Hitchens Debates George Galloway Tonight

Tonight's the big debate between Hitch and Galloway.

You can check out the case against Galloway on Hitchens' site, which also has a link to the live webcast feed from the debate.

In a recent Slate column, Hitchens recounts just how vile this traitor -- and yes, he is guilty of treason, though perhaps not in a legal sense -- actually is.

Fawning on dictators, posing and posturing for a state-controlled press in front of a coerced audience, managing to overlook the existence of death squads and torturers, and praising the invasion and occupation of neighboring states—this is the same George Galloway who in 1994 flew to Baghdad and addressed Saddam Hussein in the following terms, commiserating with him on his failure to annex the Arab and Muslim state of Kuwait:

Your Excellency, Mr. President, I greet you in the name of the many thousands of people in Britain who stood against the tide and opposed the war and aggression against Iraq. … I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability.

Now, you can be a flatterer of dictators and murderers and still—just about—be a pacifist, or "anti-war." But here is what Galloway said about the car bombers and beheaders and suicide fanatics of Iraq, again this July 30 at the Al-Assad Library, as broadcast by Syrian state TV and by Al Jazeera the following day. He informed the Arab world:

Two of your beautiful daughters are in the hands of foreigners—Jerusalem and Baghdad. The foreigners are doing to your daughters as they will. The daughters are crying for help, and the Arab world is silent. Some of them are collaborating with the rape of these two beautiful Arab daughters …

As for the jihadist and Baathist resisters: They "are writing the names of their cities and towns in the stars, with 145 military operations every day."

Change only the name, and this is flat-out Bin-Ladenist hysteria.

Very Strong Content Warning For Obscenely Graphic Insults With the Flavor of Timeless Roman Poetry.

Well, I'm just glad that Hitch won't be getting personal about Georgie:

In a recent interview he made opprobrious remarks about the state of my midriff, which I will confess has—as P.G. Wodehouse himself once phrased it—"slipped down to the mezzanine floor." In reply I do not wish to stoop. Those of us who revere the vagina are committed to defend it against the very idea that it is a mouth or has teeth. Study the photographs of Galloway from Syrian state television, however, and you will see how unwise and incautious it is for such a hideous person to resort to personal remarks. Unkind nature, which could have made a perfectly good butt out of his face, has spoiled the whole effect by taking an asshole and studding it with ill-brushed fangs.

That line reminded me of Catullus. He was a Roman poet, and considered quite a good one. In between writing about the normal stuff poets write about -- flowers, stars, Hyperion's bow, love, faggity shit like that -- he wrote "poetry" villifying his enemies (quite numerous, thankfully) in the most obscene terms.

Like this classic, found at Seldom Sober:

Really, I shouldn't have thought that it made any difference
whether Aemilius opened his mouth or his asshole:
one wouldn't expect to find elegance from either.
However, his asshole does show greater refinement,
since it has no teeth.
The teeth in his mouth are enormous,
set maladroitly in gums of saddlebag leather,
and when (as he's want to) he grins, one thinks of the gaping
cunt of a she-mule in heat, pissing profusely.
He fucks a great many women & thinks himself charming,
but hasn't brains enough to walk a miller's donkey.
Surely the women who went with him ought to take pleasure
in licking clean a sickly old hangman's asshole.

Now that's what I call poesy! If they'd taught me stuff like that in high school, instead of e.e. cummings' fey twaddle, I might have continued that love affair with the written word I'd begun when I started reading Peanuts as a tyke.

Johnny Coldcuts is a big Catullus fan; the damn sandwich never shuts up about his "genius," as a matter of fact. He's especially fond of this one, which he says "changed my life and gave me an idea of the man I wanted to be, called simply Catullus 16:

I'll fuck you up the ass, and you can blow me,
you cocksucker Aurelius and you faggot Furius,
for suggesting that my little verses
are effeminate and not pure enough.
A good poet should be virtuous,
but his verses don't need to be.
Who cares if verses that have spice and wit
are soft and not very pure?
They can also get you going.
I'm not talking to boys here, but to two hairy men
who can't even move their creaky old loins.
Are you two putting me down
just because you've read about my thousands of kisses?
Fuck you both. You can blow me.

Excuse me. I need to wipe my eyes. I've been positively moved to tears.

Brilliant, Catullus. Absolutely brilliant.

I think I have a "man-crush" on you, but not really, because you're long dead, unlike Powers Boothe, who Dave From Garfield Ridge is in love with.

Kinda puts rap put-downs in perspective. Truly old-school, as it turns out.

Would anyone be interested in a poetry-of-Catullus styled flamewar?

How Did I Miss This One Update?: From the same link directly above.

Catullus 23

O most distinguished of the bathhouse thieves,
father Vibennius, and o buttfucking son,
(for the light-fingered father is quite foul,
and the son is voracious with his asshole),
why don't you go on a trip to someplace miserable,
since everyone knows about the robberies of the father.
And as for you, son, can't you manage
to sell your hairy ass to anyone for even a penny?z

I've got to tell ya that, based on these screeds, I don't think homosexuality was quite as accepted in the ancient world as queer-theorist scholars have led us to believe.

posted by Ace at 12:41 PM

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