I Fisk You a Merry Christmas

This is fisking for dummies, but it’s Christmas after all:-

Let's just hope God is merciful, Chris
By George Galloway

WELL, he kens noo. I hope that the deceased, unbelieving English man of letters Christopher Hitchens has discovered that God is not only great but merciful too.

[Now, when Christians say that kind of thing in pious tones, you know they are lying.   May all my enemies go to hell, Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel]

I had taken a self-denying ordinance over his demise at the weekend from osophageal cancer on the grounds that one should not speak ill of the recently dead and there would be nothing good to say about him considering the circumstances.

Two things forced me to shorten my purdah. The first was the way in which almost every one of the eulogies and profiles, in which I had declined to be represented on grounds of taste, nonetheless managed to attack me in the process of praising him.

[Oooh George – I've read loads of these, and y'know, you're not mentioned THAT much.  The American ones don't mention you at all.  But of course if your google alert says "George Galloway" – and I'm sure it does, not out of mere vanity though yours should never be underestimated, but for litigation opportunities - that's how it must seem to you.]

The second was the sight of his friend Tony Blair, his voice catching with emotion in the "death of Diana way", telling us what a great man he was.

This canonisation of the departed by some of the worst hypocrites operating in the English language must be halted before it slithers any further.

[Weel, I'd be very careful of the "h" word if I were you.]

Hitchens was the only-known case of a butterfly changing back into a slug.

He wrote like an angel but placed himself in the service of the devils.

He was a drink-soaked former Trotskyite popinjay, the Englishman in New York who discovered there were large bundles of right-wing dollars available for apostates like him. If they were prepared to betray their friends, their principles and sell the soul he didn't believe he had in the first place.

[And I'm sure your work for Iran's Press TV is done for a small pittance, barely enough to keep you in cigars.  Also the "popinjay" – which one is the dapper little chap and which one the untidy handsome guy out of you two?  And though it's the season for recycling, couldn't you have at least come up with some new insults?]

Easy. As Groucho Marx once put it: "These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others."

Thus, the man who once praised Saddam Hussein in adoration and opposed the first Gulf War when the Iraqi tyrant was still occupying Kuwait, was transformed into the main literary cheerleader for the second war.

[Ah, well you would know about "adoration" of Saddam Hussein, not to mention his rapist offspring.]

And he was still blowing the weapons of mass destruction trumpet long after its tinny notes were discredited.

The man who once championed the Palestinian cause became a little echo for Benjamin Netanyahu, denouncing the 10 Turkish dead on the ship Mavi Marmara as "Hamas-sympathisers" who got what they asked for.

[Do you mean that they DIDN'T sympathise with Hamas?  I'm shocked.  And – get your little head around this – it's possible to champion the Palestinian cause and not become a pimp for what Hitchens would call "gaunt fascists with an Islamic face".]

Sure his ditties were witty, his parsing precise and, if you like your men drunk, slurred and slobbering, he could be charming no doubt.

[You really know you were outclassed on all fronts – "ditties were witty", "parsing precise" – is that your way of showing you can do that writing thing as well?]

But when you're slobbering in support of the re-election of George W Bush for his catastrophic second term, or backing Bush's handling of the clean-up operation after Hurricane Katrina (where he was the only man in the country other than Bush who thought the Federal Emergency Agency was doing a "heck of a job") and you have written the script for the most disastrous massacre since Vietnam, I'm afraid literary pretence must be put in its proper place. Down the lavatory.

Hitchens and I shared the ring in an epic "Grapple in the Apple" back in 2005 in Manhattan.

Thousands of people queued around the block for ringside seats paying top dollar for the privilege. You can watch it on YouTube or wait for the DVD, with commentary and my updates, which I will produce shortly.

[My dear, plug your work in the visual media as you will, your most popular appearance on YouTube will continue to be pretending to be a cat in a red leotard.]

Ultimately, the real reason for the ­tear-stained eulogies from the British media commentariat for the late Mr Hitchens is that, by and large, the writers and editors are weeping for themselves.

They share his guilt over the Iraq War and deep inside they know it.

But all the salty tears in the world will not out that damned spot. The next reason is class.

Hitchens was a toff, a Lord. And the English-speaking world, it seems, still likes to love a Lord.

[Admiration undeservedly won, nothing to do with talent of course.  And congratulations for about the best example of resentful envy and self-promotion incompetently disguising itself as principled opposition I've seen in a long while.]

Comments

[Frank S]

Good work, Rosie. Such an ill-natured piece by Georgie at this time is tawdry to say the least, and I speak as one who does not have, overall, an admiration for Hitchens. But I do not regard him with the contempt I hold for Mr Galloway. Hitchens was a victim of a youthful attraction to socialism, an attraction which he really ought to have outgrown with the end of his adolescence. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than that, and I think he never really got the poison out of his system. But he wrote like a dream, and he came across as ruthlessy honest and penetrating. Someone you would be pleased to welcome into your home. Unlike Mr Galloway, whom, I do regret to say, I would not find welcome in my cesspit.

[Rosie]

Frank, if you welcomed GG to your cesspit, all the cess would walk out in high dudgeon, leaving you and him in the pit.

[Frank S]

Ouch.

[Frank S]

Just found a kindred spirit to cheer me up:

'After a lifetime of studying the left, I have concluded that leftism is a form of moral poison. It causes otherwise decent and kind people who take it into their systems to say and/or do cruel and sometimes evil things.'

http://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2011/12/20/why_thomas_friedman_abetted_antisemitism/page/full/

[Andrew Coates]

Rosie, as I began Galloway's 'piece' as we fellow writers call it, I thought this was your own parody.

Although it is not, it's a good laugh - *at* not with.

[Worm]

This gave me a good laugh Rosie! The really tragic thing is that you can see that George Galloway genuinely believes he is fit to measure himself in the same league as Hitchens

[Chas N-B]

Magnificent piece.

He's a funny old freak, is GG!

[Resistor]

I think Galloway was too kind to the repulsive poisonous little toad that was Christopher Hitchens. He could have mentions his misogyny, racism and betrayal of his wife and friends - and that's just for starters.

Hitchens was a pathological liar and cheerleader for a war which killed hundreds of thousands and wrecked the lives of millions.

You should mourn the victims, not the criminal.

Hitchens was the Julius Streicher of the pseudo-left.

[Lamia]

Excellent fisking. It is truly toe-curling how Galloway desperately recycles his 'greatest' 'witticisms'.

But this sums it all up:

"My dear, plug your work in the visual media as you will, your most popular appearance on YouTube will continue to be pretending to be a cat in a red leotard."

Hahaha.

[Resistor]

[My dear, plug your work in the visual media as you will, your most popular appearance on YouTube will continue to be pretending to be a cat in a red leotard.]

Galloway took part in Big Brother in order to raise money for charity and made more than £100,000. I doubt if Hitchens has donated a penny to any charity. In fact he used to sponge off and even steal from his colleagues.

Let's not forget when H itchenstook money from the far-right bigot Richard Mellon Scaife to grass up friends like Sidney Blumenthal, earning the nickname Hitch the Snitch.

[Bob]

A tiny footnote. I was re-reading this when I noticed the Groucho Marx quote which GG deploys well, and it reminded me of Hitchens' own paraphrase (without attribution) of same in an interview in 1993. Summing up the Labour Party's electoral strategy: "Here are our principles, and if you don’t like them, we’ll change them.” Alas, even truer now.

[Omar]

Excellent fisking, Rosie.

Being not quite sure of the term, I looked it up: "blogosphere slang describing a point-by-point criticism that highlights perceived errors, or disputes the analysis in a statement, article, or essay" (Guess where from.)

So GG fisks himself, in one long cesspit of a point.