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defrogWow. The Reaper has been busy. Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong-Il – all gone in one weekend.
You’ll forgive me for consolidating my comments into one post, I’m sure.
I don’t have much to say about Hitchens that others haven’t already said. While I tended to disagree with a lot of his opinions, one thing I’ve always respected about Hitchens is that he didn’t toe anyone’s party line and tailor his opinions accordingly. And his opinions were nothing if not brilliantly written and well researched. You can always say you disagreed with Hitchens, but you couldn’t say the man didn’t do his homework. He was even willing to form his opinion on whether waterboarding was torture by actually undergoing it. (His conclusion: “Believe me, it’s torture.”) Which is why Hitchens gets far more respect from me than (and I’m just pulling a name out of the air here) Sean Hannity.
Vaclav Havel may be the least known of the three to many of you. But he made a big impression on me during my Impressionable College Years via the Velvet Revolution, which was fairly big news at the time. Not unsurprisingly, what struck me the most about him was not only was he a dissident playwright who wrote a human rights charter and became President (a combination inconceivable in American politics, then and now), but was also heavily inspired by rock’n’roll music – particularly the Velvet Underground, who were bigger in Communist Czechoslovakia than they ever were in the US.
How bad-ass is that?
Reason has a great write-up of that story. It’s worth reading, even if it’s somewhat depressing to think that rock hasn’t had nearly the same effect on this side of the Iron Curtain.
As for Kim Jong-Il … well, we all know about him. And somehow it seems strangely fitting that he should die the same year as Muammar Gaddafi (Kaddaffy? Qadafy? Ghaddafi?) – both were ruthless, West-hating dictators who managed to become unintentional pop-culture icons by being cartoonishly batshit. With Gaddafi, it was outrageous fashion sense and non-sequiturs. With Kim Jong-Il, it was insanely blatant bullshit propaganda and hilarious photo-ops.
This, incidentally, is by far my favorite picture of Kim.
It looks like he’s doing a rap video. “Kim got a posse and a license to ‘Il’, yo.” Etc.
Yes, I know. I probably shouldn’t make light of it – partially cos he was part of the Axis O’ Evil®, but mainly because no one really knows what the fallout of Kim’s death is going to be. As we’ve seen in the Mid-East in recent years, getting rid of dictators may guarantee change, but perhaps not always in the form you expect (or want).
Who’s next,
This is dF
You’ll forgive me for consolidating my comments into one post, I’m sure.
I don’t have much to say about Hitchens that others haven’t already said. While I tended to disagree with a lot of his opinions, one thing I’ve always respected about Hitchens is that he didn’t toe anyone’s party line and tailor his opinions accordingly. And his opinions were nothing if not brilliantly written and well researched. You can always say you disagreed with Hitchens, but you couldn’t say the man didn’t do his homework. He was even willing to form his opinion on whether waterboarding was torture by actually undergoing it. (His conclusion: “Believe me, it’s torture.”) Which is why Hitchens gets far more respect from me than (and I’m just pulling a name out of the air here) Sean Hannity.
Vaclav Havel may be the least known of the three to many of you. But he made a big impression on me during my Impressionable College Years via the Velvet Revolution, which was fairly big news at the time. Not unsurprisingly, what struck me the most about him was not only was he a dissident playwright who wrote a human rights charter and became President (a combination inconceivable in American politics, then and now), but was also heavily inspired by rock’n’roll music – particularly the Velvet Underground, who were bigger in Communist Czechoslovakia than they ever were in the US.
How bad-ass is that?
Reason has a great write-up of that story. It’s worth reading, even if it’s somewhat depressing to think that rock hasn’t had nearly the same effect on this side of the Iron Curtain.
As for Kim Jong-Il … well, we all know about him. And somehow it seems strangely fitting that he should die the same year as Muammar Gaddafi (Kaddaffy? Qadafy? Ghaddafi?) – both were ruthless, West-hating dictators who managed to become unintentional pop-culture icons by being cartoonishly batshit. With Gaddafi, it was outrageous fashion sense and non-sequiturs. With Kim Jong-Il, it was insanely blatant bullshit propaganda and hilarious photo-ops.
This, incidentally, is by far my favorite picture of Kim.
It looks like he’s doing a rap video. “Kim got a posse and a license to ‘Il’, yo.” Etc.
Yes, I know. I probably shouldn’t make light of it – partially cos he was part of the Axis O’ Evil®, but mainly because no one really knows what the fallout of Kim’s death is going to be. As we’ve seen in the Mid-East in recent years, getting rid of dictators may guarantee change, but perhaps not always in the form you expect (or want).
Who’s next,
This is dF
