Christopher Hitchens: Who Cares

http://www.slate.com/id/2144578/

Aside from his ripe, self-satisfied snideness, this man's words and ideas are done, over, obsolete, flaccid, immature and useless ramblings of an intellectual with the heart and soul of a disaffected 12 year old.
He carries some kind of name recognition, built on some kind of legacy that I'm sure is some kind of legitimate. But he needn't be published anymore. Slate shouldn't publish him, because his drunken tirades contribute nothing meaningful to the public discussion, nothing in the way of original ideas or convincing argument. He's a waste of time. All he does is continue the ugly volley of partisan, inside, name-dropping, self-inclusive innuendo, and sure, he does it with gusto, with some fancy turns of phrase, turns that most certainly elicit a snicker or two, because he's THAT GUY, that everyone loves to snicker at, but all in all, you read his stuff and you realize that if you ran into him at a bar, you'd run the fuck away or die of instant melancholy.
Like so many of his copycats, he poisons any real dialogue with all this writerly self importance that is rife with insult, sarcasm, written with not a hint of humility, and certainly not a hint of respect for his readers, and no apparent desire to do his fucking job.
We are in a war. We are making war. And while his partisan haranguing and acerbic shit-flinging is oh-so-clever, it doesn't help me figure out how we can make our situation better. It just depresses me. What a waste of intellect. Land mines? (you want us to say they are bad? ok. thanks for the tip, DICK.) Human shields? Sanctions? What the hell are you talking about? You are bringing up these individual issues to mock and ridicule anti war activists at a time when there's already an Atom Bomb of an issue at hand: That this war is one that much of the world believes WE'VE LOST ALREADY. Things are out of control, people say. Of course, few in the United States appear to believe this, but that's the point: they/we don't know what to think, they are scared and want their government's protection and they don't want anymore troops, civilians, Iraqis or Americans to die anymore. We are divided, and we are lost and we don't want to read about it anymore because we don't know what's true and what's not and we don't know who to trust. We feel helpless. What are you doing to make this situation better? To enlighten, to clarify, to illuminate, to provide context, to INFORM? What are you doing, Christopher? Are you doing your job?
People are dying and you, you journalist, commentator, intellectual prick, one-time hero to many, you're advising "rightous anti-war types" to pick up the slack so as not to be hypocrites, to stay true to their misguided, progressive convictions? Why spend your time on this, when you know it's mockery? Is this really how you want to live out your days? Do you even care about what's happening?
Perhaps you once did. Now, though, it appears your chief concern is to happily shit on your intellectual inferiors (i.e. everyone). Perhaps you once used your powers as a force against fascism, but now it appears to have been channeled into a galactically out of control egomania aimed at anyone who disagrees with you. Your work now only tangentially addresses what we should really be concerned with: getting out of Iraq, addressing terrorism in all its many-fold manifestations and, in your case, maybe, just maybe, illumination of important ideas with that clever brain of yours.
Either write something that helps me -- you know, me, who is perhaps a bit skeptical about our foreign policy and therefore your terribly unworthy reader-- or shut your useless mouth.