Christopher Hitchens is dead. There has been some back and forth on speaking ill of the dead.

Hagiography is never about the truth, that’s for sure.

Hunter S. Thompson showed us all how:

He Was a Crook

From Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994

By Hunter S. Thompson

….Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon….”

Go. Read the whole thing.

Glenn Greenwald on Hitchens:

Saturday, Dec 17, 2011 4:34 AM Central Standard Time

Christopher Hitchens and the protocol for public figure deaths

….Nobody should have to silently watch someone with this history be converted into some sort of universally beloved literary saint. To enshrine him as worthy of unalloyed admiration is to insist that these actions were either themselves commendable or, at worst, insignificant. Nobody who writes about politics for decades will be entirely free of serious error, but how serious the error is, whether it reflects on their character, and whether they came to regret it, are all vital parts of honestly describing and assessing their work. To demand its exclusion is an act of dishonesty.

Nor should anyone be deterred by the manipulative, somewhat tyrannical use of sympathy: designed to render any post-death criticisms gauche and forbidden. Those hailing Hitchens’ greatness are engaged in a very public, affirmative, politically consequential effort to depict him as someone worthy of homage. That’s fine: Hitchens, like most people, did have admirable traits, impressive accomplishments, genuine talents and a periodic willingness to expose himself to danger to report on issues about which he was writing. But demanding in the name of politeness or civility that none of that be balanced or refuted by other facts is to demand a monopoly on how a consequential figure is remembered, to demand a license to propagandize – exactly what was done when the awful, power-worshipping TV host, Tim Russert, died, and we were all supposed to pretend that we had lost some Great Journalist, a pretense that had the distorting effect of equating Russert’s attributes of mindless subservience to the powerful with Good Journalism (ironically, Hitchens was the last person who would honor the etiquette rules being invoked on his behalf: he savaged (perfectly appropriately) Mother Theresa and Princess Diana, among others, upon their death, even as millions mourned them).

There’s one other aspect to the adulation of Hitchens that’s quite revealing. There seems to be this sense that his excellent facility with prose excuses his sins. Part of that is the by-product of America’s refusal to come to terms with just how heinous and destructive was the attack on Iraq. That act of aggression is still viewed as a mere run-of-the-mill “mistake” – hey, we all make them, so we shouldn’t hold it against Hitch – rather than what it is: the generation’s worst political crime, one for which he remained fully unrepentant and even proud. But what these paeans to Hitchens reflect even more so is the warped values of our political and media culture: once someone is sufficiently embedded within that circle, they are intrinsically worthy of admiration and respect, no matter what it is that they actually do….

We could ask the Dixie Chicks.

Lately, voters around the state are being awoken around 3 AM to the sound of a ringing phone. Those that answer hear a recorded message purporting to be on behalf of Sam Page. Naturally, Page didn’t do this, because the candidate waking you up in the middle of the night is the last person you want to vote for.

This is what Republicans do. This was what Richard Nixon’s team excelled in, calling it “ratf*cking.” It’s no surprise that Kinder is dabbling in this dark art; his buddy Karl Rove has been playing dirty tricks since the beginning of his political career. In 1970, he distributed fliers promoting a rally for Democrat Alan Dixon. He wasn’t being nice – the flier offered free beer, food, girls and a good time, and he distributed them at homeless shelters and rock concerts, all to disrupt a big rally for Dixon.

This kind of crap just keeps on coming, and all you can do is just work harder to beat it. In this case, we have a really good chance at doing just that. Sam Page has been working hard reaching out to voters across the state, outraising the incumbent quarter after quarter, and the Democrats will have a strong ticket all the way up and down. In 1970, Dixon won despite Rove’s dirty tricks. You can help beat his ilk again in 2008 by helping Sam Page out, and it’s very likely that with our help, he can beat Peter Kinder. Go to www.sampage.com and get involved in whatever way you can.