Tea at Trianon: Christopher Hitchens and the Collapse of Journalism

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Christopher Hitchens and the Collapse of Journalism

From Mark Judge at The Washington Examiner:

That’s not the reality today. Liberal journalists can’t write anything that contradicts the official orthodoxy. Conservatives are better, but they don’t cover the arts and culture the way Hitchens did. The essays in A Hitch in Time examine war and politics but also books and culture. Hitchens even reported from the 1995 Oscars. (He couldn’t stand Forrest Gump and was right.)

If you want to write as freely and as widely as Hitchens, you need to freelance for about five different outlets. Even then, there is always the lurking fear of getting canceled.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and a fellow journalist noted on Facebook that I have a new book out. He plugged it this way: “Let’s face it, Mark Judge is a guy who’s going to say what he’s going to say, and then he’s going to say it.” Well, of course. What else is the point of living in a free country? To hide your unpopular conclusions about important subjects?

Despite the internet, journalism is more restricted and intimidated than when Hitchens was alive. Do you ever open a newspaper or your laptop computer not knowing what Joy Reid, Rachel Maddow, or Jonathan Capehart are going to say? Of course not. (Read more.)