No One Left To Take Shots At

I think Hitchens attacks on Wanda Sykes say a lot about his deterioration as a writer, and a thinker. In one instance he calls her a "black dyke." In another he calls her a "sable sapphist."

Writing is really hard work--mostly because thinking is really hard work. When you don't want to do that work, but you want the meager payment it offers, the fleeting fame it brings, than you resort to thinking on the cheap. You go for shock. And you do it that way because you have nothing to offer except your rep as contrarian, and a provocateur. You do it because you are lazy.

To call his statements racist, or homophobic, demeans racist and homophobes. Indeed  Hitchens displays something more than that--weakness. Weakness is the root of these sorts of slurs--an unwillingness to do the hard work of taking your opponents at their merits. So you name call and strawman. You mock what you don't understand, what you fear.

Adam has a nice take-down, in which he notes that Hitchens doesn't even get the humor he's objecting to. I wrote a post doing the same, and then thought better of it. Life is short. Enough letters today on who's wrong on the internet.