Through the years, people who knew him told me he was a babbling drunk. Others hated him for his intransigent atheism. After 9-11, he defended some pretty awful political ideas.<\/p>\n
Yet to the end of his days<\/a> he remained one of the most readable, gutsy, iconoclastic and strong-minded<\/a> writers. <\/p>\n His repeated debunkings of Mother Teresa<\/a> were a breath of fresh air — not because the old nun was a bad woman (good or bad, I really don’t know; no doubt a mixed bag like all of us), but because she was the subject of absurdly unhealthy adulation and mythologizing. He questioned her<\/a> precisely because nobody else dared<\/i>. (The bit about her “divine light” — courtesy of Kodak — has always been a favorite.)<\/p>\n He went where others feared to go, dug in, and made those subjects his own. He opposed the same kind of unthinking credulity that has enabled tyrants to create iron-fisted rule in the name of “freedom.” Agree or disagree with his particular views, that’s a job that needs doing.<\/p>\n Oh, Hitchens, too bad you couldn’t have lived and written until you were 92!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Through the years, people who knew him told me he was a babbling drunk. Others hated him for his intransigent atheism. After 9-11, he defended some pretty awful political ideas. Yet to the end of his days he remained one of the most readable, gutsy, iconoclastic and strong-minded writers. His repeated debunkings of Mother Teresa were a breath of fresh air — not because the old nun was a bad woman (good or bad, I really don’t know; no doubt a mixed bag like all of us), but because she was the subject of absurdly unhealthy adulation and mythologizing. He…<\/p>\n