbivorous people ever to hold the position, and that anyone who took fear at anything said by such a source was obviously pretty easily scared.
There you have it. Chief spokesman for the most powerful government in the world? Per Hitchens, "unimportant". Ari Fleischer? "Gentle and herbivorous". Herbivorous, a word that literally means "feeding only on plants". Despite extensive research, I could not locate conclusive evidence on whether or not Ari is a carnivore, a vegetarian, or perhaps even macrobiotic vegan.
Hitchens goes on to provide what he later "learned" was the "real" basis for Ari's attack on the 1st Amendment:
Shortly after the assault of Sept. 11, a buffoonish Republican congressman from Louisiana named John Cooksey—incredibly enough, a member of the Committee on International Relations—had made the following contribution to the debate on ethnic profiling:
If I see someone come in and he's got a diaper on his head and a fan belt around that diaper on his head, that guy needs to be pulled over and checked.
Ari Fleischer was duly asked about the congressman at the briefing on Sept. 26 and responded as follows:
Q: Has the President had any communication with Representative Cooksey regarding his comments on Sikh Americans? And does he have a message for the lawmakers and members of his party in particular about this issue?
A: The President's message is to all Americans. It's important for all Americans to remember the traditions of our country that make us so strong and so free, our tolerance and openness and acceptance. All Americans—and we come from a very rich cultural heritage, no matter what anybody's background in this country. And that's the strength of this country, and that's the President's message that he expressed in his speech to Congress and as he has done when he visited the mosque a week ago Monday, and in the meetings that he's hosting here at the White House today with Muslim Americans and Sikh Americans.
Q: Did he speak to Representative Cooksey, and what were his reactions upon hearing those?
A: The President was very disturbed by those remarks.
Several questions later on, up came the matter of Bill Maher and his use of what Frank Rich oddly calls "comic irreverence:"
Q: As Commander-in-Chief, what was the President's reaction to television's Bill Maher, in his announcement that members of our armed forces who deal with missiles are cowards, while the armed terrorists who killed 6,000 unarmed (sic) are not cowards, for which Maher was briefly moved off a Washington television station?
A: I have not discussed it with the President, one. I have ...
Q: Surely, as a—
A: I'm getting there.
Q: Surely as Commander, he was enraged at that, wasn't he?
A: I'm getting there, Les.
Q: Okay.
A: I'm aware of the press reports about what he's said. I have not seen the actual transcript of the show itself. But assuming the press reports are right, it's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate. And that's why—there was an earlier question about has the President said anything to people in his own party—they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.
Is it not absolutely and glaringly obvious, from these exchanges, that the second reply from Fleischer is a direct reference back to his first one, which itself consists of a mild rebuke to a crass remark made by a Republican Congressman?
Uh, no, it's not. Why on earth would Fleischer say "they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say...", if he is just referring to the stupid Sikh-bashing comment of Representative Cooksey? And why would he say such a thing in response to a question about Bill Maher, if it was really in response to Cooksey? Why does Hitchens feel the need to dig up and defend five-year old remarks I imagine even Ari Fleischer is embarrassed about at this point?
As you probably know, Bill Maher lost his show for speaking the truth. His career, however, was resurrected in February 2003 with the debut of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher. In my opinion, it's much stronger than the old show: it's an hour long, with no commercial interruptions, and people can curse all they want to. I guess the irony of Ari's free-speech lecture to Bill is that it eventually enabled him to say what he wanted on the air with even greater freedom than he had before.
