"Embrace Islam? Too cute."

Michael Kinsley on Hitchens' "God is Not Great"

Michael Kinsley, in a delicious confluence, has reviewed Christopher Hitchens' "God Is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything" in The New York Times (blentry link goes to it).

In the true spirit of the reviewed piece, Kinsley makes observations that are as relevant and interesting as the original. Referring to the clear pattern of Hitchens' reliance on (intellectually honest, thus useful and acceptable) anti-liberal (and thus seemingly self-contradictory) contrariness in discourse as a tool for getting people's attention, he imaginatively alludes to an ideological “dance of the seven veils” where Hitchens sheds previously-held ideas (more of a molting, in my opinon) to which long-time readers have been privy:

Long ago he came out against abortion. Interesting! Then he discovered and made quite a kosher meal of the fact that his mother, deceased, was Jewish, which under Jewish law meant he himself was Jewish. Interesting!! (He was notorious at the time for his anti-Zionist sympathies.) In the 1990s, Hitchens was virulently, and somewhat inexplicably, hostile to President Bill Clinton. Interesting!!! You would have thought that Clinton’s decadence — the thing that bothered other liberals and leftists the most — would have positively appealed to Hitchens. Finally and recently, he became the most (possibly the only) intellectually serious non-neocon supporter of George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Interesting!!!!

The rest of the review is just as refshingly illuminating in every sense. And this from a man who has experienced brain surgery (a punch-line not to be missed at the end of this).