Balancing the media’s worshipful coverage of the passing of Christopher Hitchens

Courtesy of Vancouversun.com

In the midst of the tidal wave of worshipful prose from around the web eulogizing the late Christopher Hitchens, I find myself recalling the man’s crude sexist attacks on world-renowned female leaders such as Mother Teresa and Hillary Clinton, not to mention his earlier slanderous assault on the entire Clinton family. 

Just to balance the media's glorified coverage of the drunken atheist’s death, I’m re-publishing my post of Nov. 25, 2008 titled Rebutting Christopher Hitchens’ Latest Vilification of Hillary and Bill Clinton:

Responding to Christopher Hitchens’ attack in his post at Slate on Hillary Clinton is an unwelcome distraction this morning from preparations for Thanksgiving dinner.

I’ve managed to ignore Hitchens over the years and actually had to review his background to remind myself where such a depraved distortion of Sen. Clinton’s character and qualifications for the position of secretary of state was coming from. A quick glance at his Wiki entry was all it took.

At Slate, Hitchens writes:

In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.

Where to begin?

1. “The Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own.”

Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are known throughout the world for their lifetime efforts on behalf of human rights.

Over the past eight years as a U.S. senator, Hillary Clinton has earned a reputation for her in-depth knowledge of the important issues facing our government, her dedication, her compassion for those in need, and for her ability to work across the aisle.

As for Bill, today the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation addresses climate change, HIV/Aids and Malaria, childhood obesity, sustainable development in Africa, and economic opportunity for all.

2. “A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set.”

Here again, we have a male chauvinist commentator assuming from the get-go that as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton will be assuming the role of a subservient, dutiful wife constrained from expressing her honest opinions and best judgment in fulfilling the responsibilities of her position.

3. “a woman whose personal ambition is without limit”

Why must we repeatedly remind chauvinists like Hitchens that only women continue to be criticized for being ambitious.

4. “This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing.

Note how perniciously, Hitchens uses the word “female” to describe Sen. Clinton. Would he have pointed out the gender of a man he was attacking, as in “this is also the unscrupulous male?” I think not.

And just who was playing the race card, Mr. Hitchens? I recommend that Mr. Hitchens view the video of Obama’s national co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr.’ s tirade against Sen. Clinton the day after she won the New Hampshire primary.

Time after time Princeton historian Sean Wilentz debunked the Obama camp’s egregious attempts to smear both Bill and Hillary Clinton as racists. In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Wilentz wrote:

‘“Obama's backers, including members of his official campaign staff, then played what might be called ‘the race-baiter card.’ Hillary Clinton, in crediting both Lyndon Johnson as well as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for the Civil Rights Act in 1964, had supposedly denigrated King, and by extension Obama. Allegedly, Bill Clinton had dismissed Obama's victory in South Carolina by comparing it to those of the Rev. Jesse Jackson in the 1980s. (In fact, their electoral totals were comparable — and in the interview at issue, Clinton complimented Obama on his performance ‘everywhere’ — a line the media usually omitted.)”’

When pinned down during the Las Vegas debate, Obama made clear – after most of the damage had been done – that along with the rest of the world, he was well aware the Clintons were not racists.

5. “What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.”

That could be due to your jaundiced, bigoted view of reality, Mr. Hitchens. As one who essentially hates women from the misogynous depths of your soulless being, you could not be expected to be aware of the fact that Hillary Clinton is already widely respected among the majority of world leaders.

Incidentally, it occurred to me the other day to imagine the roles were reversed and President-elect Clinton were attempting to find an appropriate slot in her administration for Barack Obama. With Obama’s thin resume, we have to immediately rule out the vice-presidency; an apprenticeship in the Chicago Daley machine and experience as a community organizer just doesn’t cut it. He has no background whatsoever in health care, economics, or any other domestic policy area. And as far as foreign policy goes, he went on a road trip abroad last summer to meet world leaders for the first time.

In response to Obama’s repeated attempts to justify his dearth of experience by identifying with Abraham Lincoln, a little reminder might be appropriate: the world is a lot more complex than when Honest Abe was president.

Neophyte Obama will indeed be fortunate to have the experienced Hillary Clinton on board as secretary of state.

More on Teresa and Process Theology

It’s been a week since I posted my take on Mother Teresa’s loss of faith, and the media buzz continues with yet more commentary from atheist and orthodox on Teresa’s bleak life.

In Newsweek’s feature, “On Faith,” atheist Sam Harris offers an unsympathetic response to excerpts of Mother Teresa’s letters. “Christianity,” Harris says, “amounts to the claim that we must love and be loved by a God who approves of the scapegoating, torture, and murder of one man—his son, incidentally—in compensation for the misbehavior and thought-crimes of all others.”

Harris adds: “The notion that Jesus Christ died for our sins and that his death constitutes a successful propitiation of a ‘loving’ God is a direct and undisguised inheritance of the scapegoating barbarism that has plagued bewildered people throughout history.”

Harris diagnoses Mother Teresa’s despair as “run of the mill depression,” and he calls confessors and superiors to account for responding to her pleas for help by encouraging martyrdom.

Immediately after reading Harris’s piece, I turned to an op-ed in the New York Times by the Rev. James Martin, author of “The Lives of the Saints.” And sure enough, the Rev. Martin confirmed that at a confessor’s suggestion, Mother Teresa had apparently found solace in identifying with the suffering of the crucified Jesus.

In a 2006 interview with TruthDig Harris connects his concern about the dangers of martyrdom with those deluded Islamic faithful who chose to fly planes into the Twin Towers on 9/11. Harris says, “We can no longer ignore the fact that billions of our neighbors believe in the metaphysics of martyrdom, or in the literal truth of the Book of Revelation, or any of the other fantastical notions that have lurked in the minds of the faithful for millennia—because our neighbors are now armed with chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.”

In introducing Harris, Truthdig explains his fame/notoriety: “With the publication of his 2004 New York Times bestseller, ‘The End of Faith,’ a full-throttle attack on religion, Sam Harris became the most prominent atheist in America.”

Truthdig mentions Harris’s degree in philosophy from Stanford, where he’s currently completing a doctorate in neuroscience, and it also suggests that Harris has studied Eastern and Western religious disciplines for 20 years. Regrettably, many of his comments in Truthdig’s lengthy interview indicate that Harris has had little or no formal theological education. For one thing, he seems oblivious to modern day biblical criticism routinely included in seminary curricula. He also appears to be unaware that many thoughtful Christians rejected his interpretation of their tradition, including the element of martyrdom, long before he got around to it.

Some of us even found a spiritual home in process theology. For the uninitiated, process theology is derived from Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophical ruminations. My background in philosophy is limited to the introductory course in undergraduate school; however, I do have a theological education from an accredited seminary, whose instructors were undaunted by Whitehead’s integration of findings from quantum physics with his philosophical principles.

As a refresher, I recently reviewed “Process Thought and Its Applications,” in which theologian John Cobb, Jr. offered two theses: “First, the three dominant intellectual traditions of the modern West ― materialism, dualism, and idealism ― are leading us all to destruction. Second, process thought is the most adequate and promising alternative.”

In this article, Cobb nails materialism, dualism, and idealism for attitudes toward nature that are contributing to the global warming crisis. But he lets the church off the hook for repenting and becoming more ecologically sensitive ― coincidentally, Pope Benedict recently urged young Catholics at a youth rally in Loreto, Italy to take the lead in caring for the planet.

Process theology gets the gold star for an ecological attitude that acknowledges human beings are of nature ― not apart from it ― and we obviously cannot survive outside nature’s web of relationships.

Adherents of process theology believe the ecological web of relationships is the essential context of our faith. Noted process theologian Charles Hartshorne envisioned God’s relationship to the natural world as like that of the psyche or soul to the body, or most particularly to the brain, maintaining that all of life exists within God, and that we are as interconnected as cells within the human body.

To be clear: the God of process theology is not some big, macho guy in the sky who keeps a ledger of our good deeds and our misdeeds, handing out rewards and punishments accordingly. Instead, as process theology would have it, God relates to us in a consistently loving manner, respecting our free will, while continuously inviting each of us to act in the best interests of all of life ― including our own.

That should effectively rule out any kind of propitiating blood sacrifice, as described by Sam Harris, and the related dangers of martyrdom. It might even lead orthodox Christians toward focusing a little more on the life and teachings of the historical Jesus, instead of the cruel manner in which he died.

NOTE to readers: My schedule won’t permit me to update Katalusis again until next Tuesday, September 11, so have a great week and please check back in.

Peace,

Virginia