'Christopher Hitchens is losing his marbles' (in Shanghai)

Peijin

Here's a radical idea

Perhaps reading first and writing later?

'Theory, Practise, Theory' - now who said that??

Ouch.

I guess it wasn't clear from the post that I do indeed know who Christopher Hitchens is and, although I may not always agree with him, I respect his work and love listening to him speak (and not just for his accent).

I attended his talk here in Shanghai and found it truly engrossing. The man can talk about nearly anything with authority. I love that he speaks his mind, never censors himself. And I found myself nodding a lot to what he had to say that night. Religion is a topic that Hitchens and I see largely eye to eye on. The Iraq War, not so much. But I love that he is equally admired and hated from both sides of the political aisle. You have to respect that.

The short, quick post I wrote in advance of his talk was simply to let people know that he was in Shanghai -- I didn't think many people realized he was speaking here. And the "who the hell is Christopher Hitchens" part was a response to the fact that when I mentioned his name to several people here -- and tried to get them to attend the talk with me -- the majority of them did not know who Hitchens was. (And these are not people who are limited in their intellectual scope.)

Paul, I'm sorry you don't like the site. We still like your newsletter, though. And we hope to see you at our happy hour next week.

(Perhaps it should also be noted that the author of the first comment sent an email to apologize a while back and requested that we take his comment off the site. We couldn't do that, of course. He has since expressed interest in writing for the site ... but he lives in Beijing.)

the first comment by hu yue is ridiculous. the implication is that people who have not heard of hitchens have very very subpar (78 is what, over a standard deviation below norm?) IQs is fucking pretentious, OK. I've heard of who he is, i've read his essays, heard of his books. And so what if i didn't? My father is a theoretical physicist and my guess is that his IQ is somewhat above 78. I don't think he's heard of Christopher Hitchens or read any of his books. There is no reason to assume that the readers of Shanghaiist are more like you and less like my father. Therefore there is no reason to write a post assuming everyone knows Hitchens. And there are times when, because god knows we are busy, that we'd rather not regurgitate something about him because 1. that'd be boring and 2. we don't know that much about him, so why pretend like we do? So instead, you try to write something a little different or humorous? Have you forgotten that there are other great thinkers alive on the planet right now, and that perhaps people haven't gotten around to reading Hitchens because they were busy reading those other thinkers?

As for Paul French's comment: one post does not a website make. There are a lot of magazines and websites i read that sometimes have great articles and sometimes have shitty ones. i tend to believe in the former and forgive the latter (as long as it doesn't happen too often) and keep reading. Secondly, perhaps i don't spend enough time online, but i have not found too many blogs that actually have something deserving of what might be called "intellectual scope". Sure, there are online versions of good magazines with strong traditions, but remember, they pay smart people to write for them and they have that tradition and reputation thing going for them. That said, Shanghaiist is a work in progress and criticisms are welcome (i speak for myself, not for the author of the post). Of course, since you guys are so keen on intellectual standards, why don't YOU go out and write something and raise the bar? You sit there and bitch when someone doesn't know something that you know. Surely, it behooves the ignorant to brush up on things before writing on them--but there will always be situations where someone wants to write about something but doesn't have the time, resources, or wherewithal. And that's when division of labor comes to the rescue, but oh shit, all the labor on this site is done by about 3-4 people. And oh shit, some of these people don't read The nation, harper's, atlantic monthly, etc. what to do?

I fear Shanghaiist displayed the fact that it has rather quickly reached the limits of its intellecutal scope with this silly piece. If the best comment you can make is about his accent probably best to go back to stories about bars and traffic signs.

"Who is Christopher Hitchens?" Does the Shanghaiist have a maximum IQ of 78 or what?

"Why is he in Shanghai?"

Does one of the world's most outspoken, erudite and entertaining thinkers and writers need a reason to visit Shanghai and give a talk about a book he's writing?

Please, I beg you, let go of the fraternity-level sarcasm of expat mags and grow up -- intellectually, culturally, spiritually.

Resorting to "Googlisms" to unveil one's own ignorance?

Why not just call your blog the Googlist?

Hu Yue