Christopher Hitchens Dead At 62

[Cerebral_DownTime]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/ ... FI20111216

Great author, great speaker, and a great mind.

[FUDU]

What are your thoughts on his views of Mother Theresa?

[danwismar]

He was contemptuous of Mother Theresa because she glorified poverty...to suffer was to be noble...and he was repulsed by that idea. Here's a paragraph that says it...from this article:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... arest.html

This returns us to the medieval corruption of the church, which sold indulgences to the rich while preaching hellfire and continence to the poor. MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

The guy was the definition of a journalist in my eyes...I admired his courage, long before his cancer diagnosis. Wherever there was trouble in the world, he went there to report on it. If you're a fan or not, I recommend reading his memoir "Hitch 22", best book I've read in the last year or two. Another cool little book of his is "Why Orwell Matters", about one of his intellectual idols.

I saved a bunch of the obits and remembrances of him yesterday, to add to my list of Hitchens links here. http://delicious.com/dwismar/hitchens

One of the links is to a list of his famous put-downs, some of which are classics...my favorite...about Jerry Falwell...

"If you gave him an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox"

[Cerebral_DownTime]

What are your thoughts on his views of Mother Theresa?

She was a propaganda tool for the Catholic Church. Donations poured into to help this poor pious nun in her work. But it didn't help anyone but the Vatican, which is disgusting.

Here's the interview on Falwell's death. Just look at the pain in Hannity's face as Hitch unloads on Falwell.

[aclayman]

When one end of the spectrum thinks you were an elitist leftist heathen and the other considered you a traitorous warhawk neo-con, you must have lived a pretty great life. The world's a lesser place without guys like this to challenge everyone and stir up the pot.

[JJN]

Hitch should go down as a fantastic writer one of the most gifted wielders of the English language in history. Few have ever used words so sharp and so well aimed. Like him or not, it was enjoyable watching turn into a storm of wit and whiskey.

[Hikohadon]

Dude's trolling for attention with his diatribe. Right or wrong... meh.