Via Ted Rall

Back when he was writing under the Minority Report label, Hitch could get away with saying almost anything without being accused of going "off-message." After all, he is a minority of one and he can, within broad limits, report on virtually anything that takes his fancy. But since moving from The Nation to Slate, Hitch's regular column has styled itself FIGHTING WORDS: A WARTIME LEXICON, which, one would suppose, considerably narrows the range of subjects he can legitimately take on. At the same time, at Slate he is having to produce his 1,000 words on a weekly rather than a fortnightly basis, so keeping up the quality requires an extra measure of effort.The strain of fighting the good fight has been showing of late, as Hitch's recent furloughs into tabloid crime and literary tourism illustrate.

But with his latest effort, The You Decade, he appears to have given up on his war altogether in favor of trivial pursuits, i.e., complaining about the lamentable state of advertising and merchandising down at the local mall and on the box these days. At a time when the guys and gals in uniform are being ordered to accept ever-longer tours of duty, could it be that one of the chief ideologues behind the war has gone AWOL? Were this the case, it might be a good sign if it were to herald a shift away from crusading for US hegemony in the Middle East and towards support for the guerrilla war of ideas being raged against corporate totalitarianism by the likes of David Korten and Naomi Klein. But all the signs are that Hitch has no higher motive behind this particular keyboarding exercise, and that he is, rather, morphing prematurely into a contemporary version of Mike Royko or Andy Rooney in their respective dotages.

The You Decade would make a perfectly respectable personal blog entry or even a passable piece for syndication to the weekend sections of regional dailies—just above Anne Landers and sandwitched in between Dave Barry and the crossword. But as a FIGHTING WORDS column it seems badly out of place. It strikes me as the work of a tired old curmudgeon who has lots of irritants to complain about but very little real fight left in him. Perhaps it's time for change of column heading.

Back when he was writing under the Minority Report label, Hitch could get away with saying almost anything without being accused of going "off-message." After all, he is a minority of one and he can, within broad limits, report on virtually anything that takes his fancy. But since moving from The Nation to Slate, Hitch's regular column has styled itself FIGHTING WORDS: A WARTIME LEXICON, which, one would suppose, considerably narrows the range of subjects he can legitimately take on. At the same time, at Slate he is having to produce his 1,000 words on a weekly rather than a fortnightly basis, so keeping up the quality requires an extra measure of effort.The strain of fighting the good fight has been showing of late, as Hitch's recent furloughs into tabloid crime and literary tourism illustrate.

But with his latest effort, The You Decade, he appears to have given up on his war altogether in favor of trivial pursuits, i.e., complaining about the lamentable state of advertising and merchandising down at the local mall and on the box these days. At a time when the guys and gals in uniform are being ordered to accept ever-longer tours of duty, could it be that one of the chief ideologues behind the war has gone AWOL? Were this the case, it might be a good sign if it were to herald a shift away from crusading for US hegemony in the Middle East and towards support for the guerrilla war of ideas being raged against corporate totalitarianism by the likes of David Korten and Naomi Klein. But all the signs are that Hitch has no higher motive behind this particular keyboarding exercise, and that he is, rather, morphing prematurely into a contemporary version of Mike Royko or Andy Rooney in their respective dotages.

The You Decade would make a perfectly respectable personal blog entry or even a passable piece for syndication to the weekend sections of regional dailies—just above Anne Landers and sandwitched in between Dave Barry and the crossword. But as a FIGHTING WORDS column it seems badly out of place. It strikes me as the work of a tired old curmudgeon who has lots of irritants to complain about but very little real fight left in him. Perhaps it's time for change of column heading.