Jeff Koopersmith

Fond Farewell... Not
An Open Letter To Christopher Hitchens
by Jeff Koopersmith

October 3, 2002

Dear Chris:

May I call you Chris?

Or should I simply call you a simpering Neofascist lightweight who had the luck to run into Victor Navasky so long ago?

I've been watching your "career" -- your drunken rise and then drop-off in the public eye -- for the past few years.

I know what you did vis-à-vis my friend Sidney Blumenthal in concert with Matt Drudge and John Fund -- both of whom have been cast into purgatory for their part in your ugly plot. You are soon to join them, as Fund will be chirping like a sparrow when he goes on trial this month for brutalizing Morgan F. Pillsbury.

Count on that.

Chris Hitchens

But let's move on from ad hominem attacks to your "viewpoints".

It wasn't enough that you defended the right of tabloid historians to imply that the Holocaust did not occur.

It wasn't enough that you used your "friendship" with Mr. Blumenthal to try and destroy him in an effort to further your own lackluster career.

Now you've become an ill-informed war monger, mostly because you're too fat -- literally and figuratively -- and too bloated with your own sense of importance to be drafted even by your native country. You came to the United States to escape the dross of Great Britain, a nation of mostly very decent people but whose greatest achievement often seems to be suffering under the Queen and her royally maggotted family.

You took advantage of our largesse and made your money on the backs of others with no thought for their families, especially their children.

You are, in a word, a shit.

Do you really think that anyone at all cares whether you can "bear" to watch UN inspectors attempt to prevent a war that is sure to kill innocents -- and fought for no other reason than greed?

And, by the by, you never "knew" Naji Sabry -- I know, because I asked him. You met him once. You exchanged a few words. And, remarkably, you remembered -- even though you were drunk.

Mazen Zahawi was not a "friend" of yours either. As a matter of fact, he loathed you, as do most people who know you or have known you.

You talk of "murder" in Iraq, but you gladly participated in the murder of so many reputations: President Bill Clinton, Senator Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Sid Blumenthal, his wife and his family.

Just who the hell do you think you are to talk of murder?

You revel in it. Your words fertilize it.

You aren't a "hostage" of Saddam Hussein. You are a hostage of your own self-loathing. Have you looked to the other nations that have acquired -- and which sell -- weapons of mass destruction for profit, nothing but money? Here are a few examples:

• Great Britain
• France
• Germany
• Sweden
• North Korea
• even the Netherlands!
• ...and, of course, the United States.

So you really believe that only democracies can be trusted with such weapons - and all others should be submissive to them?

You, my enemy (of which I am proud), are also a sadistic megalomaniac. I suppose that's what makes it easy for you to spot others of your ilk.

What do you think about Dick Cheney? Is he also a sadist and a criminal, or did he earn nearly $100 million "running" an oil services company after having never run even a taco stand -- merely because he's a "good guy"?

While I would not blink if someone took out Saddam Hussein, I don't think anything is served by risking a world war -- even though you would probably attempt to cash in on it and its horror as you have so often cashed in on others' ill fortune in the past.

And what about the other filthy menaces in this world? Do you pretend that America should "clean" them up as well? Shouldn't we clean up our own house before engaging in the shepherding of others?

Shouldn't you?

America has lately become her own theocracy -- as will testify the non-Christian, non-Mormon religious leaders of many nation states, along with agnostics and atheists, including your colleagues over at Free Inquiry magazine. Our self-appointed religious "leaders"-- Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Benny Hinn and Franklin Graham, to name a few, all businessmen posing as holy men -- send out children to entice the poorest people of the world with desperately need food, clothing and what they see as the essentials of life, corrupting them and then figuratively hitting them over the head with "The" bible.

Are you against that practice? Do you see that these proselytizers as being just as dangerous as that criminal maniac Osama bin Laden?

You are correct about former governor George W. Bush, but wrong about most everything else -- and I mean everything else.

And yes, if the votes in Florida had been legally tabulated, not (as you lied) "gone the other way," things would have been handled differently. You see that happening right now as the Democrat-controlled Senate defies Mr. Bush and, more important, the corporate whores who control him and allow him the right to wage war at his whim.

You have no knowledge of what "the Iraqi people" believe or do not believe, but certainly even you must believe in the sovereignty of nations. Would you stand by and allow China to impose its form of government, its moral or immoral standards on the American people? Of course not. By your own definition, and practice, you are the worst kind of hypocrite.

You allude that trading one evil (John Ashcroft and Bush) for another (bin Laden et al) is some sort of choice. It is a false choice -- and you offer it knowing it to be false. Ashcroft and his ilk must be eliminated from the highest levels of our government just as terrorism must be rooted out wherever it is to be found.

John Ashcroft is surely a greater menace than bin Laden. This is a man who abuses power and has abused power for decades. This is a man who eagerly participated in denying basic rights and freedoms to all Americans far earlier than his ascent to the office of the U.S. Attorney General. This is a man who got down on his knees to Jaaaaaay-zus in a men's room with now Supreme Court Justice Clarence "Long Dong" Thomas to pray that his plan to play the race card would work. It did. And "Long Dong" has played a pivotal and pitiful role in politicizing the judicial system and subverting the Constitution and the rule of law -- so much so that other members of the court are loathe to speak with him, and he with them. Ashcroft is a man so perverted that he believe art -- in the form of a patriotic sculpture of Blind Justice -- should have her breasts covered with $26,000 worth of blue velvet burkha.

Unprecedented.

Yes, it is false for you to continue at The Nation. You have besmirched its sterling reputation for far too long. You should proceed, with all due haste, to rightful oblivion and join your friends Mr. Drudge and Mr. Fund in what Congressman Tom Lantos called, during the trumped up Clinton lynching,"the dustbin of history."

Good riddance.

Jeff Koopersmith