RIP: Christopher Hitchens

The New Neo Posted on by

The fact that Christopher Hitchens’ death has long been expected doesn’t make it any easier to see it announced.

I disagreed with him nearly as often as I agreed with him. But he was a writer of inimitable style and flair, always interesting, never boring, never offering the expected or the trite. Few if any ever emerged the victor from a verbal sparring with Hitchens, because he was as gifted and witty in extemporaneous speech as he was with pen and computer.

Hitchens was a political changer who started out a socialist and ended up somewhat to the right of that—although exactly where, it’s hard to say. But he was first and foremost an iconoclast, taking palpable delight in skewering idols of all kinds with his biting intelligence.

I’ll miss him. No one could write like him.

[NOTE: Here’s a little piece I wrote a while back that featured Hitchens describing an encounter he once had with Margaret Thatcher.]

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a heartfelt tribute by Christopher Buckley, one of Hitchens’ many friends. Hitchens sounds like an extremely entertaining (although challenging) person to know—but anyone who ever saw him speak could guess that. What most people may not have guessed is what a good friend he was to those who, like Buckley, were among those close to him.]

Sarkozy and Obama

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve never thought of Sarkozy and Obama as being similar. But an article about the former in the December 12 New Yorker contained a paragraph that, although about Sarkozy, could just as easily apply to the present attitude of a certain segment of the left towards Obama. Maybe not quite as strongly—but still, the same phenomenon:

“He’s hated,” Said Mahrane, a political reporter at the weekly magazine Le Point, told me. “And why is he hated? First of all, because he aroused crazy hope.” It is easy to forget the excitement that Sarkozy once inspired as a figure of national renewal and transformation. But the fervor with which he is now rejected can be properly understood only in relation to his original appeal—as a measure of disillusionment. “I adore Sarkozy,” a former member of his staff bold me, “but I’m very very very disappointed with his Presidency.” He had over-promised, and then he did not deliver on his program, the ex-staffer said: “I think that, in reality, he had no intention of doing so. At bottom, finally, he’s an old-school politician…a man of campaigns, a man of war, a man for taking power.” But he never learned to harness the machinery of government, the ex-staffer said, so “there are many battles he didn’t join because he didn’t know how to fight them.” As a result, “he hasn’t done anything—nothing but nothing.”

Let me emphasize that this isn’t my opinion of Obama. He never aroused hope in me, and I think that—unlike Sarkozy—he had every intention of doing many things that would be transformative and would take the country in a very leftward direction. But he didn’t have the expertise to do so—yet. Hopefully, he’ll never get the chance.

Wrinkles

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s how to retard the growth of wrinkles, for all of you folks of a certain age, or those of you who plan someday to be of a certain age and want to prepare yourselves.

Strangely enough, I already do most of those things (except cocoa—can’t eat anything chocolate because of the migraines) including the “sleep on your back” one, although it never occurred to me it would have any effect on wrinkles at all. It does, however, forestall those temporary creases one sometimes gets from contact with a crumpled pillowcase—although that’s not the reason I do it.

Romney, the non-Newt

The New Neo Posted on by

Is Newt’s star of the mere shooting variety, like the short-lived ascendancies of Bachmann and Perry and Cain before him? One would think so, from today’s editorials in the Washington Examiner and the National Review. The first comes right out and endorses Romney, the second stops just short of that officially, but effectively does it just the same.

Ah, who cares about editorials? That’s just the Washington establishment, right? They hate Newt and have been in Romney’s pocket from the start.

Actually, I don’t care about editorials. Arguments from authority mean nothing to me—except when what they make sense, and to me these do. I’ll tell you why—and it’s certainly not because I’m a Washington insider.

I long ago faced the fact that while I’m not enthusiastic about any of the Republican candidates, I like candidate Obama a great deal less. So this was always going to be an election in which my usual nose-holding was going to have to be performed in a firmer fashion than ever. So be it.

I am a pragmatist, and my humble evaluation of Newt Gingrich’s chances for election is that they are non-existent—for two reasons, neither of them being his conservatism, which is not the problem.

Newt’s first flaw is character, and the second is personality. These may sound alike, but they are not. Clinton, for example, was a good example of a candidate who lacked the first but had the second in spades. Obama is an example of a person who might lack both but was very very good at pretending to have both, enough to fool enough of the people enough of the time. Romney is an example of a candidate who has the first (at least, in the personal sense if not the political, if you think political character involves steadfastness) but lacks the second.

Unfortunately, Gingrich has neither. And he has neither in a rather spectacular way. He has a history of ethics violations, trumped up and exaggerated or no. More troubling (at least to me) is the enormous amount of money he received from Fannie and Freddie. Think that won’t be a huge problem for voters when Democrats sink their teeth into it? And that’s just his political character; I don’t think I need to reiterate the problems with his personal character vis a vis wives and other women.

Then there’s personality. If Romney is slick and robotic, Newt is downright unpleasant. Republicans and conservatives may see him as feisty and combative enough to handle Obama, but the visuals of a scowling Newt vs. Obama will not win over many independents, and whether you like it or not (or admit it or not) that’s a good part of the general election game.

Romney’s a flip-flopper? Newt, likewise. Romney’s a career politician? He spent far more time in the private sector than Newt, and knows a great deal more about business. And they both have a history of supporting individual mandates for health care, if that’s what upsets you most about Romney.

At this point there is no viable Republican candidate who is conservative and who has both character and personality. I wish it were otherwise, but it’s not. So at the moment and until further notice—these things are always subject to change right up until the moment of nomination—I reluctantly support Romney as the Republican candidate for president.

This non-earth-shattering news will affect far fewer people than the Examiner and NR endorsements, and those affect precious few already. But hey, this is a blog, and I’ve got opinions—opinions with which many, many, many of you will no doubt disagree.

As a well-known Republican figure once said, bring it on.

Foods people hate

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an article about certain foods many people hate, and why.

Among them are some of my favorites: cilantro, for example, which I fell in love with the first time I ever tasted it, some time in my twenties (“where have you been all my life, cilantro?”). I’ve often been puzzled by some people’s hatred of it, as well as of raw tomatoes and raisins. I know plenty of people who can eat cooked tomatoes (as in sauce) but can’t abide raw, and/or who love grapes but carefully pick raisins out of any pastry in which they might find them.

I can’t say the article really explains all this; do people really dislike raisins because they resemble feces, for example? And whose feces do they resemble, pray tell? Perhaps, if you stretch it a bit, those of mice. But I can’t say that’s anything that ever occurred to me before.

And fennel? Who doesn’t like fennel? Especially roasted or braised.

Now licorice: that’s another story. It’s one of the few foods I detest.

At least Barack and Michelle are consistent about this

The New Neo Posted on by

I wonder what important things Obama thinks he’s doing for the people at this point, and what important things he plans to do for them/us in a second term:

I also wonder why he and Michelle are so down on their quality of life as First Couple. But at least they are consistent. Here’s Michelle Obama during the 2008 campaign:

There’s an inconvenience factor [in running for and becoming president], and if we’re going to uproot our lives, then let’s hopefully make a real big dent in what it means to be president of the United States.”

And what it means to Mrs. Obama is sacrificing many of the things she holds most dear, in favor of a larger goal. Although she has concluded that this mission is worth what it takes, achieving such acceptance has been difficult, and the adjustments are ongoing.

I feel terribly sorrow for their sacrifices. But maybe we can relieve them of the burden by not re-electing them.

Speaking of re-election, Newt Gingrich isn’t polling well against Obama. If Gingrich becomes the nominee, and people become more familiar with him, I’m not sure whether that will change for the better or the worse.

Tolstoi on Chekhov

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Excerpt by Peter Gnedich, “Memories,” from The Book of Life (1922):

Lev Tolstoy sincerely loved Chekhov, but did not like his plays. He told Chekhov once, “A playwright should take the theater-goer by the hand, and lead him in the direction he wants him to go. And where can I follow your character? To the couch in the living-room and back””because your character has no other place to go.” They both””Tolstoy and Chekhov””laughed at these words.

Chekhov told me later, “When I am writing a new play, and I want my character to exit the stage, I remember those words of Lev Nikolaevich, and I think ”˜Where will my character go?’ I feel both funny and angry.” Chekhov’s only consolation was that Tolstoy also did not like the plays of Shakespeare.

I never liked Chekhov’s plays, and I find myself agreeing with Tolstoy about them, although most certainly not about Shakespeare’s works. When I was younger, I was annoyed by the way Chekhov’s plays circle lazily around themselves, featuring boring people doing mostly boring things. I’d had enough of that in real life! It was only later that I realized his plays were about ennui and boredom, and had something to say about depression and loss, missed opportunities and lives of regret.

But I still don’t like them. And they are almost impossible to act (unless, perhaps, you’re Russian), especially for high school or college students.

Question about that drone

The New Neo Posted on by

In the thread about the drone captured by Iran, “Mr. Frank” made the following comment:

The military wanted to destroy the drone on the ground. Obama turned down their request. Why?

I was curious to see whether this was the case. Because the comment contained no link, I Googled it and found quite a few comments of the same type on various discussion boards. But all I could find as the source of the information was this statement by Dick Cheney:

“The right response to that would have been to go in immediately after it had gone down and destroy it,” Cheney said told Erin Burnett of CNN’s’ “OutFront”

Cheney said the president had three options on his desk but rejected all of them. “They involved sending somebody in to try to recover it or, if you can’t do that, and admittedly that would be a difficult operation, he certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an air strike,” he said.

“But he didn’t take any of the options. He asked nicely for them to return it. And they aren’t going to do that,” Cheney said.

Interesting. Cheney doesn’t say where he got his information, but I assume it was from military sources annoyed at Obama.

Of course, there’s no way to tell whether it’s true or not, or what the risks of such an air strike would have been in comparison to the risks of letting the Iranians examine the drone and learn from it. I read somewhere (unfortunately, can’t find the source at the moment) that the design of the drone makes it resistant to the reverse-engineering Iran claims it’s undergoing. It’s almost impossible to know whether that’s true, either, but if it is then the capture of the drone would be most valuable to the Iranians for propaganda.

But here’s my question: why don’t drones feature a mechanism by which they can be destroyed remotely if they fall into enemy hands? That would seem to be a rather obvious plus to incorporate into the design, but this is hardly my field of expertise.