This is why Christopher Hitchens is such a lovable atheist:
Asserting in Vanity Fair that the United States now has entered it’s “banana republic” phase, Hitchens writes, “And am I the only one who finds it distinctly weird to reflect that the last head of the Federal Reserve and the current head of the Treasury, Alan Greenspan and Hank “The Hammer” Paulson, should be respectively the votaries of the cults of Ayn Rand and Mary Baker Eddy, two of the battiest females ever to have infested the American scene? That Paulson should have gone down on one knee to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as if prayer and beseechment might get the job done, strikes me as further evidence that sheer superstition and incantation have played their part in all this. Remember the scene at the end of Peter Pan, where the children are told that, if they don’t shout out aloud that they all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s gonna fucking die? That’s what the fall of 2008 was like, and quite a fall it was, at that.”
Actually, Hitchens is not first out of the gate with the observation on Greenspan.
Christopher Buckley’s father, William Buckley, peppered both Rand and Greenspan in his novel “Getting It Right.”
The two Christophers are collaborators in their recent endorsements of Sen. Barack Obama as President.
The lede to Hitchens’ piece in Vanity Fair, which may or may not have been written by Hitchens, also includes a broad swipe at Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, among other banana republics: “The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.”
All of which raises two interesting questions: Should the two Christophers' perferred candidate, Barack Obama, prove to be the next president of the new US bannana republic, does Hitchens propose that a banner should be strung around the White House welcoming the new Randian to his new home -- “Welcome to Venezula?”
And will Christoper Buckley aide in stringing a net around the fourth floor of the office building where his dad’s magazine is produced?
Asserting in Vanity Fair that the United States now has entered it’s “banana republic” phase, Hitchens writes, “And am I the only one who finds it distinctly weird to reflect that the last head of the Federal Reserve and the current head of the Treasury, Alan Greenspan and Hank “The Hammer” Paulson, should be respectively the votaries of the cults of Ayn Rand and Mary Baker Eddy, two of the battiest females ever to have infested the American scene? That Paulson should have gone down on one knee to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as if prayer and beseechment might get the job done, strikes me as further evidence that sheer superstition and incantation have played their part in all this. Remember the scene at the end of Peter Pan, where the children are told that, if they don’t shout out aloud that they all believe in fairies, then Tinker Bell’s gonna fucking die? That’s what the fall of 2008 was like, and quite a fall it was, at that.”
Actually, Hitchens is not first out of the gate with the observation on Greenspan.
Christopher Buckley’s father, William Buckley, peppered both Rand and Greenspan in his novel “Getting It Right.”
The two Christophers are collaborators in their recent endorsements of Sen. Barack Obama as President.
The lede to Hitchens’ piece in Vanity Fair, which may or may not have been written by Hitchens, also includes a broad swipe at Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, among other banana republics: “The ongoing financial meltdown is just the latest example of a disturbing trend that, to this adoptive American, threatens to put the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave on a par with Zimbabwe, Venezuela, and Equatorial Guinea.”
All of which raises two interesting questions: Should the two Christophers' perferred candidate, Barack Obama, prove to be the next president of the new US bannana republic, does Hitchens propose that a banner should be strung around the White House welcoming the new Randian to his new home -- “Welcome to Venezula?”
And will Christoper Buckley aide in stringing a net around the fourth floor of the office building where his dad’s magazine is produced?
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