Duly Quoted: Wieseltier on Hitchens' 'Clowning'

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Mixed Media

by Jeff Bercovici

Main

'Stuff White People Like' Book a Cro... Engineering the Risk Out of Book Pub...

Jul 17 2008 12:17PM EDT

"Why, just some weeks ago Christopher Hitchens and his camera-ready conscience went and got themselves waterboarded for the pages of Vanity Fair, which are anyway torture enough. There are many things that might be said about such a stunt -- that moral understanding is not arrived at by means of the senses, or by personal acquaintance with evil; that ordinary intelligence and ordinary imagination are quite sufficient to establish the foulness and the folly of such procedures, which is why judges who have not dressed up in Guantanamo drag have been able to rule persuasively against them; that the victims of waterboarding do not commonly towel down and head for the Waverly Inn -- but I have no intention of dignifying this high clowning with serious reflection. I hope only that Hitchens next tries rendition."

-New Republic critic Leon Wieseltier, who's not impressed with Hitchens' willingness to be waterboarded in the name of journalism.

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