Position	Wide Receiver
Number	87, 86, 81, 84
Birthdate	February 03, 1971 Red Bank, New Jersey
Debutyear	1993
Finalyear	2001
Draftyear	1993
Draftround	1
Draftpick	16
College	California
Teams
Stat1label	Receptions
Stat1value	445
Stat2label	Receiving Yards
Stat2value	6,291
Stat3label	Touchdowns
Stat3value	25
Nfl	DAW202452

Sean Russell Dawkins (born February 3, 1971 in Red Bank, New Jersey) is a former American football wide receiver who played for the Indianapolis Colts, New Orleans Saints, Seattle Seahawks and Jacksonville Jaguars from 1993 to 2001.

Dawkins was born in New Jersey but by the time he was in high school, he lived in Sunnyvale, California, where he distinguished himself as a Wide Receiver at Cupertino's Homestead High School, earning a football scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley.

While at Cal, Dawkins used his speed and size (6 feet 4 inches, 215 pounds) to establish himself as one of the country's most dangerous deep threats. His first two seasons at California were unqualified successes for him personally, as well as his Golden Bear teammates. In 1990, California won their first Bowl Game since 1938, defeating Wyoming in the Copper Bowl. The following season, the Bears dominated nationally ranked Clemson in the Citrus Bowl, which earned them the 7th ranking in the CNN/USA Today poll, their highest finish since 1950. It also marked the first time in school history that California won bowl games in successive seasons.

The 1992 season, however, included a new coach. After transforming the California program from a laughingstock into a national power, coach Bruce Snyder left Berkeley for Arizona State and was replaced by Keith Gilbertson. Gilbertson's squad struggled to a 4-7 record in 1992 but Dawkins was one bright spot in an otherwise forgettable year. Dawkins was named a consensus All-American after the season in 1992, an honor which encouraged him to forgo his senior season and enter the NFL Draft.

He was selected in the first round of the 1993 NFL Draft by the Indianapolis Colts as the 16th overall pick and the second wide receiver chosen. In his third season with the Colts, Indianapolis won two playoff games before falling to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC Championship game. He would play in two more playoff games in his career, but both were losses.

He enjoyed his finest personal year in 1999 when he caught 58 passes for 992 yards.

After one season in New Orleans, Dawkins signed as a free agent with the Seattle Seahawks. After two campaigns with Seattle, Dawkins spent his final year with the Jacksonville Jaguars. His career was clearly on the decline by that point, as he made only 20 catches with the Jaguars that season. Before the 2002 season, he signed with the Minnesota Vikings, however he got cut at the final cutdown and never played in the NFL again.

As of 2003, Dawkins was living in the Sacramento area pursuing a career in real estate.

As of 2009, Dawkins was preparing to become a police officer in San Jose, California.

External links

Player profile

Category:1971 births Category:Living people Category:American football wide receivers Category:California Golden Bears football players Category:Indianapolis Colts players Category:New Orleans Saints players Category:Seattle Seahawks players Category:Jacksonville Jaguars players Category:People from Monmouth County, New Jersey

Name	Richard Dawkins
Caption	Dawkins in 2010 at Cooper Union in New York City
Birth name	Clinton Richard Dawkins
Birth date	March 26, 1941
Birth place	Nairobi, Kenya Colony
Residence	Oxford, England
Nationality	British
Ethnicity	White British
Education	MA, DPhil (Oxon)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Occupation	Ethologist
Years active	1967–present
Employer	University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of Oxford
Organization	Fellow of the Royal SocietyFellow of the Royal Society of Literature
Known for	Gene-centered view of evolution, concept of the meme, as well as advocacy of atheism and science.
Notable works	The Selfish Gene (1976)The Extended Phenotype (1982)The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
Influences	Charles Darwin, Ronald Fisher, George C. Williams, W. D. Hamilton, Daniel Dennett, Nikolaas Tinbergen (doctoral adviser)
Spouse	Marian Stamp Dawkins (m. 1967–1984)Eve Barham (m. 1984–?)Lalla Ward (m. 1992–present)
Children	Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984)
Parents	Clinton John DawkinsJean Mary Vyvyan (née Ladner)
Awards	Faraday Award (1990)Kistler Prize (2001)
Website	The Richard Dawkins Foundation

Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008.

Dawkins came to prominence with his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, which popularised the gene-centered view of evolution and introduced the term meme. In 1982, he introduced into evolutionary biology an influential concept, presented in his book The Extended Phenotype, that the phenotypic effects of a gene are not necessarily limited to an organism's body, but can stretch far into the environment, including the bodies of other organisms.

Dawkins is an atheist and humanist, a Vice President of the British Humanist Association and supporter of the Brights movement. He is well known for his criticism of creationism and intelligent design. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, he argued against the watchmaker analogy, an argument for the existence of a supernatural creator based upon the complexity of living organisms. Instead, he described evolutionary processes as analogous to a blind watchmaker. He has since written several popular science books, and makes regular television and radio appearances, predominantly discussing these topics. He has been referred to in the media as "Darwin's Rottweiler," a reference to English biologist T. H. Huxley, who was known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. In his 2006 book The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that religious faith is a delusion—a fixed false belief. As of January 2010, the English-language version had sold more than two million copies and had been translated into 31 languages, making it his most popular book to date.

Biography

Dawkins was born in Nairobi, Kenya. His father, Clinton John Dawkins (1915–2010), returning to England in 1949, when Dawkins was eight. His father had inherited Over Norton Park, which he turned from a country estate into a commercial farm. Both his parents were interested in natural sciences; they answered Dawkins' questions in scientific terms.

Dawkins describes his childhood as "a normal Anglican upbringing." Though he began having doubts about the existence of God when he was about nine years old, he was persuaded by the argument from design, an argument for the existence of God or a creator based on perceived evidence of order, purpose, or design in nature, and embraced Christianity.

He attended Oundle, a Church of England school, Dawkins' research in this period concerned models of animal decision-making.

From 1967 to 1969, he was an assistant professor of zoology at the University of California, Berkeley. During this period, the students and faculty at UC Berkeley were largely opposed to the ongoing Vietnam War, and Dawkins became heavily involved in the anti-war demonstrations and activities. He returned to the University of Oxford in 1970 taking a position as a lecturer, and in 1990, as a reader in zoology. In 1995, he was appointed Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field", and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.

Since 1970, he has been a fellow of New College. He has delivered a number of inaugural and other lectures, including the Henry Sidgwick Memorial Lecture (1989), first Erasmus Darwin Memorial Lecture (1990), Michael Faraday Lecture (1991), T.H. Huxley Memorial Lecture (1992), Irvine Memorial Lecture (1997), Sheldon Doyle Lecture (1999), Tinbergen Lecture (2004) and Tanner Lectures (2003).

He has sat on judging panels for awards as diverse as the Royal Society's Faraday Award and the British Academy Television Awards, and has been president of the Biological Sciences section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2004, Balliol College, Oxford instituted the Dawkins Prize, awarded for "outstanding research into the ecology and behaviour of animals whose welfare and survival may be endangered by human activities". In September 2008, he retired from his professorship, announcing plans to "write a book aimed at youngsters in which he will warn them against believing in 'anti-scientific' fairytales."

Personal life

On 19 August 1967, Dawkins married fellow ethologist Marian Stamp; they divorced in 1984. Later that same year, on 1 June, he married Eve Barham (19 August 1951–28 February 1999) in Oxford. They had a daughter, Juliet Emma Dawkins (born 1984, Oxford). In 1992, he married actress Lalla Ward in Kensington and Chelsea, London. who had worked with her on the BBC's Doctor Who.

Work

Evolutionary biology

, Austin, March 2008]] In his scientific works, Dawkins is best known for his popularisation of the gene-centred view of evolution. This view is most clearly set out in his books The Selfish Gene (1976), where he notes that "all life evolves by the differential survival of replicating entities", and The Extended Phenotype (1982), in which he describes natural selection as "the process whereby replicators out-propagate each other". In his role as an ethologist, interested in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he advocates the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has consistently been sceptical about non-adaptive processes in evolution (such as spandrels, described by Gould and Lewontin) and about selection at levels "above" that of the gene. He is particularly sceptical about the practical possibility or importance of group selection as a basis for understanding altruism. This behaviour appears at first to be an evolutionary paradox, since helping others costs precious resources and decreases one's own fitness. Previously, many had interpreted this as an aspect of group selection: individuals were doing what was best for the survival of the population or species as a whole, and not specifically for themselves. British evolutionary biologist W. D. Hamilton had used the gene-centred view to explain altruism in terms of inclusive fitness and kin selection − that individuals behave altruistically toward their close relatives, who share many of their own genes. Similarly, Robert Trivers, thinking in terms of the gene-centred model, developed the theory of reciprocal altruism, whereby one organism provides a benefit to another in the expectation of future reciprocation. Dawkins popularised these ideas in The Selfish Gene, and developed them in his own work.

Critics of Dawkins' approach suggest that taking the gene as the unit of selection − of a single event in which an individual either succeeds or fails to reproduce − is misleading, but that the gene could be better described as a unit of evolution − of the long-term changes in allele frequencies in a population. In The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that he is using George C. Williams' definition of the gene as "that which segregates and recombines with appreciable frequency." Another common objection is that genes cannot survive alone, but must cooperate to build an individual, and therefore cannot be an independent "unit". In The Extended Phenotype, Dawkins suggests that because of genetic recombination and sexual reproduction, from an individual gene's viewpoint all other genes are part of the environment to which it is adapted.

Advocates for higher levels of selection such as Richard Lewontin, David Sloan Wilson, and Elliot Sober suggest that there are many phenomena (including altruism) that gene-based selection cannot satisfactorily explain. The philosopher Mary Midgley, with whom Dawkins clashed in print concerning The Selfish Gene, has criticised gene selection, memetics and sociobiology as being excessively reductionist.

In a set of controversies over the mechanisms and interpretation of evolution (the so-called 'Darwin Wars'), one faction was often named after Dawkins and its rival after the American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, reflecting the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of pertinent ideas. In particular, Dawkins and Gould have been prominent commentators in the controversy over sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, with Dawkins generally approving and Gould generally being critical. A typical example of Dawkins' position was his scathing review of Not in Our Genes by Steven Rose, Leon J. Kamin and Richard C. Lewontin. Two other thinkers on the subject often considered to be allied to Dawkins are Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett; Dennett has promoted a gene-centred view of evolution and defended reductionism in biology. Despite their academic disagreements, Dawkins and Gould did not have a hostile personal relationship, and Dawkins dedicated a large portion of his 2003 book A Devil's Chaplain posthumously to Gould, who had died the previous year.

Dawkins' book expounds the evidence for biological evolution. It was released on 3 September 2009, published in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth nations by Transworld. In the United States it was released on 22 September 2009, where it was published by Free Press. All of his previous works dealing with evolution had assumed its truth, and not explicitly provided the evidence to this effect. Dawkins felt that this represented a gap in his oeuvre, and decided to write the book to coincide with Darwin's bicentennial year.

Meme

Dawkins coined the word meme (the behavioral equivalent of a gene) to describe how Darwinian principles might be extended to explain the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. This has spawned the field of memetics. Dawkins' memes refer to any cultural entity that an observer might consider a replicator of a certain idea or a complex of ideas. He hypothesised that people could view many cultural entities as capable of such replication, generally through exposure to humans, who have evolved as efficient (although not perfect) copiers of information and behaviour. Memes are not always copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes, which may themselves prove more, or less, efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for a hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes. Since originally outlining the idea in his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins has largely left the task of expanding upon it to other authors such as Susan Blackmore.

Although Dawkins invented the specific term meme independently, he has not claimed that the idea itself was entirely novel, and there have been other expressions for similar ideas in the past. For instance, John Laurent has suggested that the term may have derived from the work of the little-known German biologist Richard Semon. In 1904, Semon published Die Mneme (which appeared in English in 1924 as The Mneme). This book discussed the cultural transmission of experiences, with insights parallel to those of Dawkins. Laurent also found the term mneme used in Maurice Maeterlinck's The Life of the White Ant (1926), and has highlighted the similarities to Dawkins' concept. without recourse to evolution). He has described the Young Earth creationist view that the Earth is only a few thousand years old as "a preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood," and his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, contains a sustained critique of the argument from design, an important creationist argument. In the book, Dawkins argued against the watchmaker analogy made famous by the 18th-century English theologian William Paley in his book Natural Theology. Paley argued that, just as a watch is too complicated and too functional to have sprung into existence merely by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Dawkins shares the view generally held by scientists that natural selection is sufficient to explain the apparent functionality and non-random complexity of the biological world, and can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, albeit as an automatic, nonintelligent, blind watchmaker.

, 2008.]]In 1986, Dawkins participated in a Oxford Union debate, in which he and English biologist John Maynard Smith debated Young Earth creationist A. E. Wilder-Smith and Edgar Andrews, president of the Biblical Creation Society. In general, however, Dawkins has followed the advice of his late colleague Stephen Jay Gould and refused to participate in formal debates with creationists because "what they seek is the oxygen of respectability", and doing so would "give them this oxygen by the mere act of engaging with them at all." He suggests that creationists "don't mind being beaten in an argument. What matters is that we give them recognition by bothering to argue with them in public."

In a December 2004 interview with American journalist Bill Moyers, Dawkins said that "among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know". When Moyers questioned him on the use of the word theory, Dawkins stated that "evolution has been observed. It's just that it hasn't been observed while it's happening." He added that "it is rather like a detective coming on a murder after the scene... the detective hasn't actually seen the murder take place, of course. But what you do see is a massive clue... Huge quantities of circumstantial evidence. It might as well be spelled out in words of English."

Dawkins has ardently opposed the inclusion of intelligent design in science education, describing it as "not a scientific argument at all, but a religious one". He has been a strong critic of the British organisation Truth in Science, which promotes the teaching of creationism in state schools, and he plans—through the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science—to subsidise the delivering of books, DVDs and pamphlets to schools, in order to counteract what he has described as an "educational scandal".

Advocacy of atheism

, 24 June 2006.]] Dawkins is an outspoken atheist and a prominent critic of religion. In an interview with Thomas Bass for a book published in 1994 he described himself as a 'fairly militant atheist'. In 1996, when asked if he'd prefer to be known as a scientist or a militant atheist, he replied, "Bertrand Russell called himself the Passionate Sceptic. It's aiming high, but I'll shoot for that." He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, a vice-president of the British Humanist Association (since 1996), a member of the Secular Coalition for America advisory board, a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. In 2003, he became a signatory of the humanist manifesto Humanism and Its Aspirations, published by the American Humanist Association. As a result of his advocacy of atheism, Dawkins has sometimes been described as a vocal, militant rationalist, and as "the UK's Chief Atheist".

Dawkins believes that his own atheism is the logical extension of his understanding of evolution and that religion is incompatible with science. In his 1986 book The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins wrote:

In his 1991 essay "Viruses of the Mind" (from which the term faith-sufferer originated), he suggested that memetic theory might analyse and explain the phenomenon of religious belief and some of the common characteristics of religions, such as the belief that punishment awaits non-believers. According to Dawkins, faith − belief that is not based on evidence − is one of the world's great evils. He claims it to be analogous to the smallpox virus, though more difficult to eradicate. Dawkins is well-known for his contempt for religious extremism, from Islamist terrorism to Christian fundamentalism; but he has also argued with liberal believers and religious scientists, from biologists Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins to theologians Alister McGrath and Richard Harries. Dawkins has stated that his opposition to religion is twofold, claiming it to be both a source of conflict and a justification for belief without evidence. However, he describes himself as a "cultural Christian", and proposed the slogan "Atheists for Jesus".

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when asked how the world might have changed, Dawkins responded:

Dawkins has especially risen to prominence in contemporary public debates relating science and religion since the publication of his 2006 book The God Delusion, which has achieved greater sales figures worldwide than any of his other works to date. Its success has been seen by many as indicative of a change in the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, central to a recent rise in the popularity of atheistic literature. The God Delusion was praised by among others the Nobel laureate chemist Sir Harold Kroto, psychologist Steven Pinker and the Nobel laureate biologist James D. Watson. In the book, Dawkins argued that atheists should be proud, not apologetic, because atheism is evidence of a healthy, independent mind. He sees education and consciousness-raising as the primary tools in opposing what he considers to be religious dogma and indoctrination. These tools include the fight against certain stereotypes, and he has adopted the term Bright as a way of associating positive public connotations with those who possess a naturalistic worldview. Critics have said that the programme gave too much time to marginal figures and extremists, and that Dawkins' confrontational style did not help his cause; Dawkins rejected these claims, citing the number of moderate religious broadcasts in everyday media as providing a suitable balance to the extremists in the programmes. He further remarked that someone who is deemed an "extremist" in a religiously moderate country may well be considered "mainstream" in a religiously conservative one. The unedited recordings of Dawkins' conversations with Alister McGrath and Richard Harries, including material unused in the broadcast version, have been made available online by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science.

Oxford theologian Alister McGrath (author of The Dawkins Delusion and ) maintains that Dawkins is ignorant of Christian theology, and therefore unable to engage religion and faith intelligently. In reply, Dawkins asks "do you have to read up on leprechology before disbelieving in leprechauns?", and − in the paperback edition of The God Delusion − he refers to the American biologist PZ Myers, who has satirised this line of argument as "The Courtier's Reply". Dawkins had an extended debate with McGrath at the 2007 Sunday Times Literary Festival.

Another Christian philosopher Keith Ward explores similar themes in his 2006 book Is Religion Dangerous?, arguing against the view of Dawkins and others that religion is socially dangerous. Criticism of The God Delusion has come from philosophers such as Professor John Cottingham of the University of Reading and Christian philosopher and theologian William Lane Craig. Other commentators, including ethicist Margaret Somerville, have suggested that Dawkins "overstates the case against religion", particularly its role in human conflict. Many of Dawkins' defenders claim that critics generally misunderstand his real point. During a debate on Radio 3 Hong Kong, David Nicholls, writer and president of the Atheist Foundation of Australia, reiterated Dawkins' sentiments that religion is an "unnecessary" aspect of global problems.

Dawkins argues that "the existence of God is a scientific hypothesis like any other". He disagrees with Stephen Jay Gould's principle of nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA). In an interview with Time magazine, Dawkins said:

I think that Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf. Any belief in miracles is flat contradictory not just to the facts of science but to the spirit of science.

Astrophysicist Martin Rees has suggested that Dawkins' attack on mainstream religion is unhelpful. Regarding Rees' claim in his book Our Cosmic Habitat that "such questions lie beyond science", Dawkins asks "what expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?" Elsewhere, Dawkins has written that "there's all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic, and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority or revelation." He has said that the publication of The God Delusion is "probably the culmination" of his campaign against religion.

In 2007, Dawkins founded the Out Campaign to encourage atheists worldwide to declare their stance publicly and proudly. Inspired by the gay rights movement, Dawkins hopes that atheists' identifying of themselves as such, and thereby increasing public awareness of how many people hold these views, will reduce the negative opinion of atheism among the religious majority.

In September 2008, following a complaint by Islamic creationist Adnan Oktar, a court in Turkey blocked access to Dawkins' website richarddawkins.net. The court decision was made due to "insult to personality". During the 2010 Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, Australia Dawkins was criticised for his use of the phrase "Pope Nazi" in reference to wartime Pope Pius XII, whose actions during the Holocaust have been a matter of controversy.

at the Atheist Bus Campaign launch]] In October 2008, Dawkins officially supported the UK's first atheist advertising initiative, the Atheist Bus Campaign. Created by Guardian journalist Ariane Sherine and administered by the British Humanist Association the campaign aimed to raise funds to place atheist adverts on buses in the London area, and Dawkins pledged to match the amount raised by atheists, up to a maximum of £5,500. However, the campaign was an unprecedented success, raising over £100,000 in its first four days, and generating global press coverage. The campaign, started in January 2009, features adverts across the UK with the slogan: "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." Dawkins said that "this campaign to put alternative slogans on London buses will make people think — and thinking is anathema to religion."

In 2010, Dawkins supported legal efforts to charge Pope Benedict XVI with crimes against humanity. Dawkins and fellow anti-religion campaigner Christopher Hitchens were believed to have explored the option of attempting to have the Pope arrested under the same legal principle that saw Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet arrested during a visit to Britain in 1998. Dawkins has given support to the idea of an atheists' "free thinking" school, that would teach children to "ask for evidence, to be sceptical, critical, open-minded".

On 15 September 2010, Dawkins, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI making a State visit to the United Kingdom.

Richard Dawkins Foundation

In 2006, Dawkins founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science (RDFRS), a non-profit organisation. The foundation is in developmental phase. It has been granted charitable status in the United Kingdom and the United States. RDFRS plans to finance research on the psychology of belief and religion, finance scientific education programs and materials, and publicise and support secular charitable organisations. The foundation also offers humanist, rationalist and scientific materials and information through its website.

Other fields

, Menlo Park, California, 29 October 2006.]] In his role as professor for public understanding of science, Dawkins has been a critic of pseudoscience and alternative medicine. His 1998 book Unweaving the Rainbow takes John Keats' accusation that, by explaining the rainbow, Isaac Newton had diminished its beauty, and argues for the opposite conclusion. He suggests that deep space, the billions of years of life's evolution, and the microscopic workings of biology and heredity contain more beauty and wonder than do "myths" and "pseudoscience". Dawkins wrote a foreword to John Diamond's posthumously published Snake Oil, a book devoted to debunking alternative medicine, in which he asserted that alternative medicine was harmful, if only because it distracted patients from more successful conventional treatments, and gave people false hopes. Dawkins states that "there is no alternative medicine. There is only medicine that works and medicine that doesn't work."

Dawkins has expressed concern about the growth of the planet's human population, and about the matter of overpopulation. In The Selfish Gene, he briefly mentions population growth, giving the example of Latin America, whose population, at the time the book was written, was doubling every 40 years. He is critical of Roman Catholic attitudes to family planning and population control, stating that leaders who forbid contraception and "express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation" will get just such a method in the form of starvation.

As a supporter of the Great Ape Project – a movement to extend certain moral and legal rights to all great apes – Dawkins contributed the article "Gaps in the Mind" to the Great Ape Project book edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer. In this essay, he criticises contemporary society's moral attitudes as being based on a "discontinuous, speciesist imperative".

Dawkins also regularly comments in newspapers and weblogs on contemporary political questions; his opinions include opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the British nuclear deterrent and the actions of U.S. President George W. Bush. Several such articles were included in A Devil's Chaplain, an anthology of writings about science, religion and politics. He is also a supporter of the Republic campaign to replace the British monarchy with a democratically elected president. Dawkins has described himself as a Labour voter in the 1970s and voter for the Liberal Democrats since the party's creation. In 2009, he spoke at the party's conference in opposition to blasphemy laws, alternative medicine and faith schools. In the UK general election of 2010, Dawkins officially endorsed the Liberal Democrats, in support of their campaign for electoral reform and for their "refusal to pander to 'faith'."

In the 2007 TV documentary The Enemies of Reason, Dawkins discusses what he sees as the dangers of abandoning critical thought and rationale based upon scientific evidence. He specifically cites astrology, spiritualism, dowsing, alternative faiths, alternative medicine and homeopathy. He also discusses how the Internet can be used to spread religious hatred and conspiracy theories with scant attention to evidence-based reasoning.

Continuing a long-standing partnership with Channel 4, Dawkins participated in a five-part television series The Genius of Britain, along with fellow scientists Stephen Hawking, James Dyson, Paul Nurse, and Jim Al-Khalili. The five-episode series was broadcast in June 2010. The series focussed on major British scientific achievements throughout history.

Dawkins presented a More4 documentary entitled 'Faith School Menace' in which he argued for "us to reconsider the consequences of faith education, which... bamboozles parents and indoctrinates and divides children."

In 1998 Dawkins expressed his appreciation for two books, famous for their criticism of postmodernism in US universities, in departments like literary studies, anthropology and other cultural studies; the two books are (by Gross and Levitt) and Intellectual Impostures (by Sokal and Bricmont), both related to the Sokal affair hoax. In the same occasion Dawkins also dismissed Cambridge University for awarding philosopher Jacques Derrida an honorary doctorate. the University of Hull, and the University of Antwerp, and honorary doctorates from the University of Aberdeen, Open University, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, He also holds honorary doctorates of letters from the University of St Andrews and the Australian National University (HonLittD, 1996), and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1997 and the Royal Society in 2001.

Dawkins topped Prospect magazine's 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, as decided by the readers, receiving twice as many votes as the runner-up. He has been short-listed as a candidate in their 2008 follow-up poll. In 2005, the Hamburg-based Alfred Toepfer Foundation awarded him its Shakespeare Prize in recognition of his "concise and accessible presentation of scientific knowledge". He won the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science for 2006 and the Galaxy British Book Awards Author of the Year Award for 2007. In the same year, he was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and he was ranked 20th in The Daily Telegraph's 2007 list of 100 greatest living geniuses. He was awarded the Deschner Award, named after German anti-clerical author Karlheinz Deschner.

Since 2003, the Atheist Alliance International has awarded a prize during its annual conference, honouring an outstanding atheist whose work has done most to raise public awareness of atheism during that year. It is known as the Richard Dawkins Award, in honour of Dawkins' own work.

Media

Selected publications

Documentary films

Nice Guys Finish First (1987)

The Blind Watchmaker (1987)

Growing Up in the Universe (1991)

Break the Science Barrier (1996)

The Root of All Evil? (2006)

The Enemies of Reason (2007)

The Genius of Charles Darwin (2008)

Faith School Menace (2010)

Notes

b. The debate ended with the motion "That the doctrine of creation is more valid than the theory of evolution" being defeated by 198 votes to 115.

References

External links

General

Official website

Richard Dawkins' page on Academia.edu

The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science

Video

National Geographic Interviews – A series of video interviews with National Geographic Channel with Richard Dawkins on Darwin, Evolution and God.

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on militant atheism at TED in 2002

TED Talks: Richard Dawkins on our "queer" universe at TED Global in 2005

Video interview with Riz Khan for Al Jazeera English

Video interview at Big Think

Selected writings

Viruses of the Mind (1993) – Religion as a mental virus.

The Real Romance in the Stars (1995) – A critical view of astrology.

The Emptiness of Theology (1998) – A critical view of theology. (Alternative link at RDFRS.)

Snake Oil and Holy Water (1999) – Suggests that there is no convergence occurring between science and theism.

What Use is Religion? (2004) – Suggests that religion may have no survival value other than to itself.

Race and Creation (2004) – On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved.

The giant tortoise's tale, The turtle's tale and The lava lizard's tale (2005) – A series of three articles written after a visit to the Galápagos Islands.

Dawkins' Huffington Post articles

Audio

Richard Dawkins on RadioLIVE's Weekend Variety Wireless – Richard Dawkins appears live on New Zealand's RadioLIVE, taking calls from the audience.

Category:1941 births Category:Living people Category:20th-century biologists Category:20th-century non-fiction writers Category:21st-century biologists Category:21st-century non-fiction writers Category:Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford Category:Atheism activists Category:British republicans Category:Criticism of religion Category:English atheists Category:English biologists Category:English humanists Category:English sceptics Category:English science writers Category:Ethologists Category:Evolutionary biologists Category:Fellows of New College, Oxford Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature Category:Fellows of the Royal Society Category:Gifford Lecturers Category:Old Oundelians Category:People from Nairobi Category:Presenters of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures Category:Recipients of the Medal of the Presidency of the Italian Republic Category:Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford Category:University of California, Berkeley faculty

Name	Adnan Oktar
Residence	Turkey
Other names	Harun Yahya, Adnan Hoca
Caption	Adnan Oktar
Birth name	Adnan Oktar
Birth date	February 02, 1956
Birth place	Ankara, Turkey
Known	Islamic creationism, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Masonry
Occupation	Author
Religion	Sunni Muslim
Website	www.harunyahya.com

Adnan Oktar (born Ankara, February 2, 1956), also known as Harun Yahya, is an Islamic creationist. In 2007, he came to international attention when he sent out thousands of unsolicited copies of the Atlas of Creation advocating Islamic creationism to schools, colleges and science museums in several European countries and the USA. Oktar runs two organizations of which he is also the Honorary President: Bilim Araştırma Vakfı ("Science Research Foundation", BAV, established 1990), which promotes creationism and Milli Değerleri Koruma Vakfı ("Foundation to Protect National Values", established 1995) which promotes Turkish nationalism. In the last two decades, Oktar has been involved in a number of legal cases, both as defendant and plaintiff.

Biography

Adnan Oktar was born in Ankara on February 2, 1956. He grew up in Ankara, and lived there through his high school years where he studied the works of Islamic scholars like Said Nursi, a Muslim Kurdish scholar who wrote Risale-i Nur, an extensive Qur'anic commentary which includes a comprehensive political and religious ideology.

In 1979, Adnan Oktar came to Istanbul and entered Mimar Sinan University. These years were marked with violence and repression which led to the installation of a military junta following the coup of September 1980. The environment in Turkey was one of political and cultural instability, threatened by Cold War politics, and a clash between Kemalist secular modernisers and a rising tide of Islamic militancy. because he felt that it had been turned into an ideology used to promote materialism and atheism, and numerous derivative ideologies. He personally funded a pamphlet entitled the Theory of Evolution Oktar also claims he was thrown in a mental institution as punishment after the publication of his first book.

Throughout the 1980s and early ’90s, Oktar built up his community. His followers were especially active recruiting in the summer resorts along the shore of the Sea of Marmara. The social organization within the group become more hierarchical and took on a Messianic nature.

In 1990, he founded the Science Research Foundation (SRF, or, in Turkish, Bilim Araştırma Vakfı, or BAV). Oktar founded the Science Research Foundation to hold conferences and seminars for scientific activities "that target mass awareness concerning what the real underlying causes of social and political conflicts are", which he describes to be materialism and Darwinism, though some media describe the BAV as "a secretive Islamic sect" and "cult-like organization, that jealously guards the secrets of its considerable wealth". Members of the BAV are sometimes referred to as Adnan Hocacılar ("Adherents of Adnan the Hodja") by the public

In 1994 the Islamist Welfare Party (Refah Partisi), the predecessor of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), won control of the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara. The new mayors (in Istanbul this was Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, now Turkey’s Prime Minister) sought broader support. The journalist and editor Fatih Altayli claimed that Oktar made business agreements with municipalities under the control of the Welfare party. This claim was denied by Oktar, and resulted in libel suits against Fatih Altayli with various results. After a court case lasting two years the charges were dismissed.

After September 11, 2001 and the WTC attacks, Oktar published a book called Islam Denounces Terrorism. Oktar spoke more of interfaith dialogue, attempting to unify believers of all stripes. Muslims, Christians and Jews should unite against the corrupting influence of Darwinism, which he held responsible for fascism, anti-Semitism and the holocaust. and worldwide. He built a large publishing enterprise with publications sold though Islamic bookstore worldwide. He is considered "one of the most widely distributed authors in the Muslim world". Adnan Oktar has been preaching about the “Turkish-Islamic Union”, which would bring peace to the entire Muslim world under the leadership of Turkey.

Writings

Oktar has written numerous books under the pen name Harun Yahya. Harun referring to the biblical Aaron and Yahya referring to the New Testament John the Baptist.

Oktar's books on faith-related topics attempt to communicate the existence and oneness of God (Allah in the Qur'an ) according to the Islamic faith, and are written with the main purpose of introducing Islam to those who are strangers to religion. Each of his books on science-related topics stresses his views on the might, sublimity, and majesty of God. These books attempt to display for non-Muslims what Oktar claims to be signs of the existence of God, and the excellence of his creation. A sub-group within this series are the series of "Books Demolishing the Lie of Evolution", a critique of the ideas of materialism, evolution, Darwinism, and atheism.

These publications argue against evolution. They assert that evolution denies the existence of God, abolishes moral values, and promotes materialism and communism. Oktar argues that Darwinism, by stressing the "survival of the fittest", has inspired racism, Nazism, communism and terrorism. A claim not unexpected in Turkey when during the political turmoil before a 1980 military coup, communist bookshops touted Darwin's works as a complement to Karl Marx.

Truman State University physicist Taner Edis, who was born in Turkey, says the secret to BAV's success is the huge popularity of the Harun Yahya books. "They're fairly lavishly produced, on good-quality paper with full-color illustrations all over the place," he says. "They're trying to compete with any sort of science publication you can find in the Western world. And in a place like Turkey, Yahya books look considerably better-published than most scientific publications.".

Creationism

The spread of organized Christian creationism to Islam began in the 1980s, when the Muslim minister of education in Turkey turned to the Institute of Creation Research (ICR), a Christian institution in Dallas Texas, for help in developing twofold curriculum that would teach evolution and creation side by side.

In 1990, the Science Research Foundation (BAV in Turkish) was formed in Istanbul, headed by Oktar.

Oktar for many years drew on the writings of young earth Christian creationists to develop his case against evolution. However, Islam does not require belief in Young Earth creationism, and making use of the fact that earth may have existed for billions of years, Oktar later produced material which was more similar to Intelligent Design. So similar in fact, that Harun Yahya's website was listed as an 'Islamic intelligent design' website by the Discovery Institute.

In early 1998, the BAV launched its first campaign against evolution/Darwinism. They regularly ran full-page ads against evolution in daily Turkish newspapers and even ran an ad in the U.S. magazine TIME. A number of faculty members were harassed, threatened and slandered in fliers, leading to legal action against BAV (see "Legal Issues" below).

In 2005, Professor Ümit Sayın summed up the effect of the BAV's campaign when he said to The Pitch:

However, the reaction of scientific community is negative and dismissive.

Taner Edis has said "there is nothing new in the Yahya material: scientifically negligible arguments and outright distortions often copied from Christian anti-evolution literature, presented with a conservative Muslim emphasis" concluding it "has no scholarly standing whatsoever". According to Richard Dawkins, Oktar "doesn't know anything about zoology, doesn't know anything about biology. He knows nothing about what he is attempting to refute".

The Atlas of Creation

Oktar published volume 1 of his Yaratılış Atlası (The Atlas of Creation), with Global Publishing, Istanbul, Turkey in October 2006. Volumes 2 and 3 followed in 2007. A dedicated website (yaratilisatlasi.com, English atlasofcreation.com) registered to Global Yayıncılık (Global Publishing), Istanbul, went online also in 2007.

At 11 x 17 inches and 12 pounds, with a bright red cover and almost 800 glossy pages, most of them lavishly illustrated, “Atlas of Creation” is according the New York Times "probably the largest and most beautiful creationist challenge yet to Darwin’s theory, which Mr. Yahya calls a feeble and perverted ideology contradicted by the Koran".

However, the book has been widely criticized and dismissed by scientists.

Biologist Kevin Padian from University of California, Berkeley, said that people who had received copies were “just astounded at its size and production values and equally astonished at what a load of crap it is." adding that "[Oktar] does not really have any sense of what we know about how things change through time.” .

Biologist PZ Myers wrote: "The general pattern of the book is repetitious and predictable: the book shows a picture of a fossil and a photo of a living animal, and declares that they haven't changed a bit, therefore evolution is false. Over and over. It gets old fast, and it's usually wrong (they have changed!) and the photography, while lovely, is entirely stolen."

The Council of Europe's Committee on Culture, Science and Education wrote in its report on this book that "None of the arguments in this work are based on any scientific evidence, and the book appears more like a primitive theological treatise than the scientific refutation of the theory of evolution."

Conspiracy theories

Oktar propagates a number of conspiracy theories, beginning with his 1986 Yahudilik ve Masonluk (Judaism and Freemasonry). The book suggests that the principal mission of Jews and Freemasons in Turkey was to erode the spiritual, religious, and moral values of the Turkish people and, thus, make them like animals, as stated in what Oktar refers to as their use of "Distorted Torah." Oktar asserts that "the materialist standpoint, evolution theory, anti-religious and immoral lifestyles were indoctrinated to the society as a whole" by Jews and Freemasons. and Global Freemasonry. According to Oktar, Freemasonry is "the main architect of the world system based on materialist philosophy, but which keeps that true identity concealed." In recent publications and interviews (since 2004), Oktar qualifies his condemnations of Zionism and Freemasonry by adding the word atheist before them, as in atheist Zionists and atheist Freemasons.

According to an recent interview Oktar's position is essentially merely against atheism as he has met Christians and Jews worldwide. He stated his objectives of a religious alliance "include waging a joint intellectual and spiritual battle against the worldwide growing tide of irreligiousness, unbelief and immorality." The interviewer noted "But even more unusual is their agreement with regard to the need to rebuild the Jewish Temple, a structure that Mr. Oktar refers to as the 'Masjid (Mosque)' or the 'Palace of Solomon.'"

Holocaust Denial and Affirmation

In 1996, BAV distributed its first book, originally published the previous year, entitled Soykırım Yalanı (The Holocaust Lie). This book claims that "what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans."

In 1996, during a slander suit brought against Turkish painter and intellectual, Bedri Baykam, Baykam exposed Adnan Oktar as responsible for the publication of The Holocaust Lie.

Three years later the Stephen Roth Institute expressed the opinion that Adnan Oktar had increased his tolerance toward others, asserting that "he now works towards promoting inter-religious dialogue".

In 2006, BAV published a book affirming the Holocaust, called The Holocaust Violence. The Holocaust Violence states "The Nazis subjected European Jews to indisputable and unforgivable cruelty during World War II. They humiliated, insulted and degraded millions of Jewish civilians, forcing them from their homes and enslaving them in concentration camps under inhuman conditions... Certainly the Jewish people, of whom 5.5 million died in concentration camps, were the worst victims of the Nazi barbarity."

In a 2007 interview with The Guardian, Oktar denied writing The Holocaust Lie, a claim that The Guardian stated was "hard to believe.". The next year in an interview with Der Spiegel, Adnan Oktar stated that "The Holocaust Lie," had been written by a member of his organization who had published his own essays using Oktar's pen-name "Harun Yahya", upon his own initiative. Oktar disclaimed the first book, and said the second book reflected his own opinions.

In 2009, Oktar expressed his views for Jews in his own words, "hatred or anger toward the line of the Prophet Abraham is completely unacceptable. The Prophet Abraham is our ancestor, and the Jews are our brothers. We want the descendants of the Prophet Abraham to live in the easiest, pleasantest and most peaceful manner. We want them to be free to perform their religious obligations, to live as they wish in the lands of their forebears and to frequently remember Allah in comfort and security." In 2009 and 2010, Oktar published several websites of Jewish interest.

Legal issues, arrest, trial, and sentencing

In the last two decades, Oktar has been involved in a number of legal cases, both as defendant and plaintiff. Oktar is seen as controversial in the Turkish media. Although most of the legal cases are unrelated to creationism or religion, a BAV spokesperson says Oktar is being persecuted “because of his ideas.” Physicist Taner Edis of Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, who has followed the case closely says given the political pressures on Turkey’s justice system, that’s “not entirely implausible.”

In the summer of 1986, Adnan Oktar was arrested for his statement "I am from the nation of Abraham and Turkish ethnicity" in a newspaper interview. According to the New Humanist, Oktar was arrested for promoting a theocratic revolution for which he served 19 months, though he was never formally charged. He was later acquitted.

A number of faculty members who taught Evolution were harassed, threatened and slandered in fliers that labeled them "Maoists". In 1999, six of the professors won a civil court case against the BAV for defamation and were each awarded $4,000.

In 1999 Adnan Oktar was arrested and charged with using threats for personal benefit and creating an organization with the intent to commit a crime. The judicial process lasted over two years, during which most of the complainants retracted their claims. As a result, cases against Oktar and other BAV members were dismissed. Consequently, in the face of all these allegations against BAV, the Chairman of the Court announced in the hearing dated 29.02.2008 that testimonies obtained through unlawful means may not be considered as evidence based on article 148 of the criminal code.

Oktar was convicted of creating an illegal organization for personal gain. He and 17 other members of his organisation were sentenced to three years in prison. Oktar denied the charges and appealed the verdict. In May 2010, the Court of Appeals overturned the conviction and dismissed the charges.

Blocking of Internet sites

Since 2007 Oktar has successfully had the Turkish government block public access to several websites. In April 2007, Oktar filed a libel lawsuit against the owners of Ekşi Sözlük, a virtual community similar to everything2. The court reviewed the complaint and ordered the service provider to close the site to public access. The site was temporarily suspended so the entry on Oktar could be expunged and locked. Then access to Süper Poligon, a news website, was also restricted following Oktar's complaint. In August 2007, Oktar got a Turkish court to block WordPress.com in all of Turkey. His lawyers argued that blogs on WordPress.com contained libelous material on Oktar and his colleague, which WordPress.com staff was unwilling to remove.

In addition, Edip Yuksel, a Turkish writer who knew Oktar in the 1980s and is now critical of him, had his website banned in Turkey from Oktar's complaints. In addition, Yuksel wrote a Turkish-language book about Oktar called The Cult of the Antichrist, but he has yet to find "a publisher willing to brave Mr. Oktar's lawyers." One week later a complaint by Oktar led to the banning of the internet site of the Union of Education and Scientific Workers (Türk Eğitim Sen). This was followed by a block of the country's third-biggest newspaper site, Vatan, in October.

Television Broadcasting

Recently, as of 21st March 2011, Adnan Oktar started television broadcasting on A9 satellite channel where his interviews as well as night lectures are broadcast live. The main purpose of foundation of this television channel is announced to promote love, justice and cooperation among people in Turkey as well as the entire world.

Bibliography

Oktar's books and brochures appear in Turkish with "Vural Yayıncılık" ("Global Publishing"), Istanbul. English translations of Oktar's books appear with "Ta-Ha Publishers", London, UK; "Global Publishing", Istanbul, Turkey; "Al-Attique Publishers", Ontario, Canada and "Goodword Books", New Delhi, India.

Publication media includes: Books, Booklets (Pamphlets), Children's Books, Journals, Documentaries, Audio Books, CD's, Posters and over a hundred websites. The total number of books and brochures published by Oktar number in the hundreds. The works are lavishly produced, on good-quality paper with full-color illustrations and sold in Islamic bookstores worldwide.

References

External links

Official Harun Yahya site

Harun Yahya: Catalog of works

Taner Edis: Harun Yahya and Islamic Creationism (2003)

Richard Dawkins on Harun Yahya's Atlas of Creation

Category:Article Feedback Pilot Category:1956 births Category:People from Ankara Category:Turkish Muslims Category:Living people Category:Turkish prisoners and detainees Category:Islamic creationists Category:Conspiracy theorists Category:Internet censorship Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Anti-Masonry

Width	250
Caption	Brian Dawkins during the 2009 NFL season.
Currentpositionplain	Safety
Currentteam	Denver Broncos
Currentnumber	20
Birthdate	October 13, 1973
Birthplace	Jacksonville, Florida
Heightft	6
Heightin	0
Weight	210
Debutyear	1996
Debutteam	Philadelphia Eagles
College	Clemson
Draftyear	1996
Draftround	2
Draftpick	61
Pastteams
Status	Active
Highlights
Statweek	6
Statseason	2010
Statlabel1	Tackles
Statvalue1	1,041
Statlabel2	Sacks
Statvalue2	22.0
Statlabel3	INTs
Statvalue3	37
Nfl	DAW041411

Brian Patrick Dawkins (born October 13, 1973 in Jacksonville, Florida) is an American football safety for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the second round of the 1996 NFL Draft. He played college football at Clemson.

An eight-time Pro Bowl selection, Dawkins is a member of the Philadelphia Eagles 75th Anniversary Team and 20/20 Club.

College career

A three-year starter at free safety for Clemson University, Dawkins finished his career with 247 tackles and 11 interceptions. He was a 2nd team All-American selection as a senior when his team-high six interceptions tied him for the conference lead. He was named the first-team strong safety on Clemson's all-centennial team in 1995 and was selected to their Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

Professional career

Philadelphia Eagles

Dawkins was drafted in the second round of the 1996 NFL Draft by the Philadelphia Eagles. As a rookie in 1996, he replaced Greg Jackson as the starting free safety, remaining in that position for 13 years until he signed with the Denver Broncos in 2009. In 1996, he started 13 of the 14 games he played in, recording 75 tackles, a sack, and three interceptions. During his Eagles career Dawkins was elected to seven Pro Bowls in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2008. In 2002 in a game versus the Houston Texans he became the first player in NFL history to record a sack, an interception, forced fumble, and touchdown reception in a single game. During the 2008 season he became the tenth member of the 20/20 Club and broke the Eagles record for games played surpassing Harold Carmichael who had 180. After the 2008 season Dawkins became a free agent. He finished his career with the Eagles starting 182 of 183 games, recording 898 tackles, 34 interceptions, and 21 sacks.

Denver Broncos

On February 28, 2009, Dawkins signed a five-year, $17 million contract with the Denver Broncos. He joined another teammate, Correll Buckhalter, who also signed with the Broncos. The contract includes $7.2 million guaranteed and a termination clause that says Dawkins can opt out of the contract after two years and receive an extra $1.8 million, virtually making the contract for two years and $9 million. Dawkins can also earn an additional $10 million in performance incentives.

On December 29, 2009, the NFL announced that Dawkins was the starter of the AFC Pro Bowl team as a strong safety. Dawkins played in 16 of 16 games for the 2009 broncos. He totaled 116 tackles and 2 interceptions. In 2010 Dawkins had an injury shortened season compiling only 66 tackles and 2 interceptions while only playing in 11 games

Personal life

In early 2007, Dawkins and his wife gave birth to twin daughters, Chonni and Cionni. Both daughters were born two months premature, but are currently healthy. Dawkins, with his wife, Connie, also have two other children, Brian Jr. and Brionni.

While with the Eagles, Dawkins had been a resident of Voorhees Township, New Jersey, but put his house there up for sale after joining the Broncos.

After Dawkins signed with the Broncos in 2009, Dan Leone, an Eagles employee who was a gate chief at Lincoln Financial Field was fired by the Eagles after Leone posted messages on his Facebook page expressing his disappointment in the team. Dawkins announced that he would give his two allotted game tickets for the 2009 Eagles-Broncos game to Leone, saying, "I felt it would be a good thing, to reach out to that individual and just let him know how much I appreciate it."

References

External links

Denver Broncos bio

Philadelphia Eagles bio

Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:American Christians Category:People from Jacksonville, Florida Category:People from Voorhees Township, New Jersey Category:American football safeties Category:Clemson Tigers football players Category:Philadelphia Eagles players Category:Denver Broncos players Category:National Conference Pro Bowl players Category:American Conference Pro Bowl players

Name	Sean Taylor
Caption	Taylor at Redskins training camp, August 2005.
Currentnumber	21, 36
Currentpositionplain	Safety
Birthdate	April 01, 1983
Birthplace	Miami, Florida
Deathdate	November 27, 2007
Deathplace	Miami, Florida
Heightft	6
Heightin	2
Weight	212
Highschool	Gulliver Preparatory School
College	Miami (Fla.)
Draftyear	2004
Draftround	1
Draftpick	5
Debutyear	2004
Debutteam	Washington Redskins
Finalteam	Washington Redskins
Finalyear	2007
Pastteams
Highlights
Statseason	2007
Statlabel1	Tackles
Statvalue1	299
Statlabel2	Interceptions
Statvalue2	12
Statlabel3	Forced fumbles
Statvalue3	8
Statlabel4	Quarterback sacks
Statvalue4	2.0
Statlabel5	Touchdowns
Statvalue5	1
Nfl	TAY696860
Pfr	TaylSe20
Dbf	TAYLOSEA01

Sean Michael Maurice Taylor (April 1, 1983 – November 27, 2007) was an American football free safety who played for the Washington Redskins of the National Football League. Taylor was drafted in the first round (fifth overall) of the 2004 NFL Draft by the Redskins. He played college football at the University of Miami and was a member of the Hurricanes' 2001 National Championship team. Due to his ferocious hits, several of his pro teammates nicknamed him "Meast," an abbreviation for the term "half man, half beast."

Taylor died at the age of 24 on November 27, 2007, from critical injuries due to gunshots by intruders at his Miami area home. His death led to an outpouring of national support and sympathy, especially in the Washington area, where Taylor had been a fan favorite as a Redskin and the Miami area, where Taylor had starred collegiately for the Miami Hurricanes.

In honor of Taylor, on the first play of the first game after he was murdered, the Redskins defense lined up with only 10 players (leaving the area Taylor lined up at free safety open) against the Buffalo Bills.

Early years

Taylor was born April 1, 1983 in Miami to Pedro Taylor, a policeman, and Donna Junor. He spent his early years growing up with his great-grandmother Aulga Clarke in Homestead and later moved to his father's home at the age of 10. He grew up in a low-income neighborhood in Miami, on a street lined with candy-colored houses.

Taylor played high school football in Pinecrest, a suburb of Miami. He originally began his high school football career at 6A Miami Killian High School, but left for 2A Gulliver School Pinecrest Campus, where he could play both offense and defense. Despite missing the first game of the season (the team's only loss), he helped Gulliver win the Florida Class 2A State Championship in 2000 with a 14–1 record. Taylor was a star on both sides of the ball during that season, playing running back, defensive back and linebacker. He rushed for 1,400 yards and a state-record 44 touchdowns and on two separate occasions, rushed for more than 200 yards during Gulliver’s state playoff run. He also racked up more than 100 tackles during the season and scored 3 touchdowns (two receiving, one rushing) in the state title game victory over Marianna High School.

Taylor was considered the No. 1 prospect in Miami-Dade County by the Miami Herald. He was also rated the nation’s No. 1 skill athlete and an All-American by super prep. Furthermore, Taylor was an Orlando Sentinel Super Southern Team selection, the No. 1 athlete on the Florida Times-Union Super 75 list and rated the Number 1 player in Florida by the Gainesville Sun.

In 2007 he was also named to the Florida High School Association All-Century Team which selected the Top 33 players in the 100-year history of high school football in the state.

After his death, Taylor was honored at Gulliver by a plaque that was placed in the academy's cafeteria.

College career

2001 season

Taylor was recruited into the University of Miami Hurricanes and carved a niche for himself in Miami's secondary in nickel and dime defensive schemes as a freshman (he was one of just four true freshmen to play for the team). During the season, Taylor was named Big East Special Teams Player of the Week for his performance against the Pittsburgh Panthers. |}(* represents NFL Combine)

Washington Redskins

Following his selection by the Redskins, Taylor signed a seven-year, $18 million contract with the team.

In Week 9, Taylor returned a blocked Mike Vanderjagt field goal into Dallas Cowboys territory and was awarded a 15 yard penalty after Kyle Kosier grabbed his facemask. This set up the winning field goal by Nick Novak.

Three weeks later in Week 12, Taylor had his best game of the season against the Carolina Panthers. Though he played well throughout the game, his presence was felt most sharply in the final minutes in which he made a key 4th-down tackle to prevent a 1st down and intercepted Jake Delhomme to seal the victory. He earned NFL Defensive Player of the Week honors following the game.

Even while playing on a struggling Redskins defensive unit, Taylor's impact on the field was recognized when he was named a first alternate to the NFC's 2007 Pro Bowl team. When the NFC's first choice for safety, Brian Dawkins of the Philadelphia Eagles, chose not to play in the Pro Bowl due to an injury, Taylor was named to the vacated spot, marking his first and only Pro Bowl appearance. A crushing hit by Taylor on Buffalo Bills punter Brian Moorman in the Pro Bowl created much fan and media discussion.

2007 season

Prior to the start of the 2007 season, Sports Illustrated named Taylor the hardest-hitting player in the NFL.

Before the season, in a rare interview, he was quoted as saying, "[Y]ou play a kid's game for a king's ransom. And if you don't take it serious enough, eventually one day you're going to say, 'Oh, I could have done this, I could have done that.'" The season appeared to represent a personal turnaround for Taylor, as teammates said that he had finally gotten his life straightened out because of his daughter.

Also before the season, the Redskins decided to use Taylor in a more traditional free safety role with less responsibility.

At the time of his death, Taylor was tied for the most interceptions in the National Football Conference and second in the league with 5 despite having missed Weeks 11 and 12 with a knee injury. Playing at a high level,

Controversies

Following Taylor's early departure from the University of Miami and his drafting by the Redskins, a number of criminal troubles plagued Taylor's NFL career, including:

2004 DUI arrest in Virginia

Taylor was arrested in Fairfax County, Virginia at 2:45am on October 27, 2004 for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol following a birthday party in Washington for former Redskins receiver Rod Gardner. Pulled over for driving 82 mph on the Beltway, where the speed limit is 55 mph, Taylor failed a field sobriety test and then refused a blood alcohol (BAC) test, which resulted in his arrest. A Fairfax County judge acquitted Taylor of the charges in March 2005 after viewing a videotape of Taylor's roadside sobriety tests that, according to the judge, failed to demonstrate obvious intoxication. Taylor was, however, convicted for refusing to take a blood alcohol test requested by a Virginia state police officer. But when this case was heard on appeal in March 2005, Taylor was acquitted of refusing to take the BAC test, with the judge ruling there was a lack of probable cause for the request.

2005 armed assault arrest in Miami

Events: On June 3, 2005, Taylor was named publicly as a "person of interest" by Miami-Dade County police in regard to a Miami assault case involving firearms, and was being sought for questioning. "We need to speak to him, we don't know if he's a victim, witness or suspect," Miami-Dade police spokesman Mary Walters said. Taylor allegedly was present at, and possibly involved in, an incident on June 1 in which bullets allegedly were fired into a stolen vehicle.

On June 5, ESPN and the Miami Herald both reported that Taylor, accompanied by his lawyer, had surrendered to Miami-Dade police at approximately 10pm EST on June 4 at the Cutler Ridge district police station, from which he was transported to the Turner Guilford Knight correctional facility. He was charged with aggravated assault with a firearm (a felony) and misdemeanor battery. Miami-Dade police issued a statement the same day confirming the earlier reports. Taylor had allegedly pointed a gun at a person over a dispute over two ATVs that he claimed were stolen.

The Associated Press reported that Taylor was held in detention at Turner Gilford Knight and released the evening of June 4 after posting bond of $16,500. The Miami-Dade County Clerk's Office announced that he would soon be officially arraigned on the charges.

The Washington Post reported on March 3, 2006 that Taylor's trial had been postponed until April 10. Days before that date, the trial was moved back once more, this time by a week, because of conflicts with Passover and Easter celebrations.

Armed assault plea agreement and resolution

On January 28, 2006, the Miami-Dade County prosecutor announced that he was filing new charges against Taylor, which would have increased his potential maximum jail time from 16 years to 46 years. The new charges included increasing his felony assault charges from one to three, which reflected the allegation that, on June 1, 2005, he brandished a firearm at three individuals who Taylor believed stole two all-terrain vehicles from him.

On April 17, the trial was again postponed until May 8, after the prosecutor in the case asked the presiding judge to be removed from the case. The county prosecutor's request for removal from the case came as Taylor's defense. Lawyers argued that the prosecutor was using the case to promote his side work as a disc jockey in South Beach. Defense lawyers for Taylor entered a motion for the case's complete dismissal, due to prosecutorial misconduct.

On May 8, the prosecution requested and received another extension of the case, citing the new prosecutor assigned to the case and a need for additional preparation time. The trial was scheduled to begin July 10 in Miami, but on June 2 the charges against Taylor were dropped as part of a negotiated plea bargain. Taylor donated his time to various charities and made $1,000 donations to 10 southern Florida schools in scholarships. In exchange, would avoid jail time and a felony record.

Death

Taylor's house had been burglarized in his absence on November 18. Media reports vaguely described the police reports of the circumstances surrounding the first burglary. Among the details noted were that the intruders pried open a window to climb into the home, went through the desk and safe that were located in Taylor's bedroom, and damaged an air conditioning unit. This report had been made by Taylor's mother, who had checked on the home and discovered the burglary. The police report did not specify if anything was stolen from the home, presumably because his mother would not know the contents of the desk or safe located in his bedroom.

Eight days after the original burglary, on November 26 at 1:45am EST, Taylor was shot in the upper leg by an armed intruder at his home in Palmetto Bay, Florida, where he had been recuperating from a football injury. He was mortally wounded in his femoral artery. His longtime girlfriend, Jackie Mofett (a niece of actor Andy García), hid under the bedding with their 18-month-old daughter Jackie. Mofett then called 9-1-1 from her cell phone.

Taylor was airlifted to the Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, where he underwent surgery. He emerged from surgery about 12:30pm. He had lost a significant amount of blood and remained in a coma. His doctors speculated he may have suffered brain damage due to the blood loss, and an unnamed Redskins source reported that Taylor's heart stopped twice during the emergency surgery. The news was released to the media by Richard Sharpstein, a family friend who learned the news from Taylor's father around 5:30am, and by Drew Rosenhaus, Taylor's agent.

Arrests

On November 30, Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Miami-Dade police detained four people in the Fort Myers area for questioning in connection with Taylor's death. The Miami Herald reported that investigators believe the four learned of Taylor's house through someone who unwittingly set up the burglary by bragging about his wealth. Later that night, Miami-Dade police spokeswoman Linda O'Brien announced that four men — Venjah K. Hunte, 20; Eric Rivera, Jr., 17; Jason Scott Mitchell, 19; and Charles Kendrick Lee Wardlow, 18 — had been arrested and charged with Taylor's murder. Police director Robert Parker added that authorities had more than one confession but would not elaborate.

All four men were charged on December 1 with felony second-degree murder, armed burglary and home invasion with a firearm or another deadly weapon, charges carrying life sentences for the perpetrators. Around 2:30pm on May 13, 2008, a fifth suspect - 16-year-old Timothy Brown - was arrested in connection with the murder. On May 14, Brown was charged with first-degree murder and armed burglary of an occupied dwelling. All murder charges were subsequently moved up to 1st-degree murder. In addition, it turned out that three of the suspects in Taylor's murder were involved in the November 18 burglary. The death penalty, however, was not sought because the gunman was the 17-year old Rivera.

Law enforcement theories

Police detectives who examined the evidence and the crime scene had suggested that Taylor was the victim of professional thieves who were armed and dangerous. Taylor's family, friends and Sharpstein, who were most aware of the factual circumstances surrounding the two break-ins, agreed with that contention. They pointed to the following known facts, none of which suggested a plot to specifically target Taylor but which combined to suggest he was the innocent victim of professional thieves who assumed the home would be empty:

Very few people in the region, not even Taylor's father, knew that Taylor was at home.

The intruders made lots of loud noises prior to attempting to break down Taylor's door, suggesting that they did not think the home was occupied.

Taylor was shot in the leg, which could mean the attacker(s) had no intent to kill him. They may not have expected Taylor to be in his bedroom so they shot because they were surprised to see him and/or because Taylor had a weapon of his own, a machete.

Disproven rumors

In the immediate aftermath of Taylor's death, speculation on the Internet and within the media suggested that the details surrounding Taylor's death were especially sinister. Among the rumors were: That a knife was left on Taylor's bed during the November 18 intrusion as a "message." Sharpstein recently clarified that the knife was a kitchen knife used by the intruders to pry things open during the first invasion and was tossed aside on the bed of Taylor's sister.

Media reaction and controversy

There has been criticism by some of the way in which Taylor's death has been covered by the media. Among the criticisms are that unsubstantiated statements by then Arizona Cardinals safety Antrel Rolle about individuals from Taylor's past who despised him for no longer associating with them garnered as much attention as did the observations of experienced police detectives.

There has also been a backlash against the pigeonholing of Taylor as a stereotypical victim of black-on-black gun violence and characterizing him as a troubled youth who was headed toward certain destruction because of his past transgressions, while ignoring the circumstances surrounding his death.

Additionally, many of Taylor's friends, teammates, coaches and old associates expressed outrage at the way he was characterized by the media, including references to the University of Miami's image.

Memorial service

On December 3, 2007, 4,000 people attended Taylor’s funeral service held in Pharmed Arena at Florida International University. The entire Redskins organization attended the funeral and took up a section of the arena, traveling the day after a home game against the Buffalo Bills and two days before another home game against the Chicago Bears.

Speakers at the nationally televised funeral service included NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, then-Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs, and current and former professional and collegiate teammates LaVar Arrington, Clinton Portis and Buck Ortega. Reverend Jesse Jackson and O. J. Simpson, whose children went to Gulliver Prep, Taylor’s high school, were in attendance. Also attending were numerous prominent University of Miami alumni, including former teammates.

Many of Taylor’s teammates wept throughout the emotional service. Taylor’s daughter Jackie sat in front with her mother, and wore a pin with her father’s jersey number 21 on the sleeve of her dress. In one of the eulogies, Taylor’s uncle Michael Outar told the audience, "I wanted him to play running back or quarterback and score all the touchdowns. The coach gave Sean number 66 and put him on the line. Before the game he said, 'Uncle Michael, what do I do?' I said, 'Hit the guy with the ball.' And that's what he did, over and over."

Taylor was buried near his Palmetto Bay home.

National Football League

The NFL recognized the death of Taylor by placing a #21 decal on the back of all NFL players' helmets during all Week 13 games; additionally, a moment of silence was held before each game that week. Players on other teams were given the option to continue wearing the decals in subsequent weeks.

Taylor was posthumously voted starting free safety for the NFC team for the 2008 Pro Bowl as a second team All-Pro. During their first defensive play, the NFC defense took the field with only 10 players in honor of Taylor.

Washington Redskins

The Redskins had the number 21 painted on the field, at a parking lot entrance and in the Redskins Ring of Fame, all three of which became temporary memorials. In addition to the black #21 sticker on the back of every NFL helmet, the Redskins also wore the number as a patch on player uniforms, warmup shirts and coaching staff jackets, as well as unveiling a banner bearing his name and number. His locker at Redskins Park was encased in Plexiglas and left the same way Taylor had left it. The organization also established a trust fund for Taylor's daughter, Jackie.

The first Redskins game after Taylor's death, on December 2, 2007 against the Buffalo Bills, was at FedEx Field. The game began with the Redskins defense playing with 10 men on the field instead of the usual 11. Players signaled to the sky, holding up the numbers two and one, on numerous occasions. The team requested everyone arrive 25 minutes before the start of the game at 12:40pm and played a four-minute remembrance video, held a moment of silence and gave attendees commemorative towels with Taylor's number on them in his honor and memory.

The Redskins had a 5–6 record at the time of Taylor's murder. Following his funeral and the loss to the Bills, they won a Thursday night game against the Chicago Bears three days later. Washington went on a four-game winning streak to close out the season, which included a 27–6 (a 21-point difference, Taylor's jersey number) home victory over division rival Dallas Cowboys in front of a record crowd to finish 9–7 and secure the final spot in the playoffs. With this win, the team became only the fourth team during the Super Bowl era to qualify for the playoffs following a 5–7 start. However, the Redskins lost to the Seattle Seahawks by 21 points during the first week of the playoffs.

Teammates Chris Cooley, Chris Samuels and Ethan Albright all wore jerseys with the #21 during the 2008 Pro Bowl. The three jerseys were auctioned off and the proceeds donated to the Sean Taylor Memorial Trust Fund.

Taylor's number 21 has not been reissued by the team. It is not known at this time if it has been removed from circulation as being "unofficially retired," as the Redskins do not retire jersey numbers. When O.J. Atogwe, who wore number 21 with the Rams, signed with the Redskins, he said that he would not take number 21.

At the Redskins game against the New York Giants on November 30, 2008, Clinton Portis ran down the field with a flag in the team's colors with the number 21 on it to honor the anniversary of Sean Taylor's death. They also painted the middle of the field with the number 21 instead of the Redskins symbol.

University of Miami

At the University of Miami in Coral Gables, a banner honoring Taylor signed by students and alumni was displayed in the student union breezeway, and a candlelight vigil was held on the campus in his honor the evening of December 2, 2007. Due to a previously scheduled event later that week, Sean Taylor's funeral was held on December 3 at nearby Florida International University at Pharmed Arena instead of at BankUnited Center on the University of Miami campus.

Trial

Although originally scheduled for April 7, 2008, the trial of the men charged with Sean Taylor's murder was postponed to June 2009. The trial was postponed by petition of the defense, saying that there were still hundreds of potential witnesses who needed to be interviewed before the trial could proceed. The trial was delayed for a third time on June 9, 2009 for unspecified reasons. A new trial date was set for January 18, 2010, and was postponed again with a trial date of March 14, 2011. On May 12, 2008, it was announced the suspects, if convicted, would not face the death penalty, but may be subjected to life imprisonment because the suspected gunman, Eric Rivera, was only 17 at the time of the shooting. On May 15, 2008, Venjah Hunte, one of the five suspects in Taylor's murder, accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to 29 years in prison. On April 1, 2009, Hunte petitioned the court to withdraw his guilty plea.

Memorial

Ring of Fame Induction

Sean Taylor was inducted posthumously into the Washington Redskins Ring of Fame on November 30, 2008. He joined 42 others and is the first player introduced to the ring since Gary Clark was inducted in late 2007.

References

External links

Official website

Sean Taylor biography at NNDB

Sean Taylor memorial at Sports Enyclopedia

Biography and photo of Jackie Garcia, Sean Taylor's former girlfriend, at University of Miami women's soccer page

"Family Ties Offer Link in Taylor Killing," ''The Washington Post, December 2, 2007

The Washington Post, December 2, 2007">"Fourth Taylor Suspect Appears in Court, Denied Bond," The Washington Post, December 2, 2007

Sean Taylor video tribute at Yahoo

Jackie Garcia Biography

Category:African American players of American football Category:All-American college football players Category:American football safeties Category:Deaths by firearm in Florida Category:Miami Hurricanes football players Category:Murdered African-American people Category:Murdered players of American football Category:National Conference Pro Bowl players Category:People from Miami, Florida Category:People murdered in Florida Category:Washington Redskins players Category:1983 births Category:2007 deaths

Name	Sean Hannity
Caption	Sean Hannity at King of Prussia Mall (2004)
Birth date	December 30, 1961|
Birth place	New York City, New York United States
Nationality	American
Known for	Political commentary
Employer	Citadel Broadcasting, Fox News Channel
Occupation	Radio host/television host, political commentator, author
Party	Conservative Party of New York
Religion	Catholic
Spouse	Jill Rhodes Hannity
Parents	Hugh J. and Lillian F. Hannity
Website	Hannity.com
Education	New York UniversityAdelphi University

Sean Hannity (born December 30, 1961) is an American radio and television host, author, and conservative political commentator. He is the host of The Sean Hannity Show, a nationally syndicated talk-radio show that airs throughout the United States on Premiere Radio Networks. Hannity also hosts a cable-news show, Hannity, on Fox News Channel. Hannity has also written three New York Times bestselling books: , , and .

Personal background

Hannity is the son of Hugh J. and Lillian F. Hannity. His paternal and maternal grandparents emigrated from Ireland. He has two sisters, Joanne S. Hannity and Therese (Hannity) Grisham. He grew up in Franklin Square, New York and attended Sacred Heart Seminary in Hempstead, New York during his middle school years and St. Pius X Preparatory Seminary high school in Uniondale, New York. Hannity dropped out of New York University and Adelphi University to pursue his broadcasting career.

During the late 1980s, Hannity was a general contractor in Santa Barbara, California and also a bartender.

Professional life

Dick Cheney]] Hannity hosted his first talk radio show in 1989 at the volunteer college station at UC Santa Barbara, KCSB-FM, while working as a general contractor. The show aired for 40 hours of air time; Regarding his first show, Hannity has said, "I wasn't good at it. I was terrible." Hannity's weekly show on KCSB was canceled after less than a year by station managers upset with his remarks about gays and lesbians. This was after two shows featuring the book The AIDS Coverup: The Real and Alarming Facts about AIDS by Gene Antonio; among other remarks, Hannity told a lesbian caller "I feel sorry for your child". The station later reversed its decision to dismiss Hannity due in part to a campaign conducted by the Santa Barbara Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Hannity decided against returning to KCSB.

After leaving KCSB, Hannity placed an ad in radio publications presenting himself as "the most talked about college radio host in America." Radio station WVNN in Athens, Alabama (part of the Huntsville market) then hired him to be the afternoon talk show host. Alan Colmes was then hired to co-host and the show debuted as Hannity & Colmes.

Later that year Hannity left WGST for New York, where WABC had him substitute for their afternoon drive time host during Christmas week. In January 1997, WABC put Hannity on the air full-time, giving him the late night time slot. WABC then moved Hannity to the same drive time slot he had filled temporarily a little more than a year earlier. Hannity has been on WABC's afternoon time slot since January 1998.

Conservative Cal Thomas and liberal Bob Beckel, in their book Common Ground, describe Hannity as a leader of the pack among broadcasting political polarizers, which following James Q. Wilson they define as those who have "an intense commitment to a candidate, a culture, or an ideology that sets people in one group definitively apart from people in another, rival group."

Television

Hannity was a co-host of Hannity & Colmes, an American political "point-counterpoint"-style television program on the Fox News Channel featuring Hannity and Alan Colmes as co-hosts. Hannity presented the conservative point of view with Colmes providing the liberal viewpoint. Critics argued that the show highlighted Hannity's views and those of conservative guests over Colmes' and those of liberal guests.

Hannity had on air clashes with show guests such as Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer of Human Life International, who challenged Hannity on his public dissent from the Catholic Church on the issue of contraception. Hannity stated that if the Catholic Church were to excommunicate him over the issue, he would join Jerry Falwell's Thomas Road Baptist Church.

In January 2007, Hannity began a new Sunday night television show on Fox News, Hannity's America.

In November 2008, Colmes announced his departure from Hannity & Colmes. After the show's final broadcast on January 9, 2009, Hannity took over the time slot with his own new show, Hannity, which has a format similar to Hannity's America

Radio

Hannity's radio program is a conservative political talk show that features Hannity's opinions and ideology related to current issues and politicians. The Sean Hannity Show began national syndication on September 10, 2001 on over 500 stations nationwide. As of spring 2008, the program is heard by over 13.25 million listeners a week. In 2004, Hannity signed a $25 million five-year contract extension with ABC Radio (now Citadel Media) to continue the show through 2009. The program was made available via Armed Forces Radio Network in 2006. In June 2007, ABC Radio was sold to Citadel Communications.

In January 2007, Clear Channel Communications signed a groupwide three-year extension with Hannity on over 80 stations. The largest stations in the group deal included KTRH Houston, KFYI Phoenix, WPGB Pittsburgh, WKRC Cincinnati, WOOD Grand Rapids, WFLA Tampa, WOAI San Antonio, WLAC Nashville, and WREC Memphis.

The opening theme music for the Sean Hannity Show is "Independence Day" by Martina McBride followed by "Eye of the Tiger" by Survivor.

Books

Hannity is the author of three books. The first two, and Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism, were published through ReganBooks. Both of these books reached the nonfiction New York Times bestseller list, the second of which stayed there for five weeks. Hannity has stated that he is too busy to write many books,

Hannity wrote his third book, , which was released by HarperCollins on March 30, 2010. The book became Hannity's third New York Times Bestseller.

Freedom Concerts

Since 2003, Hannity has hosted country music–themed "Freedom Concerts" billed to help benefit the Freedom Alliance Scholarship Fund, a charity created by Oliver North to provide college scholarships to children with a parent severely disabled or killed in military action. As of 2009, more than $9 million has been raised by the concerts.

Artists such as Charlie Daniels, Billy Ray Cyrus, Martina McBride, Buddy Jewell, LeAnn Rimes, Lee Greenwood, Headlining names for the 2010 concert series were Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, and Michael W. Smith.

The charity has been criticized by conservative-leaning blogger Debbie Schlussel for distributing too little of its funds for charitable purposes. In March 2010, two liberal organizations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington group (CREW) and the political action committee VoteVets.org, requested that the Federal Trade Commission investigate Freedom Alliance, Freedom Concerts, Hannity, North and others. The complaint alleges the claims that all of the concerts' proceeds go toward scholarships are false. CREW also asked the IRS to investigate whether Freedom Alliance' engaged in political activities in violation their non-profit, tax-exempt status. The president of the charity overseeing the scholarships, Freedom Alliance, called the allegations "baseless" and added that "there is absolutely no merit to the scurrilous charges launched against Freedom Alliance from two of the most left-wing organizations in the country." Hannity is not on the staff or board of Freedom Alliance.

Awards and honors

Hannity received a Marconi Award in 2003 and 2007 as the Network Syndicated Personality of the Year from the National Association of Broadcasters. In 2009, Talkers Magazine listed Hannity as #2 on their list of the 100 most important radio talk show hosts in America. The same magazine gave Hannity their Freedom of Speech Award in 2003. In 2005, Jerry Falwell, chancellor of Liberty University, awarded Hannity an honorary degree. Radio and Records magazine has honored Hannity with the National Talk Show Host of the Year Award for three consecutive years.

Bibliography

Hannity, Sean (2002). , ReganBooks, ISBN 0-06-051455-8.

Hannity, Sean (2004). , ReganBooks, ISBN 0-06-058251-0.

Hannity, Sean (2010). , Harper Paperbacks, ISBN 0-06-200305-4.

References

External links

Sean Hannity's official website

Sean Hannity's biography (Fox News)

Hannity Official Fox News site

List of radio stations streaming the Sean Hannity Show

Sean Hannity's bio and title list from HarperCollins

Timeline of Hannity's life and career

Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:Adelphi University alumni Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American broadcasters of Irish descent Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American writers of Irish descent Category:American Roman Catholics Category:Conservatism in the United States Category:Environmental skepticism Category:New York University alumni Category:People from New York City Category:People from Nassau County, New York Category:Fox News Channel people

Name	Jim Harbaugh
Width	200
Caption	Harbaugh with Stanford in August 2010
Currentteam	San Francisco 49ers
Currentposition	Head coach
Birthdate	December 23, 1963
Birthplace	Toledo, Ohio
Heightft	6
Heightin	3
Weight	215
Highschool	Palo Alto High SchoolAnn Arbor Pioneer High School
College	Michigan
Draftyear	1987
Draftround	1
Draftpick	26
Debutyear	1987
Debutteam	Chicago Bears
Finalteam	Carolina Panthers
Finalyear	2001
Coachdebutyear	2011
Coachdebutteam	San Francisco 49ers
Pastteams
Pastcoaching
Highlights
Statseason	2001
Statlabel1	TD–INT
Statvalue1	129–117
Statlabel2	Passing yards
Statvalue2	26,288
Statlabel3	QB rating
Statvalue3	77.6
Nfl	HAR004303

James Joseph "Jim" Harbaugh (born December 23, 1963) is an American football coach and former player. He is currently the head coach for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League. Harbaugh agreed to a five-year deal with the San Francisco 49ers on January 7, 2011. Previously, he was the head coach at Stanford University for four seasons and the University of San Diego for three seasons. Harbaugh is also a former NFL quarterback who played for the Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts, Baltimore Ravens, and San Diego Chargers. He was selected by the Bears with the 26th pick in the first round of the 1987 NFL Draft. He played college football at Michigan. Harbaugh and his older brother, Baltimore Ravens coach John Harbaugh, are the first pair of brothers to serve as head coaches in NFL history.

College playing career

Harbaugh played for the junior league Ann Arbor Packers, then for Tappan Junior High, going on to Pioneer High School and then to Palo Alto High School in California, where he graduated in the class of 1982. He was a four-year letterman at the University of Michigan and finished his college career in the top five in passing attempts, completions, completion percentage, passing yards, and touchdown passes in school history. Playing for Michigan coach Bo Schembechler, he was a three-year starter, though he broke his arm five games into the 1984 season and sat out the remainder the year. As a junior in 1985, Harbaugh led the nation in passing efficiency and quarterbacked one of Schembechler's best teams. The 1985 team posted a 10–1–1 record, defeated Nebraska in the 1986 Fiesta Bowl, and finished with a #2 ranking in the final polls, the highest finish for Michigan during Schembechler's tenure as head coach. As a senior in 1986, Harbaugh guided Michigan to an 11–2 record (which included his guaranteed victory over arch-rival Ohio State, which Michigan won, 26–24 in Columbus) and a berth in the 1987 Rose Bowl while earning Big Ten Conference Player of the Year honors and finishing third in the Heisman balloting. Harbaugh was also named to the Big Ten's All-Academic team, as well as the 1986 AP and UPI All-American teams. He held the career NCAA Division I FBS passing efficiency rating record (325–399 completions) for 12 years. He led the nation in efficiency in 1985.

Career passing statistics

{|class="wikitable" width="65%" |- align="center" style="background:yellow;color:blue;" | Year||Att||Comp||Int||Comp %||Yds||Yds/Comp||TD||Long |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1983||5||2||0||40.0||26||13.0||0||19 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1984||111||60||5||54.1||718||12.0||3||45 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1985||227||145||6||63.9||1,976||13.6||18||77 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1986||277||180||11||65.0||2,729||15.2||10||62 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | Total||620||387||22||62.4||5,449||14.1||31||77 |- align="center" bgcolor="" |}

Career rushing statistics

{|class="wikitable" width="60%" |- align="center" style="background:yellow;color:blue;" | Year||Att||Net Yd||Yd/Att||TD||Long |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1983||2||−15||−7.5||0||0 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1984||42||54||1.3||0||16 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1985||79||139||1.8||4||24 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | 1986||94||118||1.3||8||20 |- align="center" bgcolor="" | Total||217||296||1.4||12||24 |- align="center" bgcolor="" |}

NFL playing career

Harbaugh entered the NFL as a first-round draft pick by the Chicago Bears in 1987. He played seven seasons for the Bears and passed for a career-high 3,121 yards with them in 1991.

From 1994 to 1997, Harbaugh quarterbacked the Indianapolis Colts, and in 1995, achieved career highs in completion percentage (63.7) and touchdown passes (17). While with the Colts, during the 1995–96 NFL playoffs he led the team to the AFC Championship game and came within one dropped Hail Mary pass of taking the Colts to the Super Bowl for the first time since 1970. In 1995, he was voted to the Pro Bowl, was named Comeback Player of the Year and AFC Player of the Year, and was runner-up in the NFL MVP voting. With the Colts, Harbaugh completed 746 of 1,230 passes for 8,705 yards and 49 touchdowns and won the NFL passer rating title in 1995 with a rating of 100.7. In January 2005, Harbaugh was inducted into the Indianapolis Colts Ring of Honor as one of the most successful and popular players in the club's Indianapolis era.

After a last-place 3–13 record in 1997, Harbaugh was traded to the Baltimore Ravens (based in the Colts' former home city of Baltimore, Maryland) to make room for 1st overall draft pick Peyton Manning. During the 1998 season, Harbaugh was the starter but would split playing time with eventual bust Eric Zeier. Then he played two years with the San Diego Chargers. In 1999 he led the Chargers to an 8–8 record, but in 2000 the Chargers finished with a 1–15 record behind Harbaugh and former first-round bust Ryan Leaf. Harbaugh signed with the Detroit Lions prior to the 2001 season, where he was expected to backup incumbent starter Charlie Batch. However, on the eve of the regular season, the Lions cut him and traded for Ty Detmer. Harbaugh then closed out his NFL career with the Carolina Panthers in 2001, where he dressed for 6 games but did not compile any statistics.

For his NFL career, Harbaugh played in 177 league games with 140 starts. He completed 2,305 of 3,918 passes for 26,288 yards with 129 touchdowns. Particularly during his time with Indianapolis—such as when he led the Colts to come-from-behind wins over the Chiefs and Chargers in 1995–96 NFL playoffs and a near upset over the No. 2 AFC seed Steelers—he earned the nickname "Captain Comeback" (the second player to be so nicknamed after Roger Staubach) for his ability to win games in the fourth quarter after overcoming significant point deficits.

Coaching career

Assistant coaching

During his final eight seasons in the NFL (1994–2001), Harbaugh was an NCAA-certified unpaid assistant coach under his father, Jack, at Western Kentucky University. Serving as an offensive consultant, he scouted and recruited high school student-athletes throughout several states including Florida, Indiana and Illinois. He was involved in recruiting 17 players on WKU's 2002 Division I-AA national champion team. His father was a football coach for 18 years, including 14 years as head coach at WKU.

Harbaugh was an assistant coach with the Oakland Raiders in 2002–2003. In 2002 he was an offensive assistant coach, and in 2003 he was the quarterbacks coach.

University of San Diego

Prior to the 2004 season, Harbaugh was named head football coach at the University of San Diego. In his first year, he directed the Toreros to an overall mark of 7–4, including 5 straight wins to end the season. The following year, the team improved to 11–1 and won the 2005 Pioneer Football League Championship. In 2006, USD again went 11–1 winning their second consecutive Pioneer League title in the process.

Stanford University

Harbaugh was named the head football coach at Stanford University in December 2006, replacing Walt Harris. Harbaugh's father, Jack, was Stanford's defensive coordinator from 1980–1981, while Harbaugh attended Palo Alto High School, located directly across the street from Stanford Stadium.

Harbaugh stirred some intra-conference controversy in March 2007, when he was quoted as saying rival USC head coach "Pete Carroll's only got one more year, though. He'll be there one more year. That's what I've heard. I heard it inside the staff." Upon further questions, Harbaugh claimed he had heard it from staff at USC. The comment caused a rebuke from Carroll. (In fact, Carroll would be at USC for three more years.) At the Pacific-10 Conference media day on July 26, 2007, Harbaugh praised the Trojans, stating "There is no question in my mind that USC is the best team in the country and may be the best team in the history of college football." The declaration, especially in light of his earlier comment, garnered more media attention. Later in the season, Stanford defeated #1 USC 24–23 with a touchdown in the final minute. With USC being the favorite by 41 points, it was statistically the greatest upset in college football history. Although Stanford lost to USC in 2008, Harbaugh and the Stanford Cardinal upset USC at home again with a score of 55–21 on November 14, 2009. Stanford's 55 points are most ever scored on USC in the Trojans' history. It was Pete Carroll's first November loss as USC head coach. Harbaugh joined Kansas State coach Bill Snyder and Oregon's Chip Kelly as the only coaches in college football to have a winning record against Carroll, with a record of 2–1. Harbaugh has never lost in USC's home stadium, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

In January 2009, Harbaugh was confirmed to have been interviewed by the New York Jets for the head coach position, although the job was eventually offered to Rex Ryan.

In 2009, the Cardinal had a comeback season, finishing the regular season at 8–4, finishing #21 in the polls, and receiving an invitation to play in the 2009 Sun Bowl, the Cardinal's first bowl appearance since 2001. Running back Toby Gerhart was named a Heisman Trophy finalist, finishing second to Mark Ingram in the closest margin of voting in Heisman history. On December 13, 2009, Harbaugh was rewarded with a three-year contract extension through the 2014 season.

The 2010 season brought more success for Harbaugh and the Cardinal. The team went 11–1 in the regular season, with their only loss coming from Oregon, a team that was undefeated and earned a berth in the BCS National Championship Game. The first 11 win season in program history earned the Cardinal a #4 BCS ranking and a BCS bowl invitation to the Orange Bowl. Stanford defeated Virginia Tech 40–12 for the Cardinal's first bowl win since 1996 and the first BCS bowl victory in program history. Second year starting quarterback Andrew Luck was the runner-up to for the Heisman Trophy, the second year in a row that the runner-up was from Stanford. Harbaugh was named the winner of the Woody Hayes Coach of the Year Award.

San Francisco 49ers

On January 7, 2011, just four days after winning the Orange Bowl, Harbaugh agreed to a 5-year $25 million contract to become the next head coach for the San Francisco 49ers.); another son, James, and three young daughters, Grace, Addison and Katherine. His brother John is the head coach of the Baltimore Ravens and his brother-in-law, Tom Crean, is head coach of the Indiana University men's basketball team.

He has been very active in community service ventures. He has been actively involved with the Harbaugh Hill Foundation, the Riley Hospital, Western Kentucky University, the Jim Harbaugh Foundation, the Uhlich's Children's Home and the Children's Miracle Network.

Harbaugh is co-owner of Panther Racing in the IndyCar Series. The main car for the team carries Harbaugh's old jersey number, 4. When the team won the 2001 and 2002 IRL championship, the team, which had the option of going to #1, chose instead to keep the #4 for its association with Harbaugh's career.

In 1982, Harbaugh graduated from Palo Alto High School (aka Paly), located across from Stanford University.

Head coaching record

College

NFL

See also

Lists of Michigan Wolverines football passing leaders

References

External links

Stanford Cardinal bio

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Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:American Conference Pro Bowl players Category:American football quarterbacks Category:Baltimore Ravens players Category:Chicago Bears players Category:Indianapolis Colts players Category:Indy Racing League owners Category:Michigan Wolverines football players Category:National Football League head coaches Category:Palo Alto High School alumni Category:People from Toledo, Ohio Category:Players of American football from Ohio Category:San Diego Chargers players Category:San Diego Toreros football coaches Category:San Francisco 49ers head coaches Category:San Francisco 49ers coaches Category:Stanford Cardinal football coaches Category:Western Kentucky Hilltoppers football coaches

Name	Christopher Hitchens
Color	silver
Caption	Hitchens speaking at TAM in 2007.
Birth name	Christopher Eric Hitchens
Birth date	April 13, 1949
Birth place	Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation	Writer, journalist and pundit
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Nationality	American/British
Religion	None
Genre	Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism
Spouse	Carol Blue (1989–present)
Children	Alexander, Sophia, Antonia
Relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences	George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag Martin Amis, Sam Harris

Christopher Eric Hitchens (born 13 April 1949) is an English-American author and journalist whose books, essays, and journalistic career span more than four decades. He has been a columnist and literary critic at The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Slate, World Affairs, The Nation, Free Inquiry, and became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008. He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.

Hitchens is known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson and for his excoriating critiques of, among others, Mother Teresa, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Henry Kissinger. His confrontational style of debate has made him both a lauded and controversial figure. As a political observer, polemicist and self-defined radical, he rose to prominence as a fixture of the left-wing publications in his native Britain and in the United States. His departure from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left following Ayatollah Khomeini's issue of a fatwā calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie. The 11 September 2001 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, while Hitchens insists he is not "a conservative of any kind."

Identified as a champion of the "New Atheism" movement, Hitchens describes himself as an antitheist and a believer in the philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Hitchens says that a person "could be an atheist and wish that belief in god were correct," but that "an antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who is relieved that there’s no evidence for such an assertion." He argues that the concept of god or a supreme being is a totalitarian belief that destroys individual freedom, and that free expression and scientific discovery should replace religion as a means of teaching ethics and defining human civilization. He wrote at length on atheism and the nature of religion in his 2007 book God Is Not Great.

Though Hitchens retained his British citizenship, he became a United States citizen on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial on 13 April 2007, his 58th birthday. His latest book, Hitch-22: A Memoir, was published in June 2010. Touring for the book was cut short later the same month so that he could begin treatment for newly diagnosed oesophageal cancer.

Life and career

Early life and education

His mother Yvonne and father Eric Hitchens (1909–1987) met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II. Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service), and Eric an imperialistic, "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's Scharnhorst in the Battle of North Cape. he was educated at the independent Leys School, in Cambridge, and then later at Balliol College, Oxford. He was tutored there by Steven Lukes, and read philosophy, politics, and economics. Hitchens was "bowled over" in his adolescence by Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley, Arthur Koestler's Darkness at Noon, Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, R. H. Tawney's critique on Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, and the works of George Orwell.

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22. These experiences continued in his college years when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.

In the 1960s, Hitchens joined the political left, drawn by his anger over the Vietnam war, nuclear weapons, racism, and "oligarchy", including that of "the unaccountable corporation". He would express affinity to the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 70s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but was expelled in 1967 along with the majority of the Labour students' organization, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam". Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, translator of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism. published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyite, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyite groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Journalistic career (1970–1981)

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree. His first job was with the London Times Higher Education Supplement, where he served as social science editor. Hitchens admits that he hated the job and was later fired, recalling that "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it." In the 1970s, he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with, among others, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan. At the New Statesman, he acquired a reputation as a fierce left-winger, aggressively attacking targets such as Henry Kissinger, the Vietnam War, and the Roman Catholic Church.

In November 1973, Hitchens' mother committed suicide in Athens in a suicide pact with her lover, a former clergyman named Timothy Bryan,

American career (1981–present)

After emigrating to the United States in 1981, Hitchens wrote for The Nation where he penned vociferous critiques of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and American foreign policy in South and Central America. He became a Contributing Editor of Vanity Fair in 1992, writing ten columns a year. He left The Nation in 2002, after profoundly disagreeing with other contributors over the Iraq War. There is speculation that Hitchens was the inspiration for Tom Wolfe's character Peter Fallow, in the 1987 novel The Bonfire of the Vanities,

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus. Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he has two children, Alexander and Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in 1984, has worked as a researcher for London think tanks the Policy Exchange and the Centre for Social Cohesion. Hitchens has continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda and the Darfur region of Sudan. He has visited all three countries in the so-called "Axis of Evil": Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. His work has taken him to over 60 countries.

In 1989 he met Carol Blue, a California writer, whom he later married and with whom he had a daughter, Antonia. In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.

Prior to Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir". In 2010, Hitchens attacked Vidal in a Vanity Fair piece headlined "Vidal Loco," calling him a "crackpot" for his adoption of 9/11 conspiracy theories. Also, on the back of his book Hitch-22, among the praise from notable writers and figures, a Vidal quote endorsing Hitchens as his successor is crossed out with a red 'X' and a message saying "NO C.H."

His strong advocacy of the war in Iraq had gained Hitchens a wider readership, and in September 2005 he was named one of the "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. An online poll ranked the 100 intellectuals, but the magazines noted that the rankings of Hitchens (5), Noam Chomsky (1), and Abdolkarim Soroush (15) were partly due to supporters publicising the vote.

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary". He was a finalist once more in the same category in 2008 for some of his columns in Slate but lost out to Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone. He won this award in 2011

Literature reviews

Hitchens writes a monthly essay on books in the Atlantic Monthly and contributes occasionally to other literary journals. One of his books, Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere, is a collection of such works, and Love, Poverty and War contains a section devoted to literary essays. In Why Orwell Matters, he defends Orwell's writings against modern critics as relevant today and progressive for his time. In the 2008 book Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left, many literary critiques are included of essays and other books of writers, such as David Horowitz and Edward Said.

During a three-hour interview by Book TV, he named authors who have had influence on his views.

Political views

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto". In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media". However, the same article noted that he would "likely be aghast to find himself on this list", since it reduces his self-styled radicalism to mere liberalism.

Socialism

Hitchens became a socialist "largely [as] the outcome of a study of history, taking sides ... in the battles over industrialism and war and empire." In 2001, he told Rhys Southan of Reason magazine that he could no longer say "I am a socialist." Socialists, he claimed, had ceased to offer a positive alternative to the capitalist system. Capitalism had become the more revolutionary economic system, and he welcomed globalisation as "innovative and internationalist." He stated that he had a renewed interest in the freedom of the individual from the state, but that he still considered libertarianism "ahistorical" both on the world stage and in the work of creating a stable and functional society, adding that libertarians are "more worried about the over-mighty state than the unaccountable corporation" whereas "the present state of affairs ... combines the worst of bureaucracy with the worst of the insurance companies."

In 2006, in a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania debating the Jewish Tradition with Martin Amis, Hitchens commented on his political philosophy by stating "I am no longer a socialist, but I still am a Marxist". In a June 2010 interview with the New York Times, he stated that: "I still think like a Marxist in many ways. I think the materialist conception of history is valid. I consider myself a very conservative Marxist". In 2009, in an article for The Atlantic entitled "The Revenge of Karl Marx", Hitchens frames the late-2000s recession in terms of Marx's economic analysis and notes how much Marx admired the capitalist system he was calling for the end of, but says that Marx ultimately failed to grasp how revolutionary capitalist innovation was. Hitchens was an admirer of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, commenting that "[Che's] death meant a lot to me and countless like me at the time, he was a role model, albeit an impossible one for us bourgeois romantics insofar as he went and did what revolutionaries were meant to do — fought and died for his beliefs." In a 1997 essay, however, he distanced himself somewhat from some of Che's actions.

He continues to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men, and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia. Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi. In 2004, Hitchens stated that neoconservative support for US intervention in Iraq convinced him that he was "on the same side as the neo-conservatives" when it came to contemporary foreign policy issues. He has also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".

Following the 11 September attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and of the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation. Chomsky responded and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky to which Chomsky again responded. Approximately a year after 11 September attacks and his exchanges with Chomsky, Hitchens left The Nation, claiming that its editors, readers and contributors considered John Ashcroft a bigger threat than Osama bin Laden, and were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues. This highly charged exchange of letters involved Katha Pollitt and Alexander Cockburn, as well as Hitchens and Chomsky.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled , and has held numerous public debates on the topic with everyone from George Galloway to Scott Ritter. Though he admits to the numerous failures of the war, and its high civilian casualties, he sticks to the position that deposing Saddam Hussein was a long-overdue responsibility of the United States, after decades of poor policy, and that holding free elections in Iraq has been a success not to be scoffed at. He argues that a continued fight in Iraq against insurgents, whether they be former Saddam loyalists or Islamic extremists, is a fight worth having, and that those insurgents, not American forces, should be the ones taking the brunt of the blame for a slow reconstruction and high civilian casualties.

An updated summary of his views on Iraq and the War on Terror can be found in his memoirs Hitch 22.

Criticism of George W. Bush

Prior to 11 September 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He has also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design and capital punishment. In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the ACLU and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.

Presidential endorsements

Hitchens would elaborate on his political views and ideological shift in a discussion with Eric Alterman on Bloggingheads.tv. In this discussion Hitchens revealed himself as a supporter of Ralph Nader in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, who was disenchanted with the candidacy of both George W. Bush and Al Gore. protest at the headquarters of the Commission on Presidential Debates]]

Hitchens made a brief return to The Nation just before the 2004 U.S. presidential election and wrote that he was "slightly" for Bush; shortly afterwards, Slate polled its staff on their positions on the candidates and mistakenly printed Hitchens' vote as pro-John Kerry. Hitchens shifted his opinion to "neutral", saying: "It's absurd for liberals to talk as if Kristallnacht is impending with Bush, and it's unwise and indecent for Republicans to equate Kerry with capitulation. There's no one to whom he can surrender, is there? I think that the nature of the jihadist enemy will decide things in the end".

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate would state, "I used to call myself a single-issue voter on the essential question of defending civilization against its terrorist enemies and their totalitarian protectors, and on that "issue" I hope I can continue to expose and oppose any ambiguity." He was critical of both main party candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain. Hitchens would go on to support Obama, calling McCain "senile", and his choice of running mate Sarah Palin "absurd", calling Palin a "pathological liar" and a "national disgrace".

Blumenthal-Hitchens feud

Hitchens and Carol Blue chose to submit an affidavit to the trial managers of the Republican Party in the trial of impeachment of Bill Clinton. In the affidavit, Blue and Hitchens swore that their then-friend, Sidney Blumenthal, had described Monica Lewinsky as a stalker. This allegation contradicted Blumenthal's own sworn deposition in the trial, and it resulted in a hostile exchange of opinion in the public sphere between Hitchens and Blumenthal. Following the publication of Blumenthal's The Clinton Wars, Hitchens wrote several pieces in which he accused Blumenthal of manipulating the facts.

Israel–Palestine

Hitchens has said of himself }}

A review of his autobiography, Hitch-22, in the Jewish Daily Forward, refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist..... Zionism, which he regards as an injustice against the Palestinians." Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism (reflecting his longstanding Palestinian blind spot)" The Jewish Daily Forward quotes him saying of Israel's prospects for the future, “I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable.” Hitchens isn't necessarily against Israel's right to exist as many states have been founded in such a manner, but has argued against what he calls Israel's "expansionism" in the West Bank and Gaza and "internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". Hitchens would collaborate on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing .

Domestic policy

Hitchens actively supports drug policy reform and has called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley. On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritizes in affirming that he believes a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposes the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supports the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believes in access to contraceptives and reproductive rights as "the only thing that is known to cure poverty", and in order to prevent surgical abortion altogether.

Other

Other issues Hitchens has written on include his support for the reunification of Ireland, abolition of the British monarchy, and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.

Specific individuals

Over the years, Hitchens has become famous for his scathing critiques of public figures. Three figures — Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, and Mother Teresa — were the targets of three separate full length texts, No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton, The Trial of Henry Kissinger, and The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Hitchens has also written book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), and Thomas Paine ().

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques take the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell, George Galloway, Mel Gibson, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, Michael Moore, Daniel Pipes, Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, and Cindy Sheehan.

Religion

at the "Is God Great?" debate in Alabama]] Hitchens often speaks out against the Abrahamic religions, or what he calls "the three great monotheisms" (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). He said: "The real axis of evil is Christianity, Judaism, and Islam". In his book, God Is Not Great, Hitchens expanded his criticism to include all religions, including those rarely criticized by Western secularists such as Hinduism and neo-paganism. His book had mixed reactions, from praise in The New York Times for his "logical flourishes and conundrums" to accusations of "intellectual and moral shabbiness" in The Financial Times. God Is Not Great was nominated for a National Book Award on 10 October 2007.

Hitchens contends that organized religion is "the main source of hatred in the world", "[v]iolent, irrational, intolerant, allied to racism, tribalism, and bigotry, invested in ignorance and hostile to free inquiry, contemptuous of women and coercive toward children", and that accordingly it "ought to have a great deal on its conscience". In God Is Not Great, Hitchens contends that;

"above all, we are in need of a renewed Enlightenment, which will base itself on the proposition that the proper study of mankind is man and woman [referencing Alexander Pope]. This Enlightenment will not need to depend, like its predecessors, on the heroic breakthroughs of a few gifted and exceptionally courageous people. It is within the compass of the average person. The study of literature and poetry, both for its own sake and for the eternal ethical questions with which it deals, can now easily depose the scrutiny of sacred texts that have been found to be corrupt and confected. The pursuit of unfettered scientific inquiry, and the availability of new findings to masses of people by electronic means, will revolutionize our concepts of research and development. Very importantly, the divorce between the sexual life and fear, and the sexual life and disease, and the sexual life and tyranny, can now at last be attempted, on the sole condition that we banish all religions from the discourse. And all this and more is, for the first time in our history, within the reach if not the grasp of everyone".

His book made him one of the four major advocates of the "new atheism", and an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society, Hitchens said he would accept an invitation from any religious leader who wished to debate with him. He also serves on the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America, a lobbying group for atheists and humanists in Washington, DC. In 2007, Hitchens began a series of written debates on the question "Is Christianity Good for the World?" with Christian theologian and pastor, Douglas Wilson, published in Christianity Today magazine. This exchange eventually became a book by the same title in 2008. During their book tour to promote the book, film producer Darren Doane sent a film crew to accompany them. Doane produced the film Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" which was released on 27 October 2009.

On 26 November 2010 Hitchens appeared in Toronto, Canada, in a debate sponsored by the Munk Foundation over religion with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a Roman Catholic convert. Blair argued religion is a force for good, while Hitchens was against it. Preliminary results on the Munk website said 56 per cent of the votes backed the proposition (Hitchens' position) before hearing the debate, with 22 per cent against (Blair's position), and 21 per cent undecided, with the undecided voters leaning toward Hitchens, giving him a 68 per cent to 32 per cent victory over Blair, after the debate.

In February 2006, Hitchens helped organize a pro-Denmark rally outside the Danish Embassy in Washington, DC in response to the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy.

Hitchens has been accused by William A. Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Liberties of being particularly anti-Catholic. Hitchens responded, "when religion is attacked in this country [...] the Catholic Church comes in for a little more than its fair share". Hitchens has also been accused of anti-Catholic bigotry by others, including Brent Bozell, Tom Piatak in The American Conservative, and UCLA Law Professor Stephen Bainbridge. In an interview with Radar in 2007, Hitchens said that if the Christian right's agenda were implemented in the United States "It wouldn't last very long and would, I hope, lead to civil war, which they will lose, but for which it would be a great pleasure to take part." When Joe Scarborough on 12 March 2004 asked Hitchens whether he was "consumed with hatred for conservative Catholics", Hitchens responded that he was not and that he just thinks that "all religious belief is sinister and infantile". Piatak claimed that "A straightforward description of all Hitchens’s anti-Catholic outbursts would fill every page in this magazine", noting particularly Hitchens' assertion that U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts should not be confirmed because of his faith. His great-great-grandfather was Nathan Blumenthal of Kempen, Prussia, who emigrated to Leicester. In Hitch-22, Christopher Hitchens detailed his Jewish ancestry: his matrilineal great-great-grandmother had converted to Judaism before marrying his great-great-grandfather, and Hitchens' maternal grandfather converted to Judaism before marrying his grandmother. According to Hitchens, in 1893, his maternal grandmother's parents were married “according to the rites of the German and Polish Jews. My mother’s mother, whose birth name was Dorothy Levin, was born three years later, in 1896.”

In an article in the The Guardian on 14 April 2002, Hitchens stated that he could be considered Jewish because Jewish descent is matrilineal. Christopher denied having said this and broke off contact with his brother. He then referred to his brother as "an idiot" in a letter to Commentary, and the dispute spilled into other publications as well. Christopher eventually expressed a willingness to reconcile and to meet his new nephew; shortly thereafter the brothers gave several interviews together in which they said their personal disagreements had been resolved. They appeared together on 21 June 2007 edition of BBC current affairs discussion show Question Time. The pair engaged in a formal televised debate for the first time on 3 April 2008, at Grand Valley State University.

Health and lifestyle

Smoking and drinking

A June 2006 profile on Hitchens by NPR stated: "Hitchens is known for his love of cigarettes and alcohol — and his prodigious literary output." However, in early 2008 he gave up smoking, undergoing an epiphany in Madison, Wisconsin. His brother Peter later wrote of his surprise at this decision. It was while writing his memoir Hitch-22 that he resumed smoking cigarettes and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admits to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough "to kill or stun the average mule", noting that many great writers "did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind".

Anti-war British politician George Galloway, on his way to testify in front of a United States Senate sub-committee investigating the scandals in the U.N. Oil for Food program, called Hitchens a "drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist ", to which Hitchens quickly replied, "only some of which is true". Later, in a column for Slate promoting his debate with Galloway which was to take place on 14 September 2005, he elaborated on his prior response: "He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a "popinjay" (true enough, since the word's original Webster's definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest)."

Oliver Burkeman writes, "Since the parting of ways on Iraq [...] Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker 'because I always think it's a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.' He drinks, he says, 'because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'"

In the question and answer session following a speech Hitchens gave to the Commonwealth Club of California on 9 July 2009, one audience member asked what was Hitchens' favorite whisky. Hitchens replied that "the best blended scotch in the history of the world" is Johnnie Walker Black Label. He also playfully indicated that it was the favorite whisky of, among others, the Iraqi Baath Party, the Palestinian Authority, the Libyan dictatorship, and "large branches of the Saudi Arabian Royal Family". He concluded his answer by calling it the "breakfast of champions" and exhorted the audience to "accept no substitute".

In his 2010 memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens wrote: "There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully." He described his current drinking routine on working-days as follows: "At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker's amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No 'after dinner drinks' — ​most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. 'Nightcaps' depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there."

Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:

"I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle... I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored – it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I'm going to wager on this bit... In a strange way I don't regret it. It's just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did."

Cancer treatment

In June 2010, Hitchens postponed his book tour for Hitch-22 to undergo treatment for oesophageal cancer. He announced that he is undergoing treatment in a Vanity Fair piece entitled "Topic of Cancer". Hitchens said that he recognises the long-term prognosis is far from positive, and that he would be a "very lucky person to live another five years".

In April 2011, Hitchens was forced to cancel a scheduled appearance at the American Atheist Convention, and instead sent a letter that stated, "Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death." The note did not indicate if Hitchens' loss of voice was temporary or permanent. {|class="wikitable" style="text-align:center" |- ! Year ! Film |- |1984 |align="left" | Opinions: "Greece to their Rome" |- |1988 |align="left" | Frontiers |- |1993 |align="left" | Everything You Need to Know |- |1994 |align="left" | Tracking Down Maggie: The Unofficial Biography of Margaret Thatcher |- |1994 |align="left" | Hell's Angel |- |1996 |align="left" | Where's Elvis This Week? |- |1996–2010 |align="left" | Charlie Rose (13 episodes) |- |1998 |align="left" | Princess Diana: The Mourning After |- |1999–2002 |align="left" | Dennis Miller Live (4 episodes) |- |2002 |align="left" | The Trials of Henry Kissinger |- |2003 |align="left" | Hidden in Plain Sight |- |2003–2009 |align="left" | Real Time with Bill Maher (6 episodes) |- |2004 |align="left" | Mel Gibson: God's Lethal Weapon |- |2004–2006 |align="left" | Newsnight (3 episodes) |- |2004–2010 |align="left" | The Daily Show (4 episodes) |- |2005 |align="left" | (1 episode, s03e05) |- |2005 |align="left" | The Al Franken Show (1 episode) |- |2005 |align="left" | Confronting Iraq: Conflict and Hope |- |2005 |align="left" | |- |2005–2008 |align="left" | Hardball with Chris Matthews (3 episodes) |- |2006 |align="left" | American Zeitgeist |- |2006 |align="left" | Blog Wars |- |2007 |align="left" | Manufacturing Dissent |- |2007 |align="left" | Question Time (1 episode) |- |2007 |align="left" | Your Mommy Kills Animals |- |2007 |align="left" | Personal Che |- |2007 |align="left" | Heckler |- |2007 |align="left" | In Pot We Trust |- |2008 |align="left" | Discussions with Richard Dawkins: Episode 1: "The Four Horsemen" |- |2008 | style="text-align:left;"| Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed |- |2009 |align="left" | Holy Hell |- |2009 |align="left" | Presidency |- |2009 |align="left" | Collision: "Is Christianity GOOD for the World?" |- |2010 |align="left" | |}

Bibliography

1987 Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles, Chatto and Windus (UK)/Hill and Wang (US, 1988); 1997 UK Verso edition as The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns)

1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said) Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4 Reissued, 2001

1990 "The Monarchy", Chatto & Windus Ltd

1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, Verso

1999 No One Left to Lie To, Verso

2000 , Verso

2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso.

2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian, Basic Books

2004 , Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3

2005 , Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4

2007 , [Editor] Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6

2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6

2008 (with Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman), New York University Press

2008 Is Christianity Good for the World? – A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson), Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2

2010 , Hachette Book Group, ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9

2011 ''ARGUABLY: Selected Essays, 1-4555-0277-4 / 978-1-4555-0277-6

References

External links

in 2007 in 2010 ;Profiles

"Christopher Hitchens" feature story in Prospect magazine, May 2008

"Incendiary Author Spares No Targets" feature story in The New Zealand Herald, May 2008

Such, Such are His Joys David Brooks assessment in The New York Times, 1 July 2010

"Journalist Christopher Hitchens fully embraces the Bush war camp" from the World Socialist Website

Hitchens on Dying with Cancer – August 2010 video interview with The Atlantic

Christopher Hitchens: 'You have to choose your future regrets' in The Guardian, 14 November 2010

"Christopher Hitchens’s Jewish Problem" feature article on Jewish Ideas Daily, 13 December 2010

Outspoken and outrageous: Christopher Hitchens a 60 Minutes profile aired March 6, 2011

;Articles by Hitchens

Contributor page for Vanity Fair

Index at The Atlantic Monthly

Christopher Hitchens Blog The Mirror (British tabloid)

Hitchens Web

Build Up That Wall – Christopher Hitchens online directory

Hitchens articles at Slate

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