Milo Yiannopoulos to Keynote CPAC

Oddball Breitbartian queer fetish-object Milo Yiannopoulos, recently seen on Real Time with Bill Maher, has been selected to be the keynote speaker at CPAC, a conservative shindig that pretty recently wasn't even cool with the Log Closet Cabin Republicans a mere two years ago. But after the reputed "smooth sailing" experienced by even the LCR last year, it's really quite something to have a very out British non-straight person actually as a feature, and not some weird kind of bug. Right? Progress! Big-ass tent. Room for Caitlin Jenner and all that.

I don't even know what to think about this. I actually think I should think nothing about it at all, and just make sure I have ample popcorn handy while viewing YouTube videos of what he has to say.

Now, there has been some question about whether Yiannopoulos is a supporter of pedophilia based on a certain video. . If Milo Yiannopoulos was a victim of pedophilia as a minor as he infers in that exchange (by a cleric in particular), and also in his Facebook disavowal of any support of pedophilia, I am prepared to support him in that disavowal as a supporter of victims' rights--

But he's proven over time that he has a slippery set of ethics in his reporting about various things. He mostly seems to be stunting, rather than having an actual intellectual point. His mishpacha refer to people being pedos either for the lulz or for great justice with no apparent commitment either way.  It's like "Jackass", but for Right-Wing ideology.

You Would Not Tell With Such High Zest--(long)

It seems an interesting coincidence that the end of the Iraq War coincides with the death of one of its fiercest proponents.  Of the various errata among Hitchens' works are evidences of sexism, religious bigotry (but of course!), elitism, but the unforgivable mistake is clearly support of a war of choice engaged by the United States against Iraq, a nation unfortunately burdened with a dictator in the despicable person of Saddam Hussein--of whom nothing good I have to say, a complex history, and rich oil fields. Oh, and the Islamic religion--of which I have nothing to say in relation to the conflict in Iraq, because it should not have mattered.

But it did.  In the aftermath of 9/11, not just the usual PNAC neocon folks were itching to invade Iraq (Because of: WMDs, or programs to develop WMDs, or ties between Saddam and al-Qaida, or because Saddam was a genocidal war criminal, or...oh take your pick!) A lot of the Villager/pundit/talking head class were for it. After all, Saddam Hussein was a really bad guy.  Ask the Marsh Arabs, or the Kurds. And he really did have a sophisticated weapons program as of the first Gulf War.

Be still, my rising gorge. Bryan Fischer Re: Hitchens.

Going a step further than Bob Bennett’s portrayal of Christopher Hitchens, controversial right-wing radio host Bryan Fischer thought the focus should be on where the late author’s afterlife will be spent.

“If Christopher Hitchens is in fact in hell, he’s there because God loves him,” Fischer said. “Not because God hates him, but because God loves him.”

He added: “To me, it would not be a loving thing to compel someone like Christopher Hitchens to spend the rest of eternity in a place that he hated. A place that he does not want to be.”

Via Raw Story.

It's to be expected that people will use the death of a prominent, outspoken atheist to try and make some point about the afterlife and how Christopher Hitchens certainly knows now--but it takes a very special kind of cretin to not only suppose that a person who had done nothing more* than deny the likelihood of a God (and of course, repudiated religion because of precisely the kind of jumped-up, pious, hateful asshole Fischer is)would be eternally damned....but also that this was because God loves him.

(Not to say this is all Hitchens ever did, but that for the purpose of damnation, that's quite enough.)

Christopher Hitchens --1949-2011

I don't think I fully know how to process this. I fully understand that as many of my fellow liberals found Hitchens completely irritating, galling, provocative, as found him admirable, inspiring, as a person who told the truth as he saw it. I'm a liberal and an atheist in part because of the conversation I have always had in my head with him--Christopher Hitchens:  Iconoclast, contrarian, intellectual, atheist, lover of literature, analyzer of culture.

I did not know him personally, but through his writing, I feel like I've known him for years. Of course I've known him--his voice was one of authenticity.He was who he was when he spoke out about whatever moved him to speak. He was wrong sometimes. In terms of his support of the Iraq War he was damn wrong. But in many ways, to me, he was right. His skepticism about saints and the exposure of them, his knocking down of shibboleths--that was right.


I know so many people disliked him for his certitude over various positions, but even where I disagreed with him, I admired his skill in argumentation--I read him because even if I did not agree with him, I always thought he was one with whom one might reasonably speak.

His passing greatly saddens me.

(Many edits--posting upon hearing of a person's death in the late night and after a glass of scotch is by no means the ideal conditions for me to post.)

For Christopher Hitchens--

It's very odd how someone you've never met can reach you through their printed words--that is an especial gift Christopher Hitchens has, that he can so eloquently assert his thoughts in words, that those who disagree with him, who argue with him, who at times wonder exactly what he's on about before it becomes too clear, find themselves standing back in astonishment or at least admiration that someone can duke it out in the arena of ideas and cooly sometimes turn the blunt force argument aside with elegance, or boldly, lay bare an ugly truth with the moral force of sweet reason.

I have not agreed with Hitchens on the Iraq war, nor am I entirely sold on the idea that religion is the source of so much of the heartbreak and tragedy of our human condition, the separations and persecutions that exist between people, so much as it is a tool that something sicker in our human nature just conveniently uses.

But that I can sit here with his voice in my head, like a virtual Hitch created by reading so many of his books and essays, is a testimony of the power of his mastery of the written word. And as I sit here sopping up bourbon and pouring out my witness on my dumb blog where I express my political conscience against repression, oppression, stupidity, religious nonsense, and all that, I have to acknowledge that Christopher Hitchens has been a great example of "How to".

"How to" boldly express oneself. How to not argue from bullshit but from knowledge. How to come to terms with the reality that man's real dealing must be with men, and the reminder that Orwell, Paine, and literature are important, while ego, preconceptions, and the little cults of personality of douchebags need to be exposed and lampooned. There are no saints. There are only people who are opppresed, and people who might be of some use. He is a man of exceptional utility. When he puts words into service they can move. And they moved me.

He better not die. I had Charles Bukowski, Bill Hicks, and I don't know how many other of my heroes die before I got them to at least sign something for me. I'll be pretty bummed if I never got him to sign the copy of Letters to a Young Contrarian that gave me insight into how to be a better agitator, with prose which inspires me to want to be a better writer.

But then again, as a man of letters and a person who truly lives in his words, he already has given us such a great deal of himself. I admire him greatly, and believe that if anyone is capable of kicking cancer's ass, it would be him. And I really wish him well, and long life--because the job of telling the truth as well as he so often has still needs capable people. And who, really, has shown his eloquent, elegant, right-on, balls-out, dead on, humorous, biting, beautiful capacity?