(Image source: Vanity Fair)
BY STEVEN SPARKMAN
ANCHOR LAUREN GORES
Christopher Hitchens, the fiery palemicist, essayist and journalist, has died at age 62.
“Author, commentator, essayist Christopher Hitchens has died after a long battle with cancer. The British-born journalist died in Houston of pneumonia -- a complication of his disease. Hitchens was known for his fierce intelligence and unrelenting critique of public figures.”
Hitchens was a globe-travelling journalist, often calling himself the only Western writer to visit all three of George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” countries. He always sided with those he felt were fighting against oppression and authoritarianism.
The Guardian explains, Hitchens had a knack for reporting from the thick of the fight.
“Hitchens travelled widely as a young man, often at his own expense, visiting, for example, Poland, Portugal, Czechoslovakia and Argentina at crucial moments in their anti-totalitarian struggles, offering fraternal solidarity and parcels of blue jeans. Later, he rarely wrote at length about any country without visiting it, sometimes at risk of arrest or physical attack.”
Hitchens was known for his scathing broadsides against public figures.
He attacked Mother Theresa, accusing her of acting as a moral whitewash for corrupt dictatorships. He accused former-president Bill Clinton of political manipulation and blackmail. And he argued that Henry Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal for his support of Chile’s Pinochet. (Video source: Channel 4)
More recently, he took on God in his writings and talks, passionately arguing that “religion poisons everything.” He debated theologians with the same gusto as political opponents, even scheduling his book tour across the American south.
Theologian Douglas Wilson wrote in Christianity Today about the tour.
“I came to know Christopher during the promotion tour for his atheist encyclical, God Is Not Great. True to form, Christopher did not want to write a book attacking God and his minions only to have the release be a wine and cheese party in Manhattan ... So he told his publicist that he wanted to debate with any and all comers, and in the course of promoting his book, he did exactly that.”
In June 2010, Hitchens discovered he had cancer hours before an appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Hitchens went on the program, talking about his memoir Hitch-22. At the time, he had not yet gone public with his disease. (Video source: Comedy Central)
He was diagnosed with cancer in the esophagus. As he began treatment, he wrote frankly and openly about his illness in Vanity Fair, and gave interviews like this one with CNN’s Anderson Cooper from last August.
Cooper: “So that question ‘Why me?’ came across your mind?”
Hithcens: “Well, you can’t avoid the question however stoic you are. You can only bat it away as a silly one. … I came by this particular tumor honestly. I mean, if you smoke -- which I did for many years, very heavily with occasional interruptions -- and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it.”
Throughout his life, Christopher Hitchens was difficult to pin down. A passionate leftist, he alienated the American left by supporting the Iraq war. And though known for his frank honesty, he offended many with his bombastic comments, like when he publicly gloated over the death of Jerry Falwell.
A writer for Time Magazine says his willingness to offend was all part of the integrity that made Hitchens Hitchens.
“Hitchens knew when to care greatly about the larger world, and when, therefore, not to give a rat’s ass what the larger world thought of him. It’s one thing for a writer to be principled, and it’s one thing for a writer to be a jerk; it’s a rare thing to be a principled jerk, and that’s what Hitchens was.”
According to Politico, Hitchens penned one more column which will be published in next month’s Vanity Fair.
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