Friday, June 22, 2007

The medium is the message

Today's Wall Street Journal reports that (subs. may be req'd) Christopher Hitchens is minting it as a result of rapid sales of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. The book is up to 7 times its original print run of 40,000 copies and Hitch looks set to make $1m from it. One hopes that somewhere in the book Hitch deals with his political hero's claim that "the desire for freedom is written in every human heart" but the success also reveals Hitch's talent for the media circus e.g. --

An estimated 1,000 turned out in Miami to listen to Mr. Hitchens challenge a panel that included an Orthodox Jew and a Buddhist nun. "I now wish I hadn't participated," says Nathan Katz, a professor of religious studies at Florida International University. "He was utterly abusive. It had the intellectual level of the Jerry Springer Show."

One does wonder if the book is his (highly lucrative) penance for the shambles in Iraq.

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