Prince of the Poison Pen
Can there be any doubt that the art of calumny has no finer practioner in our day than the great Christopher Hitchens? While some may occasionally object to the objects of his scorn, the flair and style of his put-downs rank with the all-time greats like Voltaire, H. L. Menken, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs ("When dealing with a religious son-of-a-bitch, get it in writing...") and the past-master of the current day, Gore Vidal ("I heard that the Reagan Library burned down. Both books were lost. And the tragedy is, he hadn't finished coloring the books"). In today's Slate, Hitch is in rare form, dumping buckets of verbal sewage over the eminently-deserving trio of Trent Lott, Cardinal Law, and his favorite whipping boy, Henry Kissinger. The choicest bits are reserved for Law:
Even in this short-list of cheap and incriminated individuals, Cardinal Bernard Law somehow manages to stand out. Of all the offenses that are most vile and unpardonable, the crime of child rape distinguishes itself without further elaboration. And this ugly prince of the church scuttles and shuttles to Rome to beg permission to make light of it. The documents plainly show him complicit with violations of which a decent person cannot even be suspected. And yet, for these many months, he has acted as if he were himself the persecuted victim. He has also brought bitter shame upon his congregation by seeming to act as if the advice of a foreign politician—the barely sentient pope—was more important than a moral law that anyone can understand without being taught it in catechism.
Remind me to keep off Hitchens' shit-list.
9:12:12 AM 
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