Q&A: Christopher Hitchens

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this week on cue a journalist and author Christopher Hitchens Christopher Hitchens what's it feel like to be 60 very much the same as it did to be 59 these are arbitrary dates in a way Edmund Wilson wrote an article called the author at 60 he wouldn't even say myself at 60 or Edmund Wilson 60 or had to read the author at 60 which I I'm going to read later on this week it just days end of the 60th year mmm what's like I suppose I would add one thing I mean since you do ask in a funny way I never expect you to live this long why and the even more strange thing about it is well I can remember when 30 seemed very old to me and I was pretty only early 20s then and that thought kept on decade by decade and also I didn't used to get the blues as some people do as Jack AIDS turned with 60 the risk of it is you say ah I remember the first time I met Brian round and came on c-span that was 28 years ago you think ah I may not have another 28 to come that hits you a bit more than it did when you were 40 let's say what is life like for you at present yeah well I'm writing a memoir so I'm having to go through all this anyway and again great stretches of time are involved and the realization that's first I've seen more days that I'm going to see seen more sunsets and Dawn's than I'm going to see I can live with that I always knew that was true no point being in denial there but if I didn't have children to date things by I think it would seem very arbitrary but what makes it real is that is realizing that I have a son who once was on the show with me remember I gave he's 10 years old who will be a quarter of a century old next moment he'll be 25 years in he what's he doing he's working for a think-tank in London called the Center for social cohesion bit of a mouthful name but it essentially says that religious groups shouldn't make special claims that there should be a national and common citizenship without being denominated by by faith you have to edit you'll I do have two daughters affected present I can say I'm the father of two teenage girls but that will change in September when Sofia will become twenty and perhaps even more dramatically Antonia will become sixteen so what has been your this is not heavy duty policy I know but what has been your kind of mission with those three kids where have you what kind of father you been de de um pretty indifferent aspect I mean I I was feel that's I get better with children the older they get I think this is probably true of a lot of men though why would I seek shelter in the majority I don't normally try and do that but a striking thing that say about women is about both my wives is that they know what to do when babies occur they so know what to do the very few men do they think somehow it seems to be female thing when they're little and when even when they're growing I think this is pretty true tonight abnormal extent with me as it was with my own father you hardly barely notice him until you bit older and so what I hope to do to redeem how little I was involved in the infancy bit is to be a POW and a prop and a stay and force as they become older it's I think what so far go back to the memoir from yes where are you in that when's it due and how much time have you spent on it and what's your approach to I spend all my time thinking about it in quite a much time writing about it I thought it's about me so I I can always spare the time and with luck it'll be turned into my publisher in the fall and that'll means will be probably sometime in the spring or early summer of next year to give us the approach you're making me tell us one thing it's going to be in there that we don't know oh I couldn't tell you just one I mean the theme is that of divide itself I haven't got a title for it yet but if it was a pop song title it would be called um both sides now I suppose something like that but I've I've often felt myself exactly split down the middle and able to see which is an advantage both sides for every question able also to take one side and take it strongly but sometimes feel the temptation to see it from the other as well and this has been the case with other aspects of my life finding out later in life that my mother was Jewish for example I had a second identity spending quite a lot of time with a wife who was Greek and trying to become in part a member of another society language and culture and other and I'm looking for another second identity there taking pleasure in if you like having it both ways which maybe it would be a good title for the for the book your first wife you were married to her for how long don't let me hesitate unduly because I was with her for longer than we were married if you know what I mean I know we got married the year I moved to United States which was be 81 and but we'd been a team for longer than that for couple years on there and we were separated in 89 and pretty divorced a year after and where she lived today in London your second wife Carol blue is blue he met her where in Los Angeles native city and what were the circumstances I was on a book tour when people say to me just what I would think about this the thought we were just having people say isn't it a bit early to be doing your memoirs because I'm up for a milli 60 and as you haven't said yet I don't look at but I know you were going to say that you suddenly think yes maybe it is early but you can't wait let's do late so if you're ever going to do it then have to do it now I want it speaking of a how you look I'm going to go back to 83 our first interview on book notes together in 83 and you have this yeah I want you to see what you look like let's let's run this okay so I'm accused of concealing it let me say it now this if I haven't said it already I've already said I was a member of the Labour Party in Britain the Labour Party is a member of the Socialist socialist international that's the the family of socialist parties that comprises from suomi torille the Sandinista movement in Nicaragua the British Labour Party the Swedish Socialist Party and many others I still consider myself a member of that political family and I don't feel that coming out with it on the air is as it were a confession it's just an affirmation if I'd known you were so interested in my private political views I'd have put them near the top of the show I said that was booknotes it was I was a common tree oh yes and that was one of the first times we talked about so I'm just giving away my fringe um having looked at that deplorable young man what does that mean by same private political views surely I should have been saying there's nothing private about them I'm there's a slip involved a funny one sorry he would say no I just I do have a bone to pick with you wolf you - shoki system you promised me I haven't seen you in a long time you promised me that when you became an American citizen that we would go to Monticello and I would interview there Thomas Jefferson's home and I never heard from you and you ended up where did you go I was very lucky I was invited to take my oath of citizenship at the Jefferson Memorial but child is on his birthday they pull 13th which is also my own though actually of course he was born under the old calendar so by the time he died his birthdays April 30 it's also the birthday of Seamus Heaney you draw a world shaver ourselves and I I took a representative group of Americans along there but I thought it was for you to call me not me to call you well it's not too late I've been invited to give the Jefferson lecture to Monticello I've been a couple of times since I wrote my book about him why I hope we really really like to take you up on that why are you an American well for a long time I lived here with a green card that a platinum green card actually one of the old ones that never ran out so I didn't have to renew it heaven had a European Union passport had three American children American wife all this I thought I don't need to no one needs to change this I got to the point where when I came back to Dulles Airport where to immigration and went joined the right line citizens and residents they'd say welcome home that's what I felt it was after 9/11 that I began to feel that I hadn't paid the full price the ticket that I was in where cheating on my dears and that's for two reasons one mmm at that point but afterwards the United States began to be subject to a fantastic campaign of slander and defamation people would say it's not true that the United States was attacked the American Jews blew up all the Israeli Jews blew up the World Trade Center or the Bush administration did we're the countries run by cowboys and thugs and Jewish neocons and I began to and feel really protective of the United States and I was I'm not gonna hear you say this it's my country are talking about now sorry thought that's actually true so there was there was that and then I thought because we're now going to have to talk about war and about fighting and fighting back if I'm going to stand up and say that I think that we ought to be sending our armed forces overseas I think I probably should be someone who could in the last resort at least being so called upon to do so actually you can be drafted if you've got a green card you can but it felt a little more solid to me to be of course no one's going to the army hasn't been found yet that would draft someone like myself me not even the good soldier Shrike but as a matter of principle and also that I should be voting and eligible for jury duty and all the other both duties and entitlements so I didn't feel comfortable so I've got that done did you vote in this last election I did and I turned up early Mitel sir you voted for I voted for the senator from Illinois why well I'm not any longer a registered member of any party oh and don't have any idiot ideological allegiance any longer but and in a way McCain's position on the war was more close to mine but I thought Obama would learn more about the war than McCain had McCain's position was actually rather an eccentric while in Afghanistan and about Iraq I thought Obama showed sons having the right stuff on this I have to say as a matter of Senator McCain's I thought he was um - how do I put this without being employed I mean it's too exhausted to be running for anything frankly and that his choice of running mate was quite simply ridiculous no much worse than ridiculous insulting not serious I didn't think the serious vote could be cast for the Republican ticket on this occasion so that made that bit easy and then I suppose I've thought for a long time the United States has been ready for ages to prove that it will vote for a qualified black candidate let's get this done I didn't think it was anything very surprising about it I mean all through a year people saying things like oh the Bradley effect will kick in even if the Bradley effect doesn't the polling machines will be fixed if the polling machines aren't fixed and someone will take a rifle and take the brother down no no no no very interesting and impressive to see how easily it got done and how natural it seemed when it was and though I didn't I didn't get as emotional and moist about that as some people - however it was an ingredient in making it a pleasure to vote for him that plus I liked him as a writer I should say I like the way he talks I like the way he writes I'm impressed by his just command of English which is the thing that matters to me the most did you read his two book yeah what did you think I thought the first one was much better because it was written when he didn't know he was going to be a politician and the second one is written under the awful knowledge that he's now in play but even given that you can tell he's written it himself he's taking the risks of making various commitments he he'll have to live up to and he's got a sense of humor sense of irony and a really very really admirable grasp of of the language of means the most the day we're recording this your name came up on the morning Colin show it did before we show the clip I I don't think I'd ever expected you to be a fellow at the Hoover Institution how did that happen and Stanford and politically how did that happen well the Hoover Institution is very very very serious about war and revolution that's what it sounded to consider and war and revolution war and counter-revolution are the great subjects of President among them well they're never not but they're particularly salient now and I've taken I don't think a very forward position with a very determined one the we are at war and that we reward the totalitarian enemy and that part of our study must be how to train not just soldiers but citizens in how to fight in this war are you still a fella I'm what they call a media fellow visiting for I mean it's it's a the Roger Mertz visiting fellow which means that I I go and talk to potential journalism students I can talk about literature with people there if necessary about politics too but I regarded as one of the academic and intellectual arsenals of the country here mark faison's our Hoover probably let's listen to what he said about this morning he wonder went waterboarding to see what it feels like to prove that it was torture in so doing he proved it was not torture a common sense definition of torture is if you're willing to try it to see what it feels like it's not torture so if I told the Christopher Hitchens I'm going to pull your teeth out with a plier see what it feels like would you try it he wouldn't try it I said I'm going to pull your fingernails off to see what it feels like to try it would you try it no you wouldn't try it I'm going to put electrodes on your body and puts a few four hundred thousand four thousand volts through your body would you try it now yes I know what he means I mean there's another trap door if you like underneath my journalistic investigation of self investigation of waterboarding which is I knew when I went in that I could stop it at any time by making a special signal to my torturers and so forth but there was only one way I felt I could advance the argument which is to see roughly speaking what it's like and for example in reply to mr. Chasen I would say you've heard this said I'm sure waterboarding simulates drowning though the feeling of drowning doesn't do that at all you are being drowned just in slow-motion everything in you immediately rebels against that is a survival question aha where is that is that the porpoise like figure of manage you that is somewhere in the mountains of Eastern North Carolina with a group of people who team of people who have had let's say feel the experience of this let's just feel like right here when they're pouring water down well it feels as if your last breath is about to be drawn and they'll hold you don't really have any choice in the matter you have to everything rebels you have to you have to make it stop as fast as you can my second reply to mr. Chasen would be a yes now saying is I think that's pretty much yeah they say that some Khalid Sheikh Mohammed lasted for something like 90 seconds I'd be very surprised if there was true unless he was trying to get us to kill him and they also say they did it hundreds of times yes yeah that's remarkable the other applied mates mr. Chasen on this point because he's making very serious one after all I was ready to do it again and because I felt so bad about having lost it so little I felt any hitchens any son of commander Hitchens of the Royal Navy should be able to stand off bit more than that so I made them judge me again and I lost a bit longer this time but and you could say again if you could stand it for two times it's not torture but the United States has always said of any regime that uses it on an on an American there it is torture and that if we catch the person who did it or ordered it will seek the death penalty and has done so several times so that it's not a matter of whether it's medieval or not fingernail pulling the rack and so forth because if you allow these things and if you say you must do them because there's a ticking bomb or if you allow this thing excuse me you must do it because there's a ticking bomb the guy's a terrorist then what's to stop you saying we'll bring on the red-hot poker or the pincers so put all this in the context right now what do you think of where the Obama administration is on this the memos and and you know what would you do about the past well I at the same time I was taking my oath at the Jefferson Memorial become an American citizen I was a member of a and by the way with me was a young marine as a witness I wanted him a friend of mine who'd been in Anbar province crushing the life out of al Qaeda turned out to be a successful campaign very proud to have been a supporter of it and of General Petraeus and the sir but at the same time I was a member named member of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Association against the NSA and on illegal march I mean I was one of the eight plaintiffs and it seems to me that that's what it is in a way to be an American that you have the right to in fact the duty to do that and to question what the way the government is fighting your war but or treating you as a citizen even if you're strongly in favor of every measure that's taken to resist and combat terrorism Islamization and the totalitarian regimes that have in the past supported or underwritten it so right now should what should this town do about what happened in the Bush administration well I mean I'm not a friend of the CIA as you know that would have been the young Hitchens who just saw back there the one with the fringe and the socialist international kid yeah the wood wood wood I'm proud of what he was saying about the Central Intelligence Agency I mean this is an agency that gave away Nelson Mandela's whereabouts and identity to the South African Police when they couldn't find him let him in for 25 years of imprisonment that was the scene he murdered the elected to help to murder the elected president of Chile countless other horrible crimes in Greece org why Cyprus elsewhere not only that these are criminal things but repeatedly told us that the Soviet Union was an economic superpower right up till 89 that it was entering its golden age and so on zoom was a fantastically successful country when it was falling to pieces George Tenet on the day of 9/11 said to senator former Sarah Boren the first thing our head of intelligence said on that day was looking at the towers go down and the planes fly and he said um it's quoted in Woodward's book directly he says I hope it's not those guys from the flight schools in the Midwest who he knew about and hadn't done anything about so they try and cover their traces and their failures and their betrayals by torturing people so they can say hey we've got results at last this will not do we can't have that so someone has to go down for this I think the one I would think the CIA should be closed and padlocked anywhere and should be restarted I don't think it's even susceptible to reform I think that's been proved by all everyone's tried to run it since Janet and then I think I have a special hatred for the the shady lawyers who tried to think of excuses try to think of half-baked legal reasons why we shouldn't go honor the Geneva Conventions and had those passed down to men in the field who were under orders but I want I want to I want to clarified and combed out i've been to guantanamo and i've been to have a grab our great was much worse understand i was saying i know and there are many worse Cuban prisons on the other side of the line and in Guantanamo there's a political prison there too but that doesn't excuse us want to go back to and this program is not meant to have any major theme it's just two snapshots of Christopher Hitchins life in preparation for the memoir do we got this off of youtube you are on Scarborough country a couple years ago at the nighttime show and let's watch this and get to reaction this week let's bring a little light to this the instead of all heat let's bring a little like this conversation and talk about trends like any Cosby okay thanks thank you so much it's like this Jerry hold on it guys stop god bless us all just stop and let's have a meaningful conversation if I set up people talking on top of each other on until media class well Chris are you two white out why don't you let a beautiful talk for a second okay you invited okay so anyway Madison Taro's okay well you know what Christopher I'll never make that mistake again so Matt here's here's the question okay Merry Christmas and good night your reaction is singers I think I left that one I know actually walked out of that one I thought look either have me on ask my view or don't but don't tell me what to say tell me what you think all the time I actually corrected mr. scarring I improved him slightly as a as a Hearst and um and there's a talk-show person he made an obvious mistake and who everyone gives themselves permission to behave absurdly when religion is mentioned he's just another one of those who do by the way when are we going to mention my new paperback version of my Antigone book when you're going to put the title and everything on the screen but are we going to say fine bookstores everywhere well yeah look to it shortly we're going to go back to 98 I want you to see I thought of it so now one of a relative of yours that's what's this one c-span is Washington journal the Hitchens brothers are back one on the right coast one on the left coast we'll start here on the right coast with Peter Hitchens what do you make of all of this well apart from all the laughing I've been doing I'm beginning to feel that I've come out here perhaps a little too soon it doesn't seem to be developing as fast as everyone in London thought it would it's filled me with a new respect for the American right I'd up till now thought of them as rather an unpolished crew the sort of people who tour the country calling for um sexual abstinence among teenagers for example but now it seems that they can infiltrate a well-heeled liberal babe from Beverly Hills into the White House get her in to see the President on justice he's come from church with his daughter get her in to see Vernon Jordan just the day before she signs an affidavit and get him to get her in to see Revlon just the day after she signed on the dotted line this is this is genius I'm talking about Monica Lewinsky it's your brother Peter that was well apart from the tie which I it's better not to wear one than wear one like that I think that's me at my best actually I mean saying okay if if you believe the liberal theory that Clinton was set up and the Monica Lewinsky was a stalker that's the sort of stuff you're going to have to believe what's your relationship with your brother these day not bad he's glad all Hitchens's a man of principle able to turn a phrase and print and Anya the main difference that we have is that he's a I wouldn't say born again but he's a very decided fundamentalist Christian but not of a fanatical sort but of a very very decided very determined Episcopalian conservative sort and with people like that I can never be completely at ease I just got may he lives where he lives in Oxford in England but he commutes regularly he lives between Oxford and London where his his media bases and what was his reaction when you found out that your mother was Jewish well we found out partly because our grandmother my mother's mother had outlived both my parents she went a great age and because Peter had married a Jewish wife and when he took her to meet my grandma my grandmother said she's Jewish isn't she and Peter saw bridled a bit and my grandmother having no reason to keep the family secret any longer so well I've got something to tell you so you so as Peter brought me the news I think I was I don't know why I say this but I have a feeling I was just very slightly more more pleased and interested than he was why well among other things he he and his Jewish wife had both converted to Christianity so it was a bit more turning over the luggage in their hold than it was in mine so your grandmother was you my wife is Jewish also at your grandmother's Jewish yeah and and then your that would make your mother Joyce and then yes indeed if it well if you believe if you believe in Mosaic law the law of return and the Nuremberg Laws and I have problems with all these three laws but yes it's a maitre lineal succession and I would not I'd certainly never if I was asked about Jewish whether the tone of voice was friendly or hostile I would never say no we'll never be able to deny it we'll want to we'll get closer to your book on this clip with Anderson Cooper when you appeared on there and that talked about the death of Jerry Falwell if you remember this one I remember the event quite well you know there it is Christopher I'm not sure if you believe in heaven but if you do do you think Jerry Falwell is in it no and I think it's a pity there isn't to help him to go to it what is it about him that brings up such vitriol the empty life of this ugly little charlatan proves only one thing that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and to truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend who would even at your network have invited on such a little toad to tell us that the tax of September 11th were the result of our sinfulness and with God's punishment if they hadn't got some kind of clerical qualification people like that should be out in the street shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup I don't know why I was so lenient on the little ratbag he said he came on the television while looks the downtown Manhattan was still smoldering there was cellphone screeching under the rubble people still alive and he said this is because we're out divorce and homosexuality the hell with him you know what I went on to say is that if he could have been given an enema he could have been buried in a matchbox and that's what I didn't get time to say on mr. Cooper but I got time to say later on that's what I meant to say how much of what you say is calculated none I mean I mean I mean in the sense of being in it's not done for a fact if that's what you mean well I mean I I don't say anything I know it's a very good question I ask myself a lot of the time because I'm often on the on the telly and on the radio and often have a book to sell and I don't want to suspect myself of just being doing the doing things for effect if I ever go further than I mean to and I say something that is is cheap or ever staged I always will try and come back and correct myself and say okay maybe that was I mean I don't do things just for you you'll put your your person your lips no I would just actually wanted I'd like to find a gift of phrase if I can and try and make it stick make it memorable I really wanted to ask you though when there was an occasion where you and someone else really were I don't the word mad doesn't describe it but you're furious with one another or you really had a confrontation that was personal and serious and deep on the air or anyway you know just in life I mean people that watch television never know how much of it's a gimmick exactly and that's what that's where one wants to suspect one's own motives this will seem odd but answer like this I'm reviewing a book at present of essays by Henry fairly perhaps you remember him quite good English born essayist often in the New Republic in the church in the eighties nineties he was a great writer and great polemicist I used to think that sometimes he would feign his sänger he would he would think and I need to get a piece I need to get paid I need I need to get an article done he would he would invent a subject to be annoyed about and I just think that will always show so I suppose I have to submit myself may not senior question not to my own verdict that you're inviting but to the safekeeping of the good taste of the audience I mean if the people read me and watch me if they think I'm doing this because I just want to make a splash well they're entitled to think that and I would I would obviously suffer a decline in respect I don't think in fact I give off the impression that I I do this perfect but back to the other part of the question though what's the biggest most serious feud you've had with any individual and it was real I mean that they weren't phony and you weren't phony and it was I guess would be with with the Henry Kissinger and his defenders of what I'd call him out of the recent past I wrote a book saying that I thought he should be arrested and put on trial and that if he was he'd be convicted for crimes against humanity and for war crimes and he made a very crude reply to me on television and put in fact saying that I was everything from a Holocaust denier to person who trashed Jackie Kennedy in fact on both those charges as you know I can't be indicted but I eventually got his lawyers to issue an apology about this and I took it very seriously indeed and I hated him hate him and I hate that the toady's in the press and and in the Academy and in publishing who've helped to smooth his path you hate him hate them hate him and what's that I can't I mean I feel it's an insult that such a person is around is is deferred to is consulted is treated with politeness in the Academy and by by our profession and and in the in the publishing industry I said earlier meting yes I met him two or three times he's never been induced to speak to me but he's sometimes had to be in the same room it with evident ill grace I think no that's probably been for me the most long-lasting and deep going and most hate based relationship I've had with anybody you ask about this book we did not actually ask you on the program to talk about this I know you didn't but I'm not very let's you good work that's fine no I just it's a how many copies hardback you sold a lot about about 350,000 you know and the title it's God is not greatest now in paperback and what kind of sales you expected this oh I would hope you from larger because the subject has become even more acute than when I didn't I didn't broach it mean it broached itself that the battle between civilization and civil society and theocracy is becoming everyday much more intense and much more urgent and the number of people who will come now to a public debate on this I go to do this kind of debate about twice a week now is growing all the time in the audience for the argument ISM is enormous why well I think for two reasons one is religion is the most interesting subject of all if you have a friend you or acquaintance you know an awful lot about them depending on whether they attributed sin the studio to the laws of biology those are nature those of evolution by natural selection or whether they think that they're here because of a divine plan it's a big difference philosophically morally and so going into this means you raise all the most interesting all the most fundamental basic questions that's the first thing so it's never a boring discussion and second what should and the second is that at the moment if you open the newspaper and see how the parties of God are behaving around the world everywhere from Russia to Iran to even certain parts of the United States where they think they ought to influence the education system that people are I think becoming fed up with being pushed around by ordinary mammals who think that they are better than asked because they have got on their side enough with this it's a very it's very insulting that's very threatening it's so stupid and it's becoming and now we have the chance that apokoliptic weaponry will fall into the hands of Messianic states or organizations Armageddon type force it clear and present danger did you ever believe in God no in your parents yes they must have done at some point what I think my father probably must have done I don't know this because of course I I always have this doubt about people who even affirm that they believe in God do they believe in it all the time do they believe in it every day do they never have crisis of faith why do they have to keep on going to church to prove that they believe if that wasn't it simple to them would you say that but I mean my father came from a very strong Baptist family he must when he was young I think of you know believer what about your children I wouldn't ask them I know I hope would they want to ask me I mean they shouldn't obviously my children do now know they have to know what I think because it's well known but I would prefer they did not Angel children tradition children should be able to make up their minds about this work I mean my daughter my youngest daughter for example younger I mean goes to Sidwell Friends School where they're not made to be quake where they are taught about other faiths so for they've make up their own minds that's all I want for them I would never dream of imposing it on on them and they really ought not to know what my beliefs are at least in silver of the edge reason it's repulsive to me to hear people saying you know see in this way a Muslim child was killed or a Catholic child was killed in Northern Ireland or Protestant Charles how do we know this about them what choice did they have in the matter what I mean is a child victim of a filthy religious war was killed well I'll show you a picture of that was in our first book notes book right here yes I don't know if you remember that when I was still a smoker yeah that's in Timberlake's ba member it is near Dupont Circle and if you'll notice this is in the middle of the day you've got your computer there you've got a martini on the bar and you've got to serve it in your mouth and it got like a I don't know sumo wrestler as well would you do that today no I had to give up smoking oh I didn't have to but I made myself give up about two years good what about the drink and with the booze I find it's a better servant than a master explained well I actually though I say that in that tense I've always thought there's very important that it pier master-servant relationship in other words that you should get more out of it than it gets out of you I found alcohol interesting it makes other people less boring a great recommendation than it has some people can't write or talk or do anything much when they've had a few drinks I without boasting I can say that I can and sometimes that I want to it can be a inspiration to me and I know that it can I know this from friends and from relatives and from watch episodes in my own life it can be very bad to have too much to drink but I have it as a I still think as a friend and an ally and noticer as a boss or a foe how do you this is there almost a question for a classroom but how do you make your money on it in other words if somebody's watching saying oh I'd love to live the life of Crystal Ridge and the must be now when they you know I'd love to have that life of word yes writing and speaking and all that how do you and can you make a decent living doing what you do you can if it's all you want to do in other words once you've decided that all you want to be as a writer and once you've learned that all you need really as a writer is to be able to talk to speak to have a voice many of my students say is that all you need I just have to be able to talk and I say yes but how many of you can how many of your friends to enjoy listening to really do you enjoy listen to yourself I mean you took try and talking sentences and so then they David as is not so easy but once you've discovered the joy of that or in my case just the fact that I knew was all I could do and ever want it to do he doesn't matter I didn't mind when I first came on your show I made a few hundred bucks out of it but I knew I was doing what I wanted to do you may never lux coming on our show you may know I know excited right nothing out of you of know you to this day pay you with not you used to even not even pay for my cab but no but I knew that I was making for a few hundred bucks method of writing but it was what I wanted to do so there was nothing to now I do better than if you want to know exactly how I do it it's this Vanity Fair the best magazine in the country in the world in fact english-speaking world pays me a monthly retainer to write the McCallum about ten out of twelve months of year and so I know I've got that much it's not a fortune at all but it's pretty generous and I can I can count on it the contract is renewed every couple of years or so and they're they're fairly decent about letting me write for other people book reviews so forth and then it's got the stage now where people will actually pay me to come and talk to them which is better than I had ever expected it I mean I'm going to be talking anyway so it's being paid to do it it's pretty amazing how many speeches a year would you get well since the religion debate got really going and became a big national argument now the cultural question I would say it's probably twice a week and I do pro bono speeches of course for good causes the liberation of Iraq for example I spent a lot of time arguing in public in favor of their through Saddam Hussein didn't get paid for that but this book if you if there are three hundred and some thousand copies of this and you pick up a two three bucks at crappy that's pretty good money is that and then the old some of my books are done okay but I used to be box-office poison for publishers I mean I wrote some books that I was quite proud of but George Orwell was one I remember and it didn't really sell at all except among all well fans um just one right and then I yes thank you actually found it on the remainder table I'm sorry to tell you them as long as it doesn't have an inscription from me inside saying it does not same to Angela with undying love or something oh I hate it when that happens what about your book I'm sure it causes conference where you go on mother Teresa the debts out oh that sells a lot especially at Christmastime yes EXO lapsed Catholics give it to their families for Christmas on a regular basis every year it's the gift that keeps on giving and then I teach I teach at Hoover and and I'm a visiting professor at the new school in New York I love doing that I really do I learn a lot from teaching that's the whole point I mean you go through a book with your class you think you've read it 50 times the 50 first time you'll always still notice something you wouldn't have noticed before you never do read the same book twice helps you to write helps you to think because your wife work I wish it paid more teaching was better paid than it was because order that I had didn't have three children because I'd love to spend more time teaching and less time just feeding the beast there's your wife her she's a screenwriter which as you know means that you're never quite sure whether you've sold the script or not we'd said the things always in play which was she's an Angelina I have a question you know I know you're not expecting this I didn't that is expecting anything I know but we didn't it none of this was controlled sure isn't but have you ever gotten on your Wikipedia site no you you mean the courageous silver trophy deicide yeah you have never looked at no I don't surf much anyway I just wanted I got on and it's 20 pages long AHA and but and you know how this works no this is an area I'm very poor on but there are several websites I know about me I just said there's a Wikipedia one there's a there's a web site for the was called Hitchens watch or something that's unfair to me there's another one that is more friendly I I don't have time for this to be honest the reason I asked you this is because when you google the name Christopher Hitchens you google anybody's name more than likely the first couple of places to go is Wikipedia and Wikipedia is written by almost anonymously by maybe in your case hundreds of people right I got I found your first Wikipedia site and you were first up at least according to what I could find on the records in 2003 Wikipedia is 7 years old I just wanted you to hear what people said seven six years ago yeah May 18 2003 first item Christopher Hitchens you see we as readers don't know who wrote this but it's a it's a just before we go I would say that when I look at Wikipedia myself on a topic I know something about I generally find it so maybe giving a hostage to fortune here I generally found it amazingly reliable it's not a question of reliability it's question they can characterize you here a nice one I want to read with a frigate of that back in 2003 what they said what they whoever they are Christopher Hitchens is a british-born American journalist author and self-proclaimed political gadfly that's not true well I'm no so proclaim come flood okay but here we are you know in other said world this is this week in Wikipedia and then I've disowned the word God by boat so they're wrong right there okay but well that's changed what's how does one get it correct what let me read to you what is today that's gone they just go back and say today it says Christopher Eric Hitchens yes born April 13 1949 is an author journalist and literary critic how we doing well current boring but uncontroversial I know currently living in Washington DC He has a been a columnist at Vanity Fair the Atlantic world affairs the nation slate free inquiry and a variety of other media outlets and it goes on this is it talks about your book God is not great in all that but then it gets Tanner says in 2009 Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the quote 25 most influential liberals in US media the same article noted though that he would quote likely be aghast to find himself on this list unquote and that he quotes Styles himself as a radical unquote not a liberal how we doing so right but it's getting to the point where you're getting publicity for getting publicity which is to me sorry boring well it there's too much of this stuff yeah you it's also reputation about your reputation often wikipedia has nothing to do it being exciting or boring because there's so many people get their hands in the pie on this thing yeah but what you're saying is you they might as well say there's a perception that rather than through the following is the case well because I do I can't see why there's so much of the stuff but yeah well you I know that it goes on forever and ever and I just you know I was interested in one was so will I for but he fell out is it they have the different categories literary review Hitchens and the nation's staff and then they quote one of your old friends Alexander Coburn what's your relationship with him no I haven't seen Alexander since his beautiful niece's wedding where he officiated a little while ago we used to see a lot of each other but we live on remotely opposite coasts now he's in Northern California and I'm in Washington on about the third page of Wikipedia fourth page it says among his most severe critics his one-time colleague and friend Alexander Coburn a weekly contribute to the nation on August 20 2005 Coburn wrote what a truly disgusting sack of you know what Hitchens and there's another four-letter word yeah the guy who called Sid Blumenthal one of his best friends and then tried to have him thrown into prison for perjury a guy who waited until his friend Edward Saeed was on his deathbed before attacking him in the Atlantic Monthly a guy who knows perfectly well the role Israel plays in the US policy but who does not scruple to flail cindy sheehan as ala russia and an anti-semite because maybe she dared mention the word israel but he's really he's nearly right but I mean the sack off etc better anyone's opinion but on the criticisms website I didn't publish them when he was on his deathbed accepting that I kept on publishing then we had he and I had cup of long-standing disagreements and those didn't change when he was ill and they didn't indeed change after he died when I published a self estimate of him I thought a fairly generous one but which included the Cruces it's actually rather silly of Alexander to say that I think because if you look at his journalism he would rightly be proud of saying that he's often written counter obituaries of people who've been over praised and chosen precisely the moment when the there's a lot of sentimental garbage being published to say come on this guy wasn't so great so it it's silly of him to he gives a hostage to fortunate in saying that you know I'm it Cindy Sheehan I caught out in a lie on Slate you can check it out it was exhaustively done with all kinds of threat she had said she thought her son was killed in a pro Israeli war a war for the war Jewish war war for Israel she later tried to pretend she hadn't said this an email and so I caught her I caught her twice it's I think it's beneath Alexander to be defending someone as chief in demagogic as her I mean who remembers now the Cindy Sheehan campaign honestly and what if we'd listened to her if we listened to her and pulled out our troops as a result of her hysteria Iraq would now be run by Al Qaeda and we and al Qaeda could have claimed to have driven us out in ignominy and shame instead of which I cried has been defeated and humiliated and Iraq is at least on course to become many shoals ahead of it a decent society know what no one can possibly wish that cindy sheehan had been listened to there nor any of it by the way I'd be glad to let you see this is 20 pages long one of the longest that I've seen and Wikipedia so they're defining you and when you go out to speak you'd be surprised often you might be introduced with the information that's contained in here yes well I'll bear it in mind but I'm now that's this YouTube and no there's all this stuff that it's hopeless to even want to know fact fortunate I don't want to have any control over one's own image let me ask you in our time remaining yeah what in your historian you've looked talk about the world where do you fit 9/11 in events that have happened in world history I mean how would how is this going to fit 25 years from now I think it'll fit with a couple of other events one that to me gets more and more significant stirring this way where you also very kindly had me on 14th of February 1989 the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie there's a new book by a man called cannon Malik author in Britain but about the fat one against Rushdie and it's called from fatwa to jihad and I think that the hinge moment in history the time when things were turning in a major cultural way the stock away is somewhere between 89 and 2001 when a a wing of Islam at a rate a certain arc of the Muslim world decided that it was at war and then it took a little time for us to discover that we reward who but history does turn a bit more slowly than that the rant when you have a moment like Sarajevo in 1914 say or some apparent flash or the Bastille in 789 or or Lexington what these flashes illuminate is a scene that's already been prepared already been set and those that's the way I think to be a historian way to look at things one of the questions that I know I used to love to get the audience's reaction to is honor kalanchoe is America the greatest country in the world huh or is how would your aunt Spiro Agnew who's supposed to have said the greatest nation in the country something the gore Vidal has a wonderful take on this it's something to be proven rather than stated it seems to be something to be demonstrated rather than a but yes I would say in this sense as someone who used to take pride in being called a revolutionary maybe sometimes for good and someone else for slightly callow reasons but anyway I'm not ashamed of it the where's the russian revolution not gone where's the Chinese revolution now it's mutated into something completely opposite different to it so the cuban revolution is more abundant the best the french revolution well it was what did have a great effect on the Enlightenment but it was and I wouldn't denigrate it with French the American Revolution the one that says build your republic on individual rights not group rights have a bill of rights that inscribes these makes them available and legible to everybody separate the church from the state separate the executive the judicial and the political branch do all these things it doesn't sound like much but it's really a very revolutionary idea this hardly a country in the world that wouldn't benefit from adopting those principles I think that gives the United States a really good claim to be a revolutionary country as well as of course paradoxically it's very conservative one certainly makes me very glad very proud to become a citizen of it what's the flag in Europe our that is the flag of Kurdistan the Kurdish people are the largest people in the world largest ethnic group if you write loves nation the debt of a state the guitar en Kuwaiti royal families have a seat at that devoted the United Nations that the Kurdish people who are perhaps as many as 35 to 40 million don't have any diplomatic representation at all but they are a big part of free Iraq and so I wear the flag as a sign of solidarity with the Revolutionary outlets and remove Saddam Hussein defeated al Qaeda and is trying to build a republic we've got about a minute left you always traveling or is your next trip I don't know sorry for such a boring answer my last trip was to Athens maybe that's better on so just come back I'm trying to write something about the New Acropolis Museum the greatest new museum in for a long time in Europe be opened on 21st of June it'll contain all the sculpture and Treasury of the Parthenon and the other temples of the Acropolis and it will it has room for all the stolen sculpture taken by British imperialists like Borrelia to be given back so we can see how all that sculpture is symmetrical and supposed to be seen the same place at the same time and I've done a piece of Vanity Fair about how wonderful it'll be when we can seal it I suppose that better MIT mentioned this book one more time if you look God is not great how religions poison everything by Christopher Hitchens we are out of fine bookstores everyone and then thank you for for joining us though it was a pleasure as always for a DVD copy of this program call one eight seven seven six six to seven seven to six for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program visit us at QA or QA programs are also available as c-span podcasts

Info

Channel: C-SPAN

Views: 633,817

Rating: 4.8403549 out of 5

Keywords: C-SPAN, cspan, q&a, hitchens, lamb, commentary, analysis

Id: nPn4GfKnOZs

Channel Id: undefined

Length: 56min 57sec (3417 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2009

Reddit Comments

WTF? Hitchens is 60 years old??? He could easily pass for a stressed out twenty-something.

👍︎︎ 5 👤︎︎ u/phenotype 📅︎︎ Apr 28 2009 🗫︎ replies

Worth watching just to see the clip of him as a young man (within the first 10 minutes). Surprising how much he's both changed and stayed the same.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/kylev 📅︎︎ Apr 28 2009 🗫︎ replies

How long before he gets totally trashed?

I keed, I keed. I really do like ol' Hitchslap, but I really gotta wonder if he's got an alcohol problem.

👍︎︎ 3 👤︎︎ u/etherreal 📅︎︎ Apr 28 2009 🗫︎ replies