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Hugh Hewitt
Hewitt at a conference in June 2008
Born	(1956-02-22) February 22, 1956 (age 56)
Alma mater	Harvard College University of Michigan Law School
Website
hughhewitt.townhall.com

Hugh Hewitt (born February 22, 1956) is an American radio talk show host with the Salem Radio Network, lawyer, academic, and author. An outspoken Republican, evangelical Christian, he comments on society, politics, and media bias in the United States. Hewitt is also a law professor at Chapman University School of Law.

Early life[link]

Hewitt attended John F. Kennedy Catholic High School^[1] in Warren, Ohio, and Harvard University, and graduating cum laude with a B.A. in government in 1978. After leaving Harvard, he worked as a ghostwriter for Richard Nixon in California and New York, before studying at the University of Michigan Law School, where he was Order of the Coif. Hewitt received his J.D. degree in 1983, then moved to Washington D.C. to clerk for Judges Roger Robb and George MacKinnon on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1983–84. Hewitt worked in the Reagan administration^[2] in the late 1980s.

Career[link]

He returned to California in 1989 to oversee construction of the Richard M. Nixon Library as the library's executive director from groundbreaking through dedication and opening. In 1990, Hewitt sparked controversy by proposing screening of researchers wishing to use the library resources. Hewitt suggested refusing admission to researchers deemed "unfriendly" — specifically Bob Woodward, whom he said was "not a responsible journalist." John Taylor, a spokesman for Nixon, overturned Hewitt's decision after two days, but it became the subject of editorial rebuke in The New York Times anyway.^[3]

When he left the library to practice law, Hewitt began a weekend radio talk show for the Los Angeles radio station KFI, where he broadcast from late 1990 to 1995. In the spring of 1992 he began cohosting L.A. PBS member station KCET's nightly news and public affairs program, Life & Times, and remained with the program until the fall of 2001, when he began broadcasting his own radio show in the afternoons. Hewitt received three Emmys for his work on Life & Times on KCET, and also conceived and hosted the 1996 PBS series Searching for God in America.

He previously was a weekly columnist for the Daily Standard (the online edition of The Weekly Standard) and World. He also occasionally appears as a political/social commentator on programs such as The Dennis Miller Show, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Larry King Live, The O'Reilly Factor and The Today Show. On 24 April 2006 Hewitt appeared as a guest on The Colbert Report.

Hewitt has been criticized by Andrew Sullivan, who calls him a "Christianist."^[4] When Sullivan appeared on Hewitt's radio show to promote his book The Conservative Soul, a lively exchange ensued and Hewitt criticized Sullivan's book as intellectually messy.^[5] Sullivan now gives out a Hewitt Award for over-the-top right-wing rhetoric.

Hewitt also became a Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law during that time. He currently teaches constitutional law^[6] In addition to his contributions as a professor, Professor Hewitt founded and continues to guide the legal scholarship of the Nexus Journal of Law and Policy. "The mission of this journal is to provide a forum for the vast array of individuals and groups that influence and shape American life. Nexus aims to put legal scholarship before an audience of interested professionals, though not limited to legal scholars and practitioners. Thousands of leaders in academia, government, media, law professors, and of course federal and state judges, subscribe to our journal. Nexus is the intersection where law, politics, economics, and media converge."^[7]

"The Hugh Hewitt Show"[link]

Hewitt's nationally syndicated radio show, The Hugh Hewitt Show, is broadcast from California from 6 to 9 PM ET on weekdays. The show appears on more than 75 stations^[8] and is syndicated by the Salem Radio Network.

Although Hewitt's background is in law, government, and politics, he also covers American cultural trends and frequently delves into the entertainment industry, offering movie reviews with "Emmett of the Unblinking Eye" every Friday evening. He frequently critiques the mainstream media on air, often inviting journalists to defend their work on the show. Interviews with Mark Halperin of ABC news and British historian Andrew Roberts lasted for the entire three hours of the show.

His regular contributors include law professors John C. Eastman, former Dean of Chapman University School of Law, and Erwin Chemerinsky, Dean of UC Irvine Law School (whom Hewitt calls "The Smart Guys"), James Lileks, Mark Steyn, United States Naval Academy English professor Dr. David Allen White (who does a monthly Shakespeare showcase)^{[dated info]}, and Congressman David Dreier (R-CA), as well as frequent callers from around the country.

Hewitt's show is also marked by its significant interaction with listeners through the microblogging service Twitter. During the broadcast, the show's producer, Duane Patterson, communicates with listeners using the hashtag #hhrs. Hewitt refers to those using the #hhrs hashtag as Tribbles, in reference to the harmless, annoying and constantly-multiplying alien race from Star Trek.

New media[link]

Hewitt is a longtime promoter of what he and other conservative pundits call the new media — talk radio and blogs — as a means to balance liberal bias in the mainstream media. Hewitt was described as one of the five "best-read national conservative bloggers" in a 2007 memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee.^[9]

In early 2006, in an article for The Weekly Standard titled "The Media's Ancien Régime," Hewitt outlined his belief that traditional journalism was supplanted by the ease of information exchange on the Internet.^[10]

There is too much expertise, all of it almost instantly available now, for the traditional idea of journalism to last much longer. In the past, almost every bit of information was difficult and expensive to acquire and was therefore mediated by journalists whom readers and viewers were usually in no position to second-guess. Authority has drained from journalism for a reason. Too many of its practitioners have been easily exposed as poseurs.

A recurring theme on Hewitt's show is accusing the mainstream media of liberal bias and lack of transparency, and the unwillingness of reporters to answer questions about their own political beliefs. Hewitt has said that the modern paradigm of reportage, whereby journalists make a claim to objectivity while never answering questions about their own beliefs, allows a deep-seated culture of liberal media bias to be perpetuated. He is fond of saying that financial reporters are never allowed to write about companies in which they have an interest, while political reporters routinely refuse to answer questions that might reveal their own political positions and thus allow the reader to adjust for any bias, whether conscious or subconscious, that their reporting might contain.^[2] He credits the right-wing blogosphere with destroying the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry in 2004.

Hewitt frequently invites members of the mainstream media to his show and quizzes them about their political beliefs and why they think those beliefs should remain a secret. Eric Black of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Helen Thomas of the White House Press Corps and Mark Halperin of ABC News, among others, have appeared on Hewitt's show and debated whether they should be obliged to disclose their political beliefs. During a 2006 exchange with Hewitt, longtime Washington Post reporter and columnist Thomas Edsall said that Democrats outnumbered Republicans 15-25 to 1 among members of the mainstream media.^[11]

After Hewitt wrote the book A Mormon in the White House?, Robert Stacy McCain of The Washington Times wrote that "Hewitt finds himself under suspicion of being a cheerleader for the Romney campaign."^[12] Hewitt donated $2,300 to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2008, as well as many other Republican candidates over the years, including U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and President George W. Bush. In the leadup to the February 5, 2008, Republican primaries, Hewitt became known for the slogan "A vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain."^[13] As soon as McCain won the Republic nomination, however, Hewitt turned his rhetorical fire on Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

Books[link]

• A Mormon in the White House?: 10 Things Every American Should Know about Mitt Romney (2007, ISBN 1-59698-502-X)
• A Guide to Christian Ambition: Using Career, Politics, and Culture to Influence the World (2006, ISBN 0-7852-8871-6)
• Painting the Map Red: The Fight to Create a Permanent Republican Majority (2006, ISBN 0-89526-002-6)
• Blog: Understanding the Information Reformation That's Changing Your World (2005, ISBN 0-7852-8804-X)
• If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat: Crushing the Democrats in Every Election and Why Your Life Depends on It (2004, ISBN 0-7852-6319-5)
• In, But Not Of: A Guide to Christian Ambition (2003, ISBN 0-7852-6395-0)
• The Embarrassed Believer (1998, ISBN 0-8499-1419-1)
• Searching for God in America: The Companion Volume to the Acclaimed TV Series (1996, ISBN 0-7881-9914-5)
• First Principles: A Primer of Ideas for the College-Bound Student (1987, ISBN 0-89526-793-4)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Hewitt's blog at Townhall.com
• Hewitt's columns at Townhall.com
• Hewitt in a video debate/discussion with Robert Wright on Bloggingheads.tv
• Hewitt's official page on Twitter
• http://www.lawschoolblog.org/blog/ : Nexus Journal of Law and Policy
• In Depth interview with Hewitt, October 4, 2009

Sam Harris may refer to:

• Sam Harris (author) (born 1967), American author and neuroscientist
• Sam Harris (basketball) (born 1984), Australian basketball player
• Sam Harris (playwright) (1872–1941), American playwright and theater producer
• Sam Harris (rugby) (born 1980), New Zealand rugby footballer
• Sam Harris (entertainer) (born 1961), American actor and recording artist

See also[link]

• Samantha Harris Shapiro
• Samuel Harris (disambiguation)

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Michael Medved
Michael Medved, 2006
Born	(1948-10-03) October 3, 1948 (age 63) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Alma mater	• Yale University  • Yale Law School
Occupation	Author, political commentator, radio host and television personality
Spouse	Diane Medved Nancy Medved (1970s)
Website
michaelmedved.com

Michael Medved (born October 3, 1948) is an American radio host, author, political commentator and film critic. His Seattle, Washington-based nationally syndicated talk show, The Michael Medved Show, airs throughout the U.S. on Salem Radio Network.^[1]

Early life[link]

Medved was born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised in San Diego, California, where his scientist father, David Medved, worked for the defense contractor Convair and later for NASA. Medved attended Palisades High School when the family moved to Los Angeles, California. He entered Yale University, located in New Haven, Connecticut, as a 16-year-old undergraduate, and graduated with honors in 1969, and then entered Yale Law School.

After his first year of law school, he left to work as a head speech writer for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Joseph Duffey,^[2][3] and then for four years as a speech writer and political consultant. After political campaign work, including a position as an aide to Congressman Ron Dellums, Medved worked in advertising, and coordinated a campaign to recruit more African Americans and Hispanics to the police departments of the California cities of San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley.

After writing more than 40 articles for the book The People's Almanac, Medved wrote What Really Happened to the Class of '65?, with David Wallechinsky. Focusing on the post-graduation lives of 30 of Medved's Palisades High School classmates who were featured in a 1965 cover story in Time, the book became a bestseller in 1976. The book also became the basis for a weekly television series on NBC that ran for 13 weeks in 1978.

Medved then wrote The Shadow Presidents: The Secret History of the Chief Executives and Their Top Aides (1979), a study of the leading White House assistants since the establishment of the presidential staff in 1857. The book included interviews with the chiefs of staff of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford. After the interviews, Medved continued his involvement in politics, befriending Ford's chief of staff, Dick Cheney, affiliating himself with the Republican Party, and campaigning for Ronald Reagan in 1980.

In 1984, Medved wrote Hospital: The Hidden Lives of a Medical Center Staff, which was discussed in Time, on ABC's Nightline, and Good Morning America. The book focused on 30 staff people who worked together in a California teaching hospital.

Movie reviews[link]

Medved continued his screenwriting work, writing for feature film projects and television miniseries, and he joined the Writers Guild of America. He also collaborated with his brother, Harry Medved, on four satirical books about movies: The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (1979), The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), The Hollywood Hall of Shame (1984) and Son of Golden Turkey Awards (1986).

Medved continued to review movies, through a weekly review on CNN (1980–1983) and a show he hosted on British network Channel 4 called The Worst of Hollywood. His commentary centered on what he considered to be bad movies, particularly in "The Golden Turkey Awards". The film selected by the Medved Brothers as The Worst Film of All Time, Plan 9 from Outer Space, has since become a cult classic.

In 1984, Medved joined Sneak Previews, the weekly movie review show originated by Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, co-hosting the program for 12 years with Jeffrey Lyons.

In 1993, Medved became chief film critic for the New York Post, a position he held for five years, during which he reviewed more than 700 movies for the newspaper.

More recently, Medved has played a prominent role in some movie-related controversies. Medved became an outspoken defender of Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ (2004), which had been criticized as antisemitic by many prominent Jewish groups. After Gibson's DUI arrest in July 2006, Medved wrote that he felt "betrayed" by Gibson's antisemitic outburst and urged Gibson to seek "reconciliation" with the Jewish community.^[4]

Some film critics, including Roger Ebert and Jim Emerson, criticized Medved for mentioning the "right to die/assisted suicide" theme in Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning Million Dollar Baby and these critics viewed Medved's statements as a plot spoiler. Medved stated that the inclusion of this theme in the film was "deeply misleading" because it was marketed as a Rocky-esque tale of a plucky female underdog in the boxing arena.^[5] Medved said that he carefully avoided revealing the final turn in the plot, but felt honor bound to inform his listeners and readers about the movie's content and provocative point of view. Roger Ebert criticized Medved, saying he "has for a long time been a political commentator, not a movie critic."^[6]

Talk radio and political commentary[link]

While focusing on the theme of Hollywood vs. America, radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh interviewed Medved and then asked Medved to guest-host his talk show. Medved went on to serve as a regular guest-host for Limbaugh on close to 30 occasions.^{[citation needed]} In 1996, Medved was offered his own local show on a major Seattle radio station. In his 2005 autobiographical book Right Turns: From Liberal Activist to Conservative Champion in 35 Unconventional Lessons, Medved says he welcomed the chance to escape "the movie ghetto" and to speak to a wider audience about politics and morality, which were a focus of his written commentary and books. Medved's show was broadcast from Seattle and syndicated through Salem Radio Network.

His three-hour daily show is now broadcast on 200 stations coast to coast and reaches more than 4.75 million listeners weekly.^[7] For ten consecutive years, Medved has been listed by Talkers magazine as one of its "Heavy Hundred" most important American talk show hosts, and recently tied for eighth place in its ranking of talk hosts by audience size.^[8]

Medved describes the show as "Your Daily Dose of Debate", often focused on listeners who call in to debate issues with the host. Guests have included those who are generally considered left-of-center, including Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, John Shelby Spong, Oliver Stone, Warren Beatty, Ralph Nader, Barbara Boxer, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, Ben Cohen, George Galloway, Thom Hartmann, Naomi Wolf, Christopher Hitchens, and Al Franken. Guests who are generally considered right-of-center include Robert Spencer, Condoleezza Rice, and Dinesh D'Souza. Medved describes himself as "your cultural crusader on politics and pop culture" and common themes on his show include current events, politics, American history and the entertainment industry. He reviews four or more new movies or DVD releases per week. The program also includes a monthly "Conspiracy Day," which usually occurs within a few days of the full moon due to the superstitions surrounding that event, where callers from across the country expose what they consider the "hidden forces" behind "perplexing and painful present events."

Medved writes a regular column for USA Today and is a member of the Board of Contributors for USA Today's Forum Page, part of the newspaper’s Opinion section. He writes occasional op-ed pieces for The Wall Street Journal and blogs daily at Townhall.com. He also wrote the 1992 book Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values, a condemnation of violence in cinema. Liberal film critic David Denby wrote a harshly critical review of Hollywood vs. America in the political magazine The New Republic.

In October 2007, Medved drew critics' fire after publishing a controversial column regarding the history of Slavery in the United States, in which he wrote, "No, it's not true that the 'peculiar institution' featured kind-hearted, paternalistic masters and happy, dancing field-hands, any more than it's true that America displayed unparalleled barbarity or enjoyed disproportionate benefit from kidnapping and exploiting innocent Africans." ^[9]

In November 2007, Medved became a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, hub of the intelligent design movement.^[10][11]

In November 2008, Medved released his eleventh nonfiction book The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation as a rebuttal to the historical fallacies he feels most Americans believe about their country. The follow up volume The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free-Market Economy was released in December of 2009.

He has argued that voters in the American Jewish community don’t necessarily embrace candidates based on their support for the state of Israel as much as they passionately oppose candidates based on their identification with Christianity, especially the Christian Right.^[12][13]

Medved also notes that the Orthodox community, which he states as less than ten percent of the American Jewish population, "gives nearly as disproportionate support to Republicans as their Reform, Conservative, and secular Jewish neighbors give to Democrats" and argues this for the main reason: "The Orthodox feel no instinctive horror at political alliances with others who make faith the center of their lives."^[13]

Personal life[link]

Medved co-founded Pacific Jewish Center, an Orthodox synagogue in Venice, California, with his friend and teacher, Rabbi Daniel Lapin. For fifteen years, Medved served as president of PJC, which states that its mission is outreach to unaffiliated and disconnected Jews. In his book Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life, he states that his commitment to religion led to his conservative political outlook. He is a baal teshuva (returnee to pre-denominational Judaism).^[14]

Books[link]

• The 5 Big Lies About American Business: Combating Smears Against the Free-Market Economy, 2009.
• The 10 Big Lies About America: Combating Destructive Distortions About Our Nation, 2008, ISBN 978-0-307-39406-4.
• Right Turns: Unconventional Lessons from a Controversial Life 2005 (explaining his conversion from being a liberal Democrat to conservative Republican) ISBN 1-4000-9832-7 (paperback).
• The Fifty Worst Films of All Time 1978 ISBN 0-446-38119-5.
• The Golden Turkey Awards (which expanded on the earlier book. Co-written by his brother Harry Medved) 1980 ISBN 0-425-05187-0.
• Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values, 1992, ISBN 0-06-016882-X; 1993, ISBN 0-06-092435-7.
• Hospital: The Hidden Lives of a Medical Center Staff, 1982, ISBN 0-671-42442-4; 1984, ISBN 0-671-42443-2.
• Saving Childhood: Protecting Our Children from the National Assault on Innocence, coauthored with his wife, clinical psychologist and author Dr. Diane Medved, 1998, ISBN 0-06-017372-6; 1999, ISBN 0-06-093224-4.
• Son of Golden Turkey Awards (written with Harry Medved), 1986, ISBN 0-394-74341-5.
• The Hollywood Hall of Shame: The Most Expensive Flops in Movie History (written with Harry Medved), 1984, ISBN 0-399-51060-5, ISBN 0-399-50714-0 (paperback)
• The Shadow Presidents: The Secret History of the Chief Executives and Their Top Aides, (a history of the White House Chiefs of Staff) 1979, ISBN 0-8129-0816-3.
• What Really Happened to the Class of '65? (written with David Wallechinsky), 1976, ISBN 0-394-40074-7; 1981 paperback, ISBN 0-345-30227-3 (paperback).

References[link]

	Biography portal
	Film portal
	Radio portal
	Television portal

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Michael Medved

• Official website
• Michael Medved at the Internet Movie Database
• "The Battles Of Tim Eyman" starring Michael Medved
• Booknotes interview with Medved on Hollywood vs. America, December 27, 1992.
• Official Blog

Benjamin Aaron Shapiro (born January 15, 1984)^[1] is an American conservative political commentator, radio talk show host, attorney, and media consultant. A native of Los Angeles, Shapiro graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles and Harvard Law School. He has written four books, starting with Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth in 2004, and writes a column for Creators Syndicate.

Early life and education[link]

Shapiro attended Yeshiva University High Schools of Los Angeles. ^[2] He then enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), majoring in political science, and graduating summa cum laude in 2004.^[3] At UCLA, Shapiro lived off-campus.^[4] He also wrote a column for the Daily Bruin student newspaper at UCLA from 2000 to 2002. The Daily Bruin suspended Shapiro after he complained on radio talk shows that the newspaper refused to print his column accusing Muslim student groups of supporting terrorism.^[2] Shapiro was hired at age 17 to become the youngest nationally syndicated columnist in the country by Creators Syndicate. He received his Juris Doctor (J.D.), cum laude, from Harvard Law School in 2007.^[3] He formerly practiced law at the Los Angeles office of Goodwin Procter LLP, and was a Vice President at Talk Radio Network. He now does independent legal consulting for major media clients.^[3]

Writing career[link]

Shapiro has written a book on his experiences in college, titled Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth (ISBN 0-7852-6148-6), which was published in 2004 by WND Books.^[2] In Brainwashed, Shapiro accused professors of being "totalitarian" and "indoctrination" through "[m]aking a case for one side and completely discarding the other side. He also criticized campus speech codes.^[4] In the Christian Science Monitor, Marjorie Kehe wrote: "Shapiro makes sweeping - and many would say brilliant- charges that they promote atheism, absolute sexual freedom (including pedophilia and statutory rape, which are crimes), and rampant environmentalism."^[5] UCLA professor Robert N. Watson accused Shapiro of personal attacks and fabrications.^[6]

His next book, Porn Generation: How Social Liberalism Is Corrupting Our Future (ISBN 0-89526-016-6), was published by Regnery in June 2005. Michelle Malkin recommended the book for summer reading in a feature by the conservative magazine National Review: "Ben argues valiantly on behalf of modesty in a flesh-baring world."^[7]

His following book, Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House (ISBN 1-5955-5100-X), was published in 2008. Shapiro's latest book, Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV was published by Harper Collins in June 2011. In that book, Shapiro argues that Hollywood has a left-wing agenda construed in the messages in primetime entertainment programming and interviewed many in the entertainment industry.^[8] He was interviewed by Fox News and RT (TV network) about his book and called for example the children's show Sesame Street left-wing propaganda.^[9] As the substantiation of his critic Shapiro interviewed several producers who said that Happy Days and M*A*S*H had a intended pro-pacifist orientation.^[10]

Shapiro is currently the Editor-At-Large for Breitbart News and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Radio[link]

Shapiro guest hosts regularly for major talk show hosts including nationally syndicated hosts Jerry Doyle and Rusty Humphries. From May 2, 2010 to 2011, he hosted The Ben Shapiro Show on the Orlando, Florida talk radio station WEUS.^[11]

Political ideology[link]

Shapiro has taken conservative stances on many social issues. He favors stronger military and law enforcement spending, as well as more restrictive laws against abortion and pornography. He has also spoken favorably of tighter immigration restrictions and expanded government wiretapping powers of suspected terrorists. Shapiro is also strongly critical of the liberal beliefs of American Jews. Shapiro is also a very strong advocate for abstinence before marriage. He is also a staunch critic of judicial activism, supporting judges whom he believes interpret the United States Constitution according to its original meaning. He has advocated significantly modifying the jury system as it exists in the United States.^[12]

Personal life[link]

Ben Shapiro is an Orthodox Jew.^[4] Shapiro married in Acre, Israel in July 2008.^[13]

External links[link]

• Shapiro's website
• California Bar profile

References[link]

Christopher Hitchens
Hitchens speaking in 2007
Born	Christopher Eric Hitchens (1949-04-13)13 April 1949 Portsmouth, England
Died	15 December 2011(2011-12-15) (aged 62) Houston, Texas
Occupation	Writer, journalist, public speaker
Nationality	English American
Citizenship	British and American
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Subjects	Politics, religion, history, biography, literature
Spouse(s)	Eleni Meleagrou (m. 1981-1989; divorced) Carol Blue (m. 1989-2011; his death)
Relative(s)	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences George Orwell,[1] Leszek Kolakowski, Voltaire, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, John Stuart Mill, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Gore Vidal, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Richard Hofstadter, 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, Israel Shahak,[2] Isaiah Berlin, Émile Zola, W. H. Auden, Susan Sontag[3]
Influenced Johann Hari,[4] Martin Amis,[5]
Signature

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American^[6][7] author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades.^[8] Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch",^[9] was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 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, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.^[10][11]

A noted critic of religion and a self described "antitheist", he said 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."^[12] According to Hitchens, the concept of a 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. His 2007 book, God Is Not Great, sold over 500,000 copies.

On 15 December 2011, Hitchens died from pneumonia, a complication of his cancer, in the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. A popular figure, his death prompted tributes and eulogies from a range of public figures, including Tony Blair, Richard Dawkins, Martin Amis, James Fenton, Nick Clegg, Stephen Fry and Bill Maher.

Life and career[link]

Early life and education[link]

His mother, Yvonne Jean (née Hickman), and father, Eric Ernest Hitchens (1909–1987), met in Scotland while both were serving in the Royal Navy during World War II.^[13] Yvonne was at the time a "Wren" (a member of the Women's Royal Naval Service),^[14] and Eric a "purse-lipped and silent" commander, whose ship HMS Jamaica helped sink Nazi Germany's battleship Scharnhorst in the Battle of the North Cape.^[3] His father's naval career required the family to move a number of times from base to base throughout Britain and its dependencies, including in Malta, where Christopher's brother Peter was born in Sliema in 1951.

Hitchens's mother having argued that "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it,"^[15] he was sent off to Mount House School in Tavistock in Devon at the age of eight, followed by the independent Leys School in Cambridge, and then at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was tutored 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.^[14] In 1968, he took part in the TV quiz show University Challenge.^[16]

Hitchens has written of his homosexual experiences when in boarding school in his memoir, Hitch-22.^[17] These experiences continued in his college years, when he allegedly had relationships with two men who eventually became a part of the Thatcher government.^[18]

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 with the politically charged countercultural and protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s. However, he deplored the rife recreational drug use of the time, which he describes as hedonistic.^[19]

He joined the Labour Party in 1965, but along with the majority of the Labour students' organization was expelled in 1967, because of what Hitchens called "Prime Minister Harold Wilson's contemptible support for the war in Vietnam".^{[20][clarification needed]} Under the influence of Peter Sedgwick, who translated the writings of Russian revolutionary and Soviet dissident Victor Serge, Hitchens forged an ideological interest in Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist socialism.^[14] Shortly after he joined "a small but growing post-Trotskyist Luxemburgist sect".^[21]

Journalistic career (1970–1981)[link]

Hitchens began working as a correspondent for the magazine International Socialism,^[22] published by the International Socialists, the forerunners of today's British Socialist Workers Party. This group was broadly Trotskyist, but differed from more orthodox Trotskyist groups in its refusal to defend communist states as "workers' states". Their slogan was "Neither Washington nor Moscow but International Socialism".

Hitchens left Oxford with a third class degree.^[23] In 1971 he went to work at the Times Higher Education Supplement where he served as a social science correspondent.^[24] Hitchens admitted that he hated the position, and was later fired; he recalled, "I sometimes think if I'd been any good at that job, I might still be doing it."^[25] He then went on to become a researcher for ITV's Weekend World.^[26] In 1973 he went on to work for the New Statesman, where he became friends with the authors Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, among others.^[26] 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.^[14] They overdosed on sleeping pills in adjoining hotel rooms, and Bryan slashed his wrists in the bathtub. Hitchens flew alone to Athens to recover his mother's body. Hitchens said he thought his mother was pressured into suicide by fear that her husband would learn of her infidelity, as their marriage had been strained and unhappy. Both her children were then independent adults. While in Greece, Hitchens reported on the constitutional crisis of the military junta. It became his first leading article for the New Statesman.^[27]

In 1977, unhappy at the New Statesman, Hitchens defected to the Daily Express where he became a foreign correspondent.^[26] He returned to the New Statesman in 1979 where he became foreign editor.^[26]

American career (1981–2011)[link]

After moving 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.^{[28][29][30][31][32][33][34]} He became a contributing editor of Vanity Fair in 1992,^[35] writing ten columns a year. In 2002 Asteroid 57901 Hitchens was named after him.^[36] 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,^[30] but others — including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive) — believe it to be Spy Magazine's "Ironman Nightlife Decathlete" Anthony Haden-Guest.^[37][38] In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus.^[39] He became a media fellow at the Hoover Institution in September 2008.^[40]

Hitchens spent part of his early career in journalism as a foreign correspondent in Cyprus.^[41] Through his work there he met his first wife Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, with whom he had 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 continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including Chad, Uganda^[42] and the Darfur region of Sudan.^[43] His work took him to over 60 countries.^[44] In 1991 he received a Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.^[45]

Before Hitchens' political shift, the American author and polemicist Gore Vidal was apt to speak of Hitchens as his "Dauphin" or "heir".^[46][47][48] 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.^[49][50] 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.^[51] 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.^[52]

In 2007 Hitchens' work for Vanity Fair won him the National Magazine Award in the category "Columns and Commentary".^[53] 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.^[54] He won the National Magazine Award for Columns about Cancer in 2011.^[55][56] Hitchens also served on the Advisory Board of Secular Coalition for America and offered advice to Coalition on the acceptance and inclusion of nontheism in American life.^[57]

Literature reviews[link]

Hitchens wrote a monthly essay on books in The Atlantic^[58] and contributed 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,^[3] he named authors who have had influence on his views, including Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, P. G. Wodehouse and Conor Cruise O'Brien.

Political views[link]

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Hitchens as a "gadfly with gusto".^[60] In 2009, Hitchens was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the "25 most influential liberals in the U.S. media".^[61] 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. Hitchens' political perspective can be found in his wide ranging writings which include many of the political dialogues he published.

Socialism[link]

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", but added, "I don't think that the contradictions, as we used to say, of the system, are by any means all resolved." 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."^[62]

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".^[63] 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".^[64] 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.^[65] Hitchens was an admirer of 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."^[66] However, in an essay written in 1997, he distanced himself from Che, and referred to the mythos surrounding him as a "cult".^[67]

He continued to regard both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky as great men,^[68][69] and the October Revolution as a necessary event in the modernization of Russia.^[21][30] In 2005, Hitchens praised Lenin's creation of "secular Russia" and his discrediting of the Russian Orthodox Church, describing it as "an absolute warren of backwardness and evil and superstition".^[21]

Iraq War and the war on terror[link]

In the years after the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie, Hitchens became increasingly critical of what he called "excuse making" on the left. At the same time, he was attracted to the foreign policy ideas of some on the Republican-right that promoted pro-liberalism intervention, especially the neoconservative group that included Paul Wolfowitz.^[70] Around this time, he befriended the Iraqi dissident and businessman Ahmed Chalabi.^[71] 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.^[72] Hitchens had also been known to refer to his association with "temporary neocon allies".^[73]

Following the September 11 attacks, Hitchens and Noam Chomsky debated the nature of radical Islam and the proper response to it. In October 2001, Hitchens wrote criticisms of Chomsky in The Nation.^[74][75] Chomsky responded^[76] and Hitchens issued a rebuttal to Chomsky^[77] to which Chomsky again responded.^[78] Approximately a year after the September 11 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,^[79] and that they were making excuses on behalf of Islamist terrorism; in the following months he wrote articles increasingly at odds with his colleagues.

Christopher Hitchens argued the case for the Iraq War in a 2003 collection of essays entitled A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, and he held numerous public debates on the topic with George Galloway^[80] and Scott Ritter.^[81]

Criticism of George W. Bush[link]

Prior to September 11, 2001, and the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, Hitchens was highly critical of Bush's "non-interventionist" foreign policy. He also criticized Bush's support of intelligent design^[82] and capital punishment.^[83][83]

Although Hitchens defended Bush's post-September 11 foreign policy, he criticized the actions of U.S. troops in Abu Ghraib and Haditha, and the U.S. government's use of waterboarding, which he unhesitatingly deemed as torture after being invited by Vanity Fair to voluntarily undergo it.^[84][85] In January 2006, Hitchens joined with four other individuals and four organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, as plaintiffs in a lawsuit, ACLU v. NSA, challenging Bush's warrantless domestic spying program; the lawsuit was filed by the ACLU.^[86][87][88]

Presidential endorsements[link]

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 to be 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.^[89]

Hitchens speaking at a September 2000 third party 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".^[90]

In the 2008 presidential election, Hitchens in an article for Slate stated, "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 went 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".^[91]

Blumenthal–Hitchens feud[link]

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,^[92] 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.^[92][93]

Israel–Palestine[link]

Hitchens had said of himself, "I am an Anti-Zionist. I'm one of those people of Jewish descent who believes that Zionism would be a mistake even if there were no Palestinians."^[94]

A review of his autobiography Hitch-22 in the Jewish Daily Forward refers to Hitchens as "a prominent anti-Zionist" and says that he views Zionism "as an injustice against the Palestinians".^[95] Others have commented on his anti-Zionism as well^[96] suggesting that his memoir was "marred by the occasional eruption of [his] anti-Zionism".^[97] The Jewish Daily Forward quoted 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."^[95]

In Slate, Hitchens pondered the notion that, instead of curing antisemitism through the creation of a Jewish state, "Zionism has only replaced and repositioned"^[98] it, saying: "there are three groups of 6 million Jews. The first 6 million live in what the Zionist movement used to call Palestine. The second 6 million live in the United States. The third 6 million are distributed mainly among Russia, France, Britain, and Argentina. Only the first group lives daily in range of missiles that can be (and are) launched by people who hate Jews." Hitchens argued that instead of supporting Zionism, Jews should help "secularize and reform their own societies", believing that unless one is religious, "what the hell are you doing in the greater Jerusalem area in the first place?" Indeed, Hitchens goes so far as to claim that the only justification for Zionism given by Jews is a religious one.^[99]

During a town hall function in Pennsylvania with Martin Amis, Hitchens stated that "one must not insult or degrade or humiliate people"^[100] and that he "would be opposed to this maltreatment of the Palestinians if it took place on a remote island with no geopolitical implications". Hitchens described Zionism as "an ethno-nationalist quasi-religious ideology" and stated his desire that if possible, he would "re-wind the tape [to] stop Hertzl from telling the initial demagogic lie (actually two lies) that a land without a people needs a people without a land".

He continued to say that Zionism "nonetheless has founded a sort of democratic state which isn't any worse in its practice than many others with equally dubious origins." He stated that settlement in order to achieve security for Israel is "doomed to fail in the worst possible way", and the cessation of this "appallingly racist and messianic delusion" would "confront the internal clerical and chauvinist forces which want to instate a theocracy for Jews". However, Hitchens contended that the "solution of withdrawal would not satisfy the jihadists" and wondered "What did they imagine would be the response of the followers of the Prophet [Muhammad]?" Hitchens bemoaned the transference into religious terrorism of Arab secularism as a means of democratization: "the most depressing and wretched spectacle of the past decade, for all those who care about democracy and secularism, has been the degeneration of Palestinian Arab nationalism into the theocratic and thanatocratic hell of Hamas and Islamic Jihad".^[98] He maintained that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a "trivial squabble" that has become "so dangerous to all of us" because of "the faith-based element."^[100]

Hitchens collaborated on this issue with prominent Palestinian advocate Edward Said, in 1988 publishing Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question.

Domestic policy[link]

Hitchens actively supported drug policy reform and called for the abolition of the "War on Drugs" which he described as an "authoritarian war" during a debate with William F. Buckley.^[19] He supported the legalization of cannabis for both medical and recreational purposes, citing it as a cure for glaucoma and as treatment for numerous side-effects induced by chemotherapy, including severe nausea, describing the prohibition of the drug as "sadistic".^[101] On the issue of abortion, Hitchens prioritized in affirming that he believed a fetus should be regarded as an "unborn child", but opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade and supported the development of medical abortion techniques, and fundamentally believed 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.^[102][103]

Other[link]

Other issues Hitchens wrote on the subjects of included his support for the reunification of Ireland,^[104][105] abolition of the British monarchy,^[106] and his condemnation of the war crimes of Slobodan Milošević^[107] and Franjo Tuđman^[108] in Yugoslavia, and the Bosnian War.^[109]

Critiques of specific individuals[link]

Hitchens was known 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 also wrote book-length biographical essays about Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson: Author of America), George Orwell (Why Orwell Matters), and Thomas Paine (Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography).

However, the majority of Hitchens's critiques took the form of short opinion pieces, some of the more notable being his critiques of: Jerry Falwell,^[110][111] George Galloway,^[112] Mel Gibson,^[113] Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama,^[114] Michael Moore,^[115] Daniel Pipes,^[116] Ronald Reagan,^[117] Jesse Helms,^[118] and Cindy Sheehan.^[21][119]When comedian Bob Hope died in 2003, Hitchens wrote an attack piece on him, calling Hope "a fool and nearly a clown, but he was never even remotely a comedian" and "Quick, then—what is your favorite Bob Hope gag? It wouldn't take you long if I challenged you on Milton Berle, or Woody Allen, or John Cleese, or even Lenny Bruce or Mort Sahl. By this time tomorrow, I bet you haven't come up with a real joke for which Hope could take credit." Critics however argued that Hitchens focused solely on Hope's declining years and ignored his heyday in the 1940s.^[120]