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Idle Smashing

An evening with Christopher Hitchens

It is typical of religion to attempt to police our most elemental instincts with a stentorian list of rather schmutzig Thou-shalt-nots. Case in point: there I was at the “Morning Joe” studio a few months ago, second wake-up brandy down the hatch and, with seven minutes till airtime, enjoying some discreet (if vigorous) plaisir solitaire under the desk, my usual warm-up. Co-host Mika Brzezinski, after coughing none too subtly five times, apparently felt herself “empowered” enough to ask me to desist. Little did she know that the Hitch doesn’t cotton to such clerical fascism.


“What, my dear Mika, would your Pope not approve? Does St. Aquinas proscribe a bit of self-help before airtime? Well, does he? Is it possible, I submit, that you don’t even know?”


La Brzezinski swiftly fell silent, like so many of the devout when their folk-beliefs are questioned even gently.


[Swigs from plastic cup, pauses, vomits]

Mother Teresa evinced so very much lachrymose sympathy for the wretched of the earth even as she cavorted with jet set and power elite: in short, a repugnant phony. And it is not just Trotskyists at heart like the Hitch who have judged her as such. During a rather sumptuous recent evening at Graydon Carter’s new downtown trattoria, not one person present—Salman Rushdie, Tina Brown, Larry Summers, Anderson Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Richard Parsons, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlie Rose, Kate Moss, and Mike Bloomberg himself—could recall a single kind favor that “Mother” Teresa had ever done for them. Not one.


How did anyone ever fall for the hypocrisy of this bon-vivant fraud, this wrinkly Tartuffe? The credulity!


[Swigs from plastic cup, pauses, vomits]

Of all the ecclesiastical grifters ever to have fleeced their flocks, surely none was as slimy as that two-bit Nepalese princeling Siddhartha Gautama. (Martin Amis and I have always called him S–t Arthur Goat Mama, if we may be permitted such a calembour in these dark, PC times.)


This vaguely oriental fatso is worshipped the world over and provides bookend support for many craven apologists for religion. But don’t be taken in by the soft, gender-free features of this epicene blob: our buddy the Buddha was not a nice guy. In fact, he was a totalitarian and a bounder. He wrote mash-notes to Mussolini and went to Studio 54 with Henry Kissinger. Like Jesus, Confucius, and Gilgamesh, he was an outspoken opponent of the bikini and an advocate of suicide bombing.


To be sure, had I lived in Nepal at the time I would not have refused a dinner invitation from the so-called “Buddha,” who was certainly among the best-read and best-traveled people in the Kingdom of Kapilvastu, as well as one of the few with whom one might expect to pass an amusing evening. His wine cellar was renowned, and though his evening cable talk show got only middling ratings, the green room was famously well stocked.


[Swig, pause, vomit]


True enough, there have been cock-ups in the Iraqi War for Freedom, including a largish number of civilian casualties. This is what Bertie Wooster would have called “a bit of a facer.” That said, I still look forward to joining my Iraqi comrades in Fallujah or Sadr City for a long-promised champagne toast to democracy, and we will thumb our noses at the appeasers, theocrats, and weak-kneed defeatists.


I would go next week, if only I could. But Charlie Rose has me on, and one learns that champagne is terribly hard to come by in Iraq. Turns out, dear friends, that Iraq is full of, well, Muslims, and of the worst teetotaling persuasion. Fascistic.


[Swig, pause, vomit]

Excremental. I’m afraid no other word will do for the Upanishads. Frankly, they make the Koran read like Proust. (For this reason Mart and I have always referred to them the Upanis–ts and no, I don’t expect this mot to go anywhere other than soaring over the empty heads of some 750 million Hindu suicide bombers and their craven liberal apologists.) Excremental. The sheer credulity of people once again does not fail to astound.

Yes, there have been setbacks in our great struggle against Islamic fascists, but that will not dent our resolve. We shall fight them on the blogs and we shall fight them on “Hardball with Chris Matthews.” We shall fight them in Vanity Fair and we shall fight them at Huffington Post. No matter the collateral damage, no price is too high! As the much maligned Donald Rumsfeld quipped to me over lunch not long ago, these days you can’t make an omelet without killing a hundred thousand civilians—a sacrifice I, for one, would not hesitate to make all over again. Écrasez l’infame!


[Swig, pause, vomit]


There are many indications that the invasion of Iraq is bringing democracy not just to Mesopotamia but to Africa, Burma, and all of China. Some might call it as a miracle, but it’s not as incredible as it sounds, for it is just as Ahmad Chalabi prophesied and preached. Skeptics and backsliders won’t like it, but the signs and wonders are all plain to the true believer!


[Ahmad Chalabi in Tinkerbell drag appears in a burst of glitter over Hitchens’s shoulder.]


For as it was written, the Army of the Petraeus doth everywhere smite the infidel and so promoteth democracy with the selfsame smiting!


[Chalabi/Tinkerbell waves wand in a tinselly flash.]


For the Kurd layeth down with the Sunni, and the Shi’ite doth lay with the twain, as it was foretold by us, and there is peace, but for a dozen car bombs each week!


For verily, look unto the wondrous success of Afghanistan, where the liberal pluralist state doth spring up as if by unseen hand, and there is peace and prosperity free of corruption and the Taliban is gone forever! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

[Chalabi/Tinkerbell vomits on Hitchens.] 

—As witnessed by Chase Madar

__________________________________________

Chase Madar is a civil-rights attorney in New York City. Christopher Hitchens is the author of God is Not Great and is the favorite intellectual of Dennis Miller.

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