Flak Magazine Letters
May-Aug 2004
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08-22-04
To: Stephen Himes
Re: Doublethink
Dear Mr Himes,
I've just returned from Afghanistan to find a copy of your review/article, sent to me by the great Tom Luddy, and I am writing to thank you for the high and rare seriousness of what you have said. I wish very much that yours was the standard by which debate was conducted these days.
Of course I am not going to leave it like that...I think you fall into error, first, by committing the great fault of attempted even-handedness. I obviously cannot say everything in my review of Moore, but what I leave out can be found elsewhere in my work, and what I put in can be tested and compared. This is not the case, as you half-admit, with F2001. I have made or helped make a few documentaries myself, including one on Kissinger that was near-commercial, and I would hide my face if anyone could accuse me of bending, stretching, inventing or omitting in the way that our new mass-celeb has done.
May I mention a few small things first? I didn't say "rubbled". I said "rumbled", a possible Anglicism that means "found out" or "caught out". Blame that on the transcript, but you do build on my "rubble" all the same....
Then you say, rather too tentatively, what is blindingly obvious. Of course Bush is joking at his own expense when he dons white tie and speaks about the "have mores". I could tell that even before I found out that he was addressing the Al Smith dinner, one of those tiring regular events (like the Gridiron in Washington) where our leaders perform this generally unfunny ritual. You may not have known this — most of the shocked audience don't know it either — but do you think that Michael Moore didn't know it? See what I mean?
(By the way, for more on the above and on other pieces of outright fraudulence, see Dave Kopel's compilation of Moore's lies. The above are points at random, but they are also points in themselves, and indicative in my opinion.
As for my position on the war in general, I can't quarrel with you if you suppose, or assert, that only a morally and politically admirable America, or American administration, had the right to fight it. Or rather, I CAN quarrel with you, and on that very point. Where you lose, though, is in suggesting that I have somehow avoided combat on this. I did produce a little book — entitled "A Long Short War" — at the very beginning of the conflict, in which I tried at least to engage with most of the objections in advance.
I would, for example, be very upset if anyone could show me the better bid that was outdone by Halliburton's insider connection. But nobody has even attempted to do this. If a Ralph Nader administration was seeking to recuperate Iraq's oil industry after decades of Saddam's privatisation, it would have had to turn to Halliburton, and its subsidiary KBR, which among other things put out the near-catastrophic fires after the 1991/2 vandalism. This may not be a Green or Socialist thought, but it is — in its materialism and realism — a Marxist one. Marxists look at the real forces and relations of production.
Populists (and "national socialists") look at the supposedly secret deals that run the world "behind the scenes". Child's play. Except that childishness is sinister in adults.
Then I have to mention the question of moral and political courage.
Without claiming it for myself, I can deny it to Moore. You know very well what he thinks and says about Israel and the Israeli lobby. Not one word about it in this film. Only Saudi-bashing (which I was doing before he did it.) Shall I make you guess? And people say what a kick-ass guy this man is...
I was not bragging when I said that I would debate Moore or any of his mouthpieces anywhere or any time, even if I may have tested your sense of humor by phrasing it in that "Make My Day" manner, which I (perhaps wrongly) felt was appropriate to his initial bully-boy challenge. I think you make too much of that. However, I would at any time stand by all the points I haven't the space to defend now, and you are welcome to pick any one you choose.
A final thing. I have had many opportunities to comment on this Orwell business, and I think (since you seem to have read Front Page) that you may even have seen one or two of these. I have been explicit and exhaustive in denying any comparison, as made by myself, between Orwell and me. (He was brave enough to take a bullet; never had enough to live on; could not get regularly published — one could go on.) If someone else wants to say that I have a hint of his style, as some did as early as two decades ago, all I can or could do was to swallow and to say that it must have been obvious that I had been reading him since I was a teenager. But THAT'S IT. I defy you to defame him, or sneer at me, on any other evidence.
've taken enough of your time, if you have read this far, so I'll close by thanking you again for all the care you took in writing your essay, and by advising you in my curmudgeonly way that you can't hope to make the best use of your obvious talent if you spend so much time splitting the difference and trying to accomodate everyone.
Sincerely,
Christopher Hitchens
07-30-04
To: Alissa Rowinsky
Re: The Weekly Shredder, Vol. 3
Alissa,
Your Weekly Shredder report on flakmag.com (07/29/04) was excellently written. My distrust of the Bush admin. has been growing in recent months, but your article helped to kick the legs out from under his platform, at least in my eyes. Great job with the supporting articles also, it's obvious you aren't the only one who has noticed the contradictions surrounding D.C. today. Anyway, thanks again for an enlightening and entertaining read.
Nathan C.
Indiana, USA
07-19-04
To: Benjamin Arnoldy
Re: Iceland (Reprise)
you are an idiot if you think you can just come to iceland in the wintertime and just expekt to haf a grate time with out any plans what the hell did you expekt? and yes icelandic night life is great and what!! one bar? you probebly ware not in the town center and yes you are right a bout one thing the youth in the small towns are dum wanabes experiansing cultur shok be cos of movies and tv
and yes I am an icelander and I love my contry but I hate the peable more than any thing
p.s I think I shuld show peable around for monney
07-19-04
To: Benjamin Arnoldy
Re: Iceland (Reprise)
After reading your article about Iceland half way through I realized what a pathetic fool you are for writing this mess. If you had any brains you would know that the key to discovering any country is through its people. You on the other hand wanted to take the bus to your destinations. Word of advice, get to know the locals unless you want to play the idiot tourist and miss out. You certainly have not done your homework because your piece lacks much of the truth. I could sense you really want to focus on the negative and for that I pity you. Please do not come back to Iceland, it is not for pompous staff writers who can't do their job properly.
Bored of self righteous foreigners
Franz Gunnarsson
