Christopher Hitchens Explains It All

I didn’t stick around for the dinner,* so I didn’t see Wanda Sykes’ routine. I think conservatives are silly to get too worked up about it; I think liberals are silly to defend someone who wishes a political commentator to get kidney failure and die. But I think Mr. Hitchens is not to be trifled with:

• By the end of the night, Christopher Hitchens was of course the last man (barely) standing, and he had some choice words for the evening’s headlining comedian, Wanda Sykes. “The president should be squirming in his seat. Not smiling,” he said. “The black dyke got it wrong. No one told her the rules.”

And you know what? He’s right. She didn’t understand the rules of the evening and the president shouldn’t laugh when his political opponents are compared to Taliban hijackers. Last time I checked, Rush Limbaugh didn’t kill 3,000 Americans, put women in burkhas/throw acid in the faces of women who want to go to school, or attempt to gain nuclear weapons for the purpose of terrorism. Hitchens is catching some flak on the right for buying into the Obama memes, but let’s not kid ourselves: He still understands the importance of the key issue of the day (the threat of Islamic extremism) and how downplaying that threat via humor is a terrible idea.