The iconoclast everyone could agree on

Christopher Hitchens died on December 15, 2011, the same day America’s nine-year adventure in Iraq, a war he so vigorously encouraged, glorified, and excused, formally concluded with the lowering of US colors at Baghdad International. Though perhaps not quite as rich in symbolism as the Fourth of July death of Thomas Jefferson — one of Hitchens’ “heroes, if I had heroes,” as he was fond of saying — for an author who devoted much of his later years to crafting eloquent defenses of that most controversial of American foreign policy decisions, the coincidence still seems fitting enough. One can even imagine the sort of quip the man himself might have made about the synchronicity: “I’d proceed further, but the challenge is gone,” perhaps.

The greater irony, of course, is that in death, Hitchens is now being feted and glorified with the same sort of sentimentalist eulogies he rebelled so strongly against in life. Rarely did Hitch regard the passing of a beloved public figure as anything other than an opportunity for snide revisionism and legacy-stomping iconoclasm.  Bob Hope was “paralyzingly, painfully, hopelessly unfunny.” The Queen Mother was a probable Nazi sympathizer. John Paul II was the protective patriarch of a “child-rape racket,” while Ronald Reagan was simply a “a cruel and stupid lizard.” For those who have grown accustomed to anticipating the tasteless prose of such an accomplished grave dancer, it must be a tragedy indeed that the savage post-mortems Hitchens was reserving for surviving foes like Henry Kissinger and Billy Graham will forever go unheard.

It’s because of this tradition that I regard the occasion of Christopher Hitchens’ death as a more opportune time to berate the man than exalt him, my own generally positive feelings for his accomplishments notwithstanding.

Hitchens’ long, and exceedingly well-documented cancerous decay always had a strange air of neutrality about it, his disease having been nonchalantly self-inflicted entirely through a decadent lifestyle he made no effort to restrain. I’m always reminded of a radio interview I heard many years ago, in which the host speculated offhandedly how agonizing Hitchens must find his trademark globetrotting in an era of non-smoking flights. “But I don’t even need them, that’s the worst part,” Hitch replied, and so it was. In the aftermath of the truly premature deaths of fit, health-conscious men like Steve Jobs and Jack Latyon, it’s more than a little difficult to muster a great deal of sympathy for an overweight lush who courted their same illness with such appalling recklessness.

At the same time, Hitchens certainly died at the right moment. As a pundit who came of age during the Cold War and whose works relied so heavily on conventionally 20th century (if not 19th) narratives of great men, beleaguered nation-states, and just and unjust wars, Hitch’s romantic style of writing never evolved in a manner fully capable of analyzing the increasingly post-ideological, post-national, technocratic landscape of the new millennium. His later, forgettable essays on subjects such as Tea Party protests and the rise of David Cameron have an unmistakable air of boredom about them (once, when asked what he thought of the current British prime minister, Hitchens responded “I don’t”), and almost always read as being somehow beneath the author. His analysis of Mitt Romney rarely ventured beyond the comfortable dead horse of Mormon-bashing, and President Obama proved an enigma that was both too conventional and post-modern to get much of a handle on.

It was the dual causes of War on Terror and atheism that provided a great second wind to a career that would have probably otherwise faltered, though it is worth noting that his strong positions on both topics were vastly more in tune with the mainstream zeitgeist than his iconoclastic reputation implies. He promoted the Iraq war at a time when 70% of Americans agreed with him, and bashed organized religion against the backdrop of murderous Islamic fundamentalism and an unprecedented sex scandal within the Roman Catholic Church. Whether speaking as a leftist or a neocon, Hitchens always sang to the chorus, and enjoyed strongest faith amongst the already converted.

His love of reliving past glories also made him a hopeless egoist and name-dropper, particularly during his final years when he had, in fact, met almost every public figure he was writing about, and rarely left the reader unaware. As is often the case with authors of his stature and longevity, the Hitch byline eventually became a bigger selling point than anything that appeared below it, and it’s telling that his final three published works — a memoir, a “best-of” collection, and an alphabetized index of his wittiest one-liners — were all exercises in nostalgia and legacy-building, rather than honest journalistic offerings of anything particularly modern or relevant.

In the grand scheme, these are all small quibbles, and, even when taken collectively, do little to diminish the significance of Hitchens’ overall body of work, which does deserve the high praise it’s been getting. So much so, in fact, that it’s quite hopeless to even attempt to contribute any unique insights of appreciation without sounding like one more obnoxious fanboy consumer of Brand Hitch, of whom there are already far too many.

Even on his worst days, Christopher Hitchens did many things better than most people on their best. I know few writers who do not take at least some inspiration from his career. But he wasn’t perfect, and in this present climate of adulation and veneration, it’s probably more appropriate than ever for his fans to remind themselves of his flaws, in order to best improve upon their own.

It’s what he would have wanted, after all.