A really quick follow up to the Hitchens post. On the Open Source episode I'm listening to, I need to note the exchange between Hitchens and Eddie Glaude, Jr., in which Glaude dismantles one of the very premises of Hitchens' whole case -- that because religious people disagree, religion is irrational. Hitchens' response is to call Glaude's arguement "white noise" and to insist that it's all meaningless jabber.
What's particularly amusing about that is that, when Glaude accuses Hitchens of not listening or not understanding, Hitchens rather self-congratulatorilty says "I analyze arguments for a living, and what you've just said is white noise." He then goes on to insist that he's not making an ad hominim argument, thus demonstrating that he doesn't even know, apparently, what an argument is. This is all a further demonstration that Hitchens relies on his ability to rhetorically bulldoze his way into subjects he knows nothing about and then off-handedly dismiss arguments he doesn't understand. When faced with genuine pushback, he's got nothing to wield except his own, seemingly infinite, reservoior of scorn and contempt.
Why does anybody bother with him?
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