Christopher Hitchens is DEAD.

[WebDudette]

for real this time, and I'm fucking bummed.

Christopher Hitchens, the author, essayist and polemicist who waged verbal and occasional physical battle on behalf of causes on the left and right, has died after a long battle with cancer at the age of 62. A prolific and public intellectual who enjoyed his drink - enough to "to kill or stun the average mule" - and cigarettes, he announced in June 2010 that he was being treated for cancer of the oesophagus and cancelled a tour for his memoir Hitch-22.

[Homer]

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU UCK

Time to go burn a church in his honor.

[Jojan]

This close to Christmas. :-( Let him rest in peace.

[Rooster]

Nooooooooooooooooo

[Static_Martyr]

Well, fuck. One of the few famous people I actually give a shit about is no longer around. Sad day

I'm sure if there was an afterlife, he'd look on with pride as the Christian and Muslim blogs and groups the world over rejoiced in his death....he would probably wear it as a badge of honor

[WebDudette]

We had a memorial services for Isaac [Asimov] a few years back, and at one point I said, ''Isaac is up in Heaven now.'' It was the funniest thing I could have said to a group of Humanists. I rolled them in the aisles. It was several minutes before order could be restored. And if I should ever die, God forbid, I hope you will say, ''Kurt is up in Heaven now.'' That’s my favorite joke.

found this on reddit, seemed applicable.

[Static_Martyr]

Tasteless, perhaps, but I wrote a blog post tribute to Hitchens that I figure I may as well post here if nowhere else. Complete with sort of personal plug at the end.

Seriously, the world is worse off without him

[jacknife737]

The world got a lot less interesting today.

[BagOfShenanigans]

And, another person that I've barely heard of dies... And I feel like an idiot.

(15 minutes of research later.)

I'll admit it's a sad event, but we seem to be treating his death as if it destroys everything he ever stood for. As an intellectual, his documented knowledge doesn't die with him. We can still benefit from it.

"I'm not sad that he's gone, but that he's irreplaceable... But all of that is irrelevant, because I'll remember the moral, and the philosophical, and the political, and the human lessons... It is my wish, and my hope, and my intention that his legacy live on."
-TheAmazingAtheist

[wheelchairman]

While it's sad that someone is dead, I find people too easily support any vocal atheist implicitly simply for being an atheist. (Took me a long time to realize that the atheist Christopher Hitchens was the same idiot Christopher Hitchens behind the 3rd Way and advisor to Tony Blair)

The 3rd Way and his support for the war on terror, his complete exaggeration of the threat of Islam (which overshadowed any other threat) makes him in my book, an irresponsible intellectual at best.

And since Bullshit! no longer airs, his entertainment value to me is rather shallow, though he was good in that show.

Actually I'm being way too generous. His support of the war on terror was dumb, foolhardy, incredibly irresponsible, and the cost of which is still yet to be fully known.