Maybe you haven’t followed the on-line feud over whether rightwing columnist Christopher Hitchens’s alleged alcoholism led him to publish on Slate a statement by the influential scholar Juan Cole that Cole believed to be confidential. Cole had made the statement on a confidential listserv called “Gulf 2000.” He felt violated when Hitchens quoted from it, and mused that Hitchens may have done so because he’s an alcoholic.
Well, I don’t think it is any secret that Hitchens has for some time had a very serious and debilitating drinking problem. He once showed up drunk to a talk I gave and heckled me. I can only imagine that he was deep in his cups when he wrote, or had some far Rightwing think tank write, his current piece of yellow journalism. I am sorry to witness the ruin of a once-fine journalistic mind.
Whether or not you think Hitchens is an alcoholic (and what I saw of him years ago would support that belief then), it’s great the conversation is happening. It’s probably relevant, to begin with. And it’s Cole’s honest opinion. And it would never appear in the mainstream press. That’s because the print press is so monetized. You get paid so much for issuing opinions in the mainstream press, and they make so much off those opinions, that libel concerns encircle every loaded statement. (Let alone the usual social groupthink questions: Unh, can we really say this??) In the blogosphere it’s about information and true opinion. Hitchens’s friends get to counter the claim or ignore it. There’s a free discussion, closer to what intellectuals are saying to one another on telephones and in bars (sorry!), not a stilted and false one.
Though Andrew Sullivan’s claim that his countryman was sober at the time—
I was at Hitch’s yesterday as he filed the piece. He was stone-cold sober. And on top form.
doesn’t seem entirely relevant. As Dan Swanson points out to me, the nastiness and self-centeredness of alcoholic behavior doesn’t require having had a drink..
Not that I would come down on Cole’s side here (as I do on his views of the Middle East). Cole is a very important thinker, for good reason; he has great judgment and knowledge. I gather that Hitchens is not in the listserv. If someone in the listserv passed on Cole’s confidential statement to Hitchens, and Hitchens chose to publish it, how different is that, in form, from what the New York Times so nobly did in breaking the story about Bush’s illegal wiretaps? Yes, the leaker violated an oath in giving the journalist info; the journalist shared the leaker’s view that the info was important, and passed it on to his readers.
There's a huge difference: Whatever Bush does is paid for by and affects the public (well, it's paid for by big corporations, but we'll go with the agreed-upon fantasy here). Cole is a civilian citizen with privacy (not to mention copyright) rights.
What Cole says affects the public too. If you stick your head abve the parapet u gotta be prepared to have it shot at.
Talk about missing the point! Cole went out-of-his mind over Hitchens hardball, and even resorted to posting photos of wounded veterans (copyrighted?) and chanting anti-war slogans. I'm interested in knowing what makes you think Cole is such a serious scholar. It wouldn't be the first time that journalists knew better than academics . . .
a discussion of personality is not really the point. the point is, proper translation forthcoming, a public benefit accrues as our present national administrator substantiates the next big adventure through media alter egos. so the crux of our discussion is which translation does our national media properly use to analyze the particular, and presently hypothetical, danger to world peace posed by some foreign nation's leader. in short, do the media assign to Mr. H, or dr. C. the true translation?
tens of millions of lives are at stake, and these, in sum, surely are of a tad more consequence than the alcoholism of one tattered scribbler. regarding the real matter of discussion, my hat is in Mr. C's ring, because it is his area of expertise through which the consequential matter is properly addressed.
if we're no better suited to the task at hand than yammering on about drinking predilections and the best suited parapets of defense, and assault, then please, turn on the fm oldies, step out back and park with me in the next afternoon's shade under the beautiful tree. there, we'll sleepily peruse the afternoon telegraph as the very discrete and proper englishmen we are, puffing fine authorized cigars, and flatulently pontificating privately. in any case, the real matter is not trivial. if we choose to be trivial, it best be done in private, and perhaps there mr. h might join us, carrying libation, eh?
The relevant points here are:
1) Cole's remarks were for discussion and clarification in the listserv group. For Hitchens to use them and out of context, no less, is not journalism, it is fraud.
2) The listserv has members whose careers or worse, lives would be damaged if their private, scholarly works in progress were made available to their enemies. Hitchens' complicity effects censorship and thought control.
3) Cole is a scholar who deserves respect. Hitchens is a sloppy drunk who should be ignored.
Dooglefish:
Given the general hysteria of the above comment, I guess it takes a sloppy drunk to know one…