hitchcult

Well, so this is a thing:

Dear Sirs & Madams,

We the undersigned ask you to please give permission and a plot for a memorial statue in a prime position within the UK, honouring national treasure Christopher Hitchens for his contributions to the UK and the world. We will raise the funds and build it, we just need the place and permission.

I imagine they'll still be raising the funds for this long after he's generally forgotten and his remaining acolytes are all huddled together for warmth in a small semi-detached in Luton. They will send blueprints of a heroic bronze figure gesticulating wildly against the march of islamofascism to all parties who may or may not be interested, in the meantime resting an empty Netto vodka bottle atop a small cairn in the back garden as a statement of intent. Eventually, the blueprints will be forgotten and the cairn will become the focus of their attentions. A mythology will be weaved around the emptiness of the bottle, as symbolising the absence of religous presence and the space in which Reason can flourish.

The adherents get a snide writeup in Fortean Times, and learned sources among conoisseurs of esoteric belief begin to refer to them as neo-Southcottians, with the empty bottle serving as a postmodernday Southcott's box. Such are the Hitchensians. They appear in public as ghostly presences protesting silently against the endowment of new mosques and earn some publicity when they are prevented from flying to Saudi Arabia with this purpose in mind. They are shy creatures, but their occasional indulgence in ritual drunkenness on Hitchensian high unholy days eventually causes neighbours to contact the multi-agency team at the council, who are concerned also by their militant smoking. A care plan is drawn up.

Comments

[hellblazer]

Reminds me: as the B&T commentariat are all better read than me, anyone know if The Book of Dave is worth a go?

[jamie]

I liked it. Sags in places, due to Self's habit of making a book out of extended riffs stitched together, but it holds together and makes a good case against self-conscious resentful masculinity. His highly personal experiments in phonetic speech are a bit less irritating than usual as well.

Incidentally, I asked him about what he thought of the Booker a few years back in an interview and he just arched his eyebrows and said "PETS win prizes". Not this time though.

[Chris Brooke]

http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2012/oct/labour-politician-threatens-quit-if-bust-%E2%80%98pro-war%E2%80%99-journalist-christopher-hitchens-goe

[Strategist]

Red Lion Square no.
But perhaps something tasteful in the toilets of Dallas's George W Bush Memorial Library?

[johnf]

Bitching for Britain. Excellent.

[ajay]

Incidentally, I asked him about what he thought of the Booker a few years back in an interview and he just arched his eyebrows and said "PETS win prizes".

Good line. He must have taken ages to think it up.

[Richard J]

It'd be too much to hope for that they would take the Muggletonians as a model, would it?

[nick s]

It'd be too much to hope for that they would take the Muggletonians as a model, would it?

Muggeridgians, perhaps.

Statues, though? They should be organising 'Hitch Night Suppers' with ample JW Black Label, readings from their Master's works, and the highlight being the grand entrance of a suet pudding, which is then ceremoniously told to fuck off. Dress code: crumpled linen suit.

[johnf]

>It'd be too much to hope for that they would take the Muggletonians as a model, would it?

I met the world's last Muggletonian. Considering the fact that they used to deliver venomous and blasphemous sermons praising the Devil in their hey day, he was a very nice and quietly spoken farmer.

[Leonard Hatred]

On a related note, it looks like Denis MacShane is getting a 12 month suspension for fiddling his expenses.

[Doug]

It never ceases to amaze me at the gullibility of some people, who still haven't seen through Hitchens maverick contrarian bollocks. It's curious how his fearless defence of reason and the so-called values of Western democracy neatly dovetailed into useful propaganda for illegal invasions and untold deaths and misery as a result. Even years after it was clear to a reasonbly intelligent 10 year old that Afghanistan and Iraq had become disasters, he was too intellectually dishonest to admit it. Then we get the low rent atheism. And now a statue is to be funded by the buffoonerati. Unbelievable.