RIP: Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

guest post by Mike LaRoche

Yesterday came the sad news that Christopher Hitchens – cheeky polemicist and militant atheist – passed away of esophageal cancer at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas.  From Reuters:

The son of a British naval officer, Hitchens studied at Oxford University and worked as literary critic for the New Statesman magazine in London before moving to New York to work as a journalist in 1981. He settled in Washington the following year, initially as correspondent for the left-wing magazine The Nation. He retained his British citizenship when he became an American citizen in 2007.

Hitchens was not one to mince words. In his book on Bill Clinton “No one left to lie to”, he called the former U.S. president a “rapist” and a “con man.” He once referred to Mother Teresa of Calcutta as a “fanatical Albanian dwarf.”

The author of 25 books – including works on Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and George Orwell – and countless articles and columns, Hitchens never lost his biting humor.

 

 

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