RIP Christopher Hitchens

Hitchens died a week ago. Here's an obit, as it appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
A quick search shows that this blog has made reference to Hitchens' work three times.

The first time was after my Bloomsday trip to Dublin in June 2007, and I reported that I had met him in an elevator in that city:

http://cfaille.blogspot.com/2007/06/christopher-hitchens.html

A year later, I made a rather snide remark about Hitchens and his "village atheist" pose at the end of a post about Scholem:

http://cfaille.blogspot.com/2008/05/mysticism-and-scholarship.html 

Again this spring I invoked Hitchens as a token of that type:

http://cfaille.blogspot.com/2011/04/from-yahooanswers.html 

Aside from his proselytizing for atheism, though, the other fact about Hitchens worth noting is that  his political journeying replicated that of the neoconserativces of an earlier time. I use the word "neocon" in what I take to be the faily narrow and correct sense, not as a loose term of abuse as it is often used these days.

A neocon in the relevant sense is generally a secular intellectual who adopts conservative views on what he takes to be practical grounds, often after a leftwing youth. Historically, many neocons happen to come from a Jewish ethnic background: Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Bill Kristol, etc.

The original neocons (the first two of those three among them) adopted conservatism after a disillusionment about communism, and they became identified with the view that the stronger the US in the world, the weaker international communism, the better for humanity.

On October 21, 2002, the Washington Post ran an opinion piece by Hitchens entitled "So Long, Fellow Travelers." It was precisely the sort of piece that could have been written by one of the original neocons in the 1970s. But with an update for the era. The new threat to all Hitchens held dear was Islamofascism (his coinage, I believe), and his disagreement with his former colleagues on the left was that they are soft on it, and he would no longer be.

His journeying is now over, his friends will remember him fondly, and the readers he infuriated might benefit as they recollect that passion in tranquility.

Troubles at The New York Times Co.

An article in BusinessWeek observes that a share of stock in The New York Times Co. is now worth only half what it was worth a year ago.

Why? Well, it's true that the equities of US based corporations have fallen across the board, but not so dramatically as all THAT! The S&P index has fallen about 20% in the past year. The NASDAQ 100 has fallen only 10%. So why has NYT fallen nearly 50% (or to be precise, 46.3%)?

In a July 23d release about disappointing second quarter earnings, the CEO (Janet Robinson) blamed the economic slowdown as well as "secular forces playing out across the media industry."

No. First, if this were simply a manifestation of the general economic slowdown, it should mirror the results of the broader indexes. Second, if the problem were "secular forces" etc., you'd see similar results at other companies in the media industry.

You don't. The Washington Post Co. has lost about 25% of its value over the last year. That IS in line with the general economy, or only slightly worse. And that would tend to show, by the way, that the stereotypical conservative answer ("it's because the NYT is so dam liberal!") isn't empirical. The WPO is as much on their enemies' list as the NYT. But it has done better, or only half as bad, over these last difficult months because ... because its a better run enterprise.

That is where responsibility lies. With Ms Robinson and her board.

God bless you please. [Okay I couldn't help myself there.]