Christopher Hitchens dies at 62: Sharp-tongued writer fearlessly challenged moral, religious hypocrisy

What Christopher (I just cannot call him Hitchens, because it is hard for me to accept the fact that his distinctive voice now belongs to history), contributed to the American dialogue about atheism was a combination of wit and disrespect that American-born atheists just cannot seem to manage. A naturalized U.S. citizen, Christopher was born and educated in England and was an heir to the best British traditions of no-holds-barred wit and satire.

No American atheist was ever going to give a book a title like The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice . No, we would begin such a book, if we ever thought about writing it in the first place, by making sure to acknowledge all the good that missionaries, somewhere, somehow, must have done. Christopher, by contrast, went straight for the jugular, noting: “As Edward Gibbon observed about the modes of worship prevalent in the Roman world, they were `considered by the people as equally true, by the philosophers as equally false, and by the magistrates as equally useful.’ Mother Teresa descends from each element in this ghastly triptych.” What a wonderful image “ghastly triptych” is!

Personal Post

Gallery

 Here are some of the many remarkable people — political leaders, business leaders, visionary thinkers, scientists, athletes, artists, entertainers of various sorts, journalists, old soldiers, diplomats, despots, humanitarians and terrorists — who died during the year.

Video

Christopher Hitchens explains what he sees as his life's work: combating "superstition and religious totalitarianism." This video is part of an interview with On Faith’s Sally Quinn from the fall of 2010.

Reactions to Hitchens’ death were numerous. Alexandra Petri argues in her satire blog ComPost that most of the onslaught of tributes did little to capture the true essence of the man.

The response to Christopher Hitchens’ death — in the wee hours of last night, from esophageal cancer — has been, predictably, asinine.

First there was the flurry of tweets insisting that anyone who said God Is Not Great ought to be taken out and shot, mistaking the trending book title for an assertion that needed hasty and eRraticAlly capitalized debunking.

I must confess that the thought of Christopher Hitchens banging about the firmament with a harp is of limited consolation. Nor is the idea of him being fricasseed on some supernal skewer particularly satisfying. But it seems oddly prevalent among online commenters.

Shortly after Christopher Hitchens’ passing in the wee hours of Thursday-into-Friday, the Reverend Rick Warren tweeted, “My friend Christopher Hitchens has died. I loved & prayed for him constantly & grieve his loss. He knows the Truth now.”

Then there was the uncomfortable fact that any writer worth his salt who has picked up a magazine in the past decade has the idea that he has a deep and personal relationship with Hitchens that the world at large will be interested in reading about. Why not try? It’s a trending topic.

When it comes to the penning of lugubrious tributes, he belongs squarely in the category of those who said it themselves and said it better. And if he didn’t, he was best friends with Martin Amis and Christopher Buckley, and I am fairly sure they have it covered. There is little you can say better about someone who has anthologized himself — not once, but five times.

He was, at all times, Christopher Hitchens. Writing for every outlet from Slate to Vanity Fair, he embodied the dream that New Journalism has been wanting so desperately and pulling off so badly — the personal brand, the byline so dominant and promising that you’d read him if he wrote about the telephone directory or the beneficence of foaming hand soap. He said controversial things that were more than merely controversial by virtue of the excellent way he said them.

More from The Washington Post

Opinion: Christopher Hitchens was the most articulate unbeliever

The Christopher Hitchens reader

Video: Hitchens on what religious people say about his diagnosis