"Hitch, You Glorious Bastard"

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

(This send-off to Christopher Hitchens, a personal hero of mine, was originally posted on my old blog on the night of December 17, 2011, two days after Christopher's death was announced. As Hitch continues to be on my mind, I figured it was an entry worth reposting here.)

One might find it odd that a practicing Catholic and a liberal such as myself would ever come to take as an idol a man with a background as seemingly offensive to both of those sensibilities as the great Christopher Hitchens, who left this world a much drabber and intellectually deficient place when he parted our presence Thursday evening. "Hitch", as he preferred to be called by his friends (and though I never met him I deeply regret to say- I almost feel that I can count myself among them due to my having read his columns, essays, and books, I daresay, "religiously," for the past couple years), began his career as a writer and journalist in the 60's as a radical leftist (a Marxist Trotskyite, to be exact) as relentlessly critical of the inhumane totalitarianism of Stalinist Russia as he was of the ruthless exploitation of the working classes in the capitalist West. Over the span of his long and illustrious career though, the three things that Hitch became best known for, indeed the things which finally made him famous long after he deserved to have been, were his stinging rebukes of figures as diverse and seeming innocuous as Princess Diana, Bill Clinton, and Mother Theresa, his outspoken support for the War in Iraq as one front in what he saw as the global struggle between the liberal, democratic and secular humanist West against the forces of "Islamofascism" (a term he coined), and his undying atheism. Hitch's 2007 magnum opus God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and the following debate tour he undertook to promote the book, catapulted him into the limelight and exposed him to a much wider audience than he ever had before, an audience including yours truly.

I remember the first time I heard the name Christopher Hitchens. It was in connection to his attacks on the doctrines and hierarchical structure of my own religion of Roman Catholicism, most especially his attacks on Mother Theresa. Good Catholic schoolboy that I was, I was horrified by what I heard (how could anyone not like Mother Theresa???), and vividly remember wanting to run as far away from such a heretic as I possibly could. Tonight, I write to tell you that I am very happy and much intellectually richer for the fact that I did not. If I had, I never would have been exposed to one of the greatest writers (the greatest contemporary columnist and essayist in the English language, in my opinion) and most intelligent and best-read political and cultural commentators of our time. As I pried more and more into the life and works of Christopher Hitchens, I was pleased to find a man who attacked religion, not out of malice or misanthropy, but out of what his fellow atheist Bertrand Russell called "unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind," and the role that Hitch felt religion played in prolonging and aggravating that suffering. In all of Hitch's countless columns that I have read and debates that I have watched over the past two glorious years that I have known of him, though I have never been swayed to adopt his atheism, I have rarely, if ever, disagreed with the premises on which he attacks organized religion. The God that Christopher railed against (and tragically, the one which those who claim to be God's most loyal followers promote) "creates his children sick and then commands them to be well," despises honest inquiry and free thought, wishes blind submission to his will and eternal adulation, and has such little respect for the intelligence of human beings, supposedly the highest expression of the life he willed to exist on this planet, that he handed down a book to dictate forevermore how, conscience be damned (literally), we should live our lives- a book that says, among other horrific things, that it is an "abomination" for the millions of gay people of the world (including the author of this column) to physically express their love to their soulmate, if that soulmate happens to be a member of the same sex, as they must be if you are gay. Such attacks on religion by Christopher never bothered me or weakened my faith, because such a God would not be worthy of my love, let alone my worship, and is as far from the God that I know and adore, as night is to day. The God that I love, pray to every day, look forward to meeting, and am confident embraced and welcomed Christopher into his arms the second the old gadfly left the realm of the living, desires the freedom and happiness of his children, relentless pursuit of truth and knowledge on their part, and would be just as amused and breathtaken by Christopher's incomparable wit and sense of humor, as well as his vast ocean of literary and historical knowledge, as I was. The God that I know would never have created me to be gay as a cruel joke, or willed me to live my life in misery and romantic isolation. Indeed, the God that I know comforted me in my time of greatest need this summer, as I gathered the courage to come out to my family and friends and at last reconcile myself to a truth that I had struggled with my entire life. The God that I know broke the mold the day he created Christopher Hitchens, and has eagerly anticipated reunion with him.

Shortly after the news came of Hitch's passing the other night, film critic Mary Pols tweeted her goodbye to Christopher with the following succinct but suiting adieu: "Mr. Hitchens, you glorious bastard, thank you for your gift of savagely smart writing." I felt that such a salutary send-off perfectly encapsulated the humor, wit, and irreverence that so characterized Christopher's beautiful writing style and personality, and, despite our never having met, the affection that I feel for him on account of it. Earlier this year, sensing that Hitch's time on this earth may not be long, I felt the urge to write him a letter letting him know how much his life's work meant to me, and the large role it played in convincing me to pursue a career as a writer and public speaker myself. It is with deep regret to say that I never succumbed to this desire, and Mr. Hitchens died having no idea how much he inspired me. But, regardless of whether Hitch was right or I am with as to the question of an afterlife, I know this- Christopher Hitchens lives on in his riveting corpus of work, both literary and oratorical, and in the hearts and minds of those of us who, I daresay, were blessed to encounter such a brilliant and beautiful mind, and the graceful pen that it wielded. Rest in peace, Christopher.