Hitchens, US Elections and Word Play

Christopher Hitchens in 2008 looking pensive and slightly aggressive at the same time.

Christopher Hitchens died in 2011 which annoyed me terribly although it probably annoyed him more. One of the annoying things for me was that I enjoyed his opinion on the various goings on in the world; even when I disagreed with him, he expressed his thoughts so clearly and with such humour that I couldn’t help but enjoy reading them. He was also my go-to source for commentary on US politics and middle east tensions; on both of these subjects the depth of his knowledge was formidable, giving him an understanding that was available to few others.


Hitchens wrote widely and although toward the end of his life he was probably best known for his writings on atheism, he was an accomplished historian and political commentator on a broad range of subjects from Mother Theresa to George Orwell, from Thomas Jefferson to Henry Kissinger and from Diana of Wales to blowjobs.

During the most recent US election especially, I missed the benefit of his views. He had written widely on the Clintons in general and although he was primarily focussed on Bill, he wrote enough to make clear his loathing for Hillary, enough that I struggle to imagine him endorsing her in any way. On the other hand, on the few occasions that he even mentioned Trump, he was more dismissive, even contemptuous than anything else. Of course Trump did not in any meaningful way move in the political circles that interested Hitchens during Hitchens lifetime.

I feel now that on balance Hitchens would have endorsed Trump in favour of Clinton, but a tepid and reserved endorsement it would have been. Hitchens would have been incensed and amused at the same time by Trump and perhaps his amusement would have been the final straw that allowed him to reach the tipping point of endorsing Trump, but of course we will never know.

Hitchens placed great store by amusement and for such a towering intellect was amused by the smallest things. He adored wordplay and was especially fond of limericks. I saw him speak once in Sydney at the Town Hall and remember fondly his amused smirk as he touched on the subject of limericks and among others he recited one as follows;

The Bishop of eastern Japan
Would roger himself with a fan
When taxed on this fact,
He replied it contracts
And expands much more than a man.

There were many more, some of them better than others, all of them lewd in one way or another and many of them only really effective when recited, unable to be transposed to the written word.

Another word game he enjoyed was the replacement of one word with another, the one he spoke of most fondly being the replacement of the word ‘heart’ with the word ‘dick’, leading to such delectable, childish pleasure as “Dickbreak Hotel”, “I left my dick in SanFrancisco” and “Don’t go breaking my dick”. Being startled might cause one a dick attack and the absence of a loved one might cause dick ache. One it would go.

For me, this works just as well by substituting the word ‘fart’ for the word ‘fight’, leading to the very obvious (if somewhat malodorous) “Fart Club” and the first rule of fart club is that we do not talk about fart club.  We can also “Fart for your right to party” and when we find things are getting out of hand we might ask for help farting the fire. Perhaps most fun for me is the notion that a politician attempting to pass a very difficult motion might find himself with a fart on his hands. This one works at so many levels that I think it would be difficult to top.

None of this has any point of course, it’s simply for amusement and it amuses me, so that’s all that matters. Readers are invited to suggest their own word replacement exercises and indeed to contribute further examples to the suggestions from both Christopher Hitchens and me.*

*The sole purpose of that last paragraph was to allow me to say that I have been mentioned in the same sentence as Christopher Hitchens. Even if I did write the sentence myself.



Photo by Fri Tanke - http://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/images/christopher-hitchens-29854, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=45188781