September 28th, 2009 by Manila Ryce
It’s really amazing how everything Hitchens writes becomes about him. How many chips can one man have on his shoulder? Take the following excerpt from Cheap Laughs:
Long before the Weekly Standard crew disembarked at Anchorage for its now-historic call upon the lady governor, I myself once sat on a cruise-ship entertainment panel—sponsored off the imposing shores of Alaska by The Nation magazine—with Betty Friedan and Al Franken. In the spontaneous-humor stakes, I seem to remember outpointing Betty with relative ease, but I nonetheless noticed with slight envy that some “progressive” women in the front row would start laughing uncontrollably as soon as it was Franken’s turn to speak and, indeed, often before he had even opened his mouth.
Fascinating. Do tell me more. Did you finally best Franken? What other famous people do you know and why are you better than them?
As predicted, Hitchens then goes on to tell us why he’s smarter than Franken. The article starts with the un-shocking revelation that Jon Stewart has polled as “America’s most trusted newscaster,” which launches Hitchens into a tirade about comedians having hubris and not being funny enough (in his objective opinion).
Isn’t the real problem that journalists such as himself are not doing their jobs well enough to reclaim that title from lowly comedians? Why not attack them for losing the public trust rather than Stewart - a comedian - for gaining it? That’s just bad sportsmanship Chris.
It’s clear Hitchens is butt-hurt that satirists have beaten journalists at their own profession, hence, he tries to beat them at theirs by becoming a parody of himself. The irony is lost on Hitchens, whose own fame has been due largely to the entertainment value his bitchiness provides rather than the intellectual honesty that people like Twain, Murrow, Cronkite, and yes even Stewart have.
Whether Stewart is a good comedian is beside the point. He’s not on trial. You and your colleagues are, Chris. Ego-driven articles like this don’t help you any.
h/t Allison Kilkenny via twitter
Russian Federation President Vladimir “Man Hands” Putin astonished the global medical community last Tuesday when he cured all forms of cancer, using ingredients he found in the forest around his dacha.”I was going for a stroll in the woods,” the president told an astonished and admiring press, “When it occurred to me that cancer is a bad thing. It’s terrible, really. And I told myself, why should there be cancer? So I decided to cure it.”