Sunday, November 15, 2009

Chistopher Hitchens Misses the Mark on "Populism"

Via Memeorandum:

Christopher Hitchens doesn’t like Sarah Palin. Hitchens has a penchant for unmasking charlatans and in the Newsweek article Palin’s Base Appeal, he appears to be unmasking Palin but it is those that he perceives as “her base” that he has taken aim at.

Populism is a political ideology based on the perceived interests of ordinary people. Reading the article, it struck me that Hitchens considers “ordinary people” to be nasty little uneducated beings whose interests don’t interest him nor in his estimation should they interest anyone else of substance. In Hitchen’s view, if Palin has had any measure of success it lies in her ability to pull the wool over the eyes of the way too gullible unwashed masses.

They say a good writer writes about what he knows and Hitchens is altogether unacquainted with ordinary people. He does not have a clue why people are angry and if truth were told, he probably believes the anger is caused by the mundane nature of their small lives. But such people are too far below his station to grant any consideration or thought.

Should Hitchens care to actually research the subject of ordinary people before he opines on them again I would be happy to clue him in. But that would most likely bore him.

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