Hitchens went to the
United States in
1981, as part of an editor exchange program between
The New Statesman and
The Nation. After joining
The Nation, 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, but others—including Hitchens (or he indicated as such while alive)—believe it to be
Spy Magazine's "
Ironman Nightlife Decathlete"
Anthony Haden-Guest. In 1987, his father died from cancer of the esophagus; the same disease that would later claim his own life. In
April 2007, Hitchens became a
U.S. citizen. He became a media fellow at the
Hoover Institution in
September 2008.
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 had two children,
Alexander and
Sophia. His son, Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, born in
1984, has worked as a policy researcher in
London. Hitchens continued writing essay-style correspondence pieces from a variety of locales, including
Chad,
Uganda and the
Darfur region of
Sudan. His work took him to over 60 countries. In
1991 he received a
Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction.
Hitchens met
Carol Blue for the first time at the
Los Angeles airport in
1989, and would marry her in 1991. Hitchens called it love at first sight. In
1999, as harsh critics of
Clinton, Hitchens and Carol Blue submitted an affidavit to the trial managers of the
Republican Party in the impeachment of
Bill Clinton. Therein they 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.
The incident ended their friendship and sparked a "personal crisis" for Hitchens who was stridently criticized by friends for a cynical and ultimately politically futile act.
Before Hitchens's 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 figures, Vidal's endorsement of Hitchens as his successor is crossed out in red and an annotated "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 publicizing the vote.
In
2007 Hitchens's 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 the National Magazine Award for Columns about
Cancer in
2011. 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. In
December 2011, prior to his death,
Asteroid 57901 Hitchens was named after him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_hitchens
In
1988, Bush ran a successful campaign to succeed
Reagan as
President, defeating
Democratic opponent
Michael Dukakis.
Foreign policy drove the Bush presidency: military operations were conducted in
Panama and the
Persian Gulf; the
Berlin Wall fell in 1989, and the
Soviet Union dissolved two years later. Domestically, Bush reneged on a 1988 campaign promise and after a struggle with
Congress, signed an increase in taxes that Congress had passed
. In the wake of a weak recovery from an economic recession, along with continuing budget deficits, he lost the
1992 presidential election to
Democrat Bill Clinton.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_hw_bush
- published: 25 Aug 2014
- views: 4930