I'm gonna wait for Hitchens' more sober response. I can't tell from this what the fuck he's nattering on about. Other than he no longer has a coherent thought in his vodka-laden brain.
SeattleDan | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 1:21 am | #

Genrul,

There's an attitude with the head thrown back and the mouth wide open and the horseshoe of... lovvvely... teeth and tongue on display, and so forth, that's um... well, it's an attempt to choke on vomit, and it happens at computer monitors around the world whenever Mr. Hitchens describes orgasms on youtube.
---- ---- ----
Btw,
The Queens of Comedy piece in Vanity Fair lists 30 or so female comedians but leaves out Kathy Griffin. Am I missing something? She's funnier than Poehler and the last five years of SNL combined. And what about Janeane Garofalo?
----- ---- ----
Ps:
Mr. John Lucid?
?
bob the hog | 03.24.08 - 3:27 am | #

Women comedians tend to be "dykes, Jews, or butch." WTF? I actually kinda respected Hitchens up until now for being an outspoken atheist, but it'll take a LOT of explanation for me to not think he's an anti-Semite (remembering, of course, that Jewish is an ethnicity rather than a religion in this case). And "dykes"? I can see why there might be differences in "humor" ability on average between men and women; maybe he has a point. But to criticize them for being Jewish is a little out there.
Mauro | 03.24.08 - 3:52 am | #

Mr. John Lucid?

Yes.
John Lucid | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 5:35 am | #

Christopher Hitchens is a drunken idiot.

--webmaster
webmaster to the general | 03.24.08 - 9:06 am | #

On the up side, dykes and Jews are my favorite people, so that explains why my life is a non-stop laff riot.

And, Bob the Hog, apropos of that six degrees of Kevin Bacon thing, I went to high school with Kathy Griffin …. Don’t know why I felt compelled to mention that, other than for pure name-dropping purposes. She didn’t know me from squat, but we probably passed one another in the hall at one point or another.

Another famous alumnus of my high school is Thomas Lennon of “Reno 911”; but he’s neither dyke-ish nor Jewish, so that doesn’t count.
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 10:30 am | #

And speaking of Our Leader and his crusade, everybody stand up and join in on the chorus:

I'm Proud to Be An American....
MOJoe | 03.24.08 - 11:12 am | #

Dykes, Jews or butch!!!?? Meaning what? That Mr. H is not sexually interested in them? Meh. More narcissistic preening. Funny? Not. What a waste of a sometimes interesting mind.
CalifSherry | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 11:40 am | #

His enmity calcified once he finally understood that women seldom make passes at men that are such asses. He jumped the snark in the 80’s.
.
stinkeye | 03.24.08 - 12:31 pm | #

Hey any friends of Bill W. out there. How would you like to be Hitchen's sponsor?
Capt. Bat Hussein Guano | 03.24.08 - 12:54 pm | #

I wonder which Lucille Ball was -- butch, Jewish, or dyke?

This was a good one, Mr. Lucid.
anne johnson | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 2:36 pm | #

sir, general, sir!

i always thought margaret smith was pretty funny...

keep watchin' the skies...
fred c dobbs | 03.24.08 - 3:12 pm | #

Genrul,

Maybe the Straight and Pretty Girls of Comedy sent Kathy Griffin an invitation, but she just thought, "Fuck Hitchens."
---- ---- ----

Yes.
-- John Lucid

It's been awhile. I thought maybe you got banned for burning douchebags or eating commenters or something.

---- ---- ----
I went to high school with Kathy Griffin

Man, did you fuck up. She could have been yours. All you would've had to do was make her laugh, just once. One Gerald Ford joke... so easy.

Now she's dating The WoZ (Steve Wozniak, billionaire co-founder of Apple Computer). Now your chances of bumping in to her at the airport and striking up a conversation about the old neighborhood, during which you bag her with that Bush joke you've been saving, are nil.
L
bob the hog | 03.24.08 - 3:34 pm | #

Women aren't naturally horses asses.
They can try-- but men are just genetically predisposed to it. Now some women can work to be one... but, as a species, they simply are not naturally horse's asses like Christopher Hitchens.
WeCanFixThisMess | 03.24.08 - 3:45 pm | #

I don't know much about humor, but I do know that when someone takes a drink while they are talking, (like at the end of this clip), it often is a way for them to stuff their own anger back inside. But he's such a jolly chap, that can't be it, can it?
m.e.b. | 03.24.08 - 3:56 pm | #

OT

Some of you may have seen this video from The JedReport. The Clinton campaign now admits that Hillary's Tusla story is a "misspeak".
bob the hog | 03.24.08 - 4:42 pm | #

I gladly take the anti-postion to Hithchins any day. The jerk has a balled up leather hide where his liver used to be.
But VF weakened their response by including Tina Fey. She is almost proof of his supposition. Not funny, never was, never will be.
moondancer | 03.24.08 - 5:17 pm | #

Dammit, Bob.

Maybe I could pretend to be gay, and I could date Steve Wozniak … you know, for the software.

I really, really want one of them MacBook Air things, too.
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 5:18 pm | #

Sorry to be un-funny for a moment (or, perhaps I should say, sorry for making no effort to be funny this time …), but I think the underlying premise of Hitchens’ argument is particularly bizarre. I mean, aside from the women-aren’t-funny thing, which is bullshit.

No, the absurd premise of Hitchens’ argument is that humor has something to do with procreation in the first place. Um, why? Speaking as a person of the dude persuasion, seems to me most of us hone our sense of humor in the context of hanging out with, y’ know, other dudes. Ever see Diner? That about sums it up. And I have the sense that the non-dudes among us do the same; they hone their sense of humor hanging out with other non-dudes. So, unless were all secretly gay … not that there’s anything wrong with that … I think the sense-of-humor/getting-laid connection is utter nonsense.

Am I missing something here? Or, does everything have to do with getting laid?
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 5:26 pm | #

Well, if Hitchens himself were funny, it might matter. It's like an atheist making fun of religion without being religious him- or not-himself.

John Lucid? John Fucking Lucid?
What's next, the Great Cthulhu? MzNicky?

I myself went to high school with the nurse of the Heaven's Gate cult fame. The one who cut off the men's balls and brewed the suicide cocktail.

Which, to tie this up; in Hitchen's hand that cocktail would be funny, being made by a woman.

Stopping myself, now;
the Rev. Jerry Gloryhole | 03.24.08 - 5:53 pm | #

Hitchens may have a point about women not getting any evolutionary advantage out of being funny, but he seems to have extrapolated from that to women *aren't* funny. Illogical. And I think his original premise is wrong, too.

My sister went to high school with Stevie Ray Vaughn and, although she did not personally hang out with him, she knew kids who did. So I am less than six degrees of separation from Stevie Ray Vaughn.
democratic socialist | 03.24.08 - 10:03 pm | #

I'll drink to that. I mean, women aren't funny, are they? At least not mine who gets miffed every time I say, "I'll drink to that."
purvis ames | 03.24.08 - 10:37 pm | #

Dave, eat your heart out...Terry Gilliam was the student body president at my high school. Of course that was about ten years before I entered the damn school, and there were no legends about him at that time.
SeattleDan | Homepage | 03.24.08 - 10:55 pm | #

mon General

Hitchens is pathos personified; a lugubrious drunk whore who despises himself for not having the intellect he thought he had.
Failed communist, failed atheist, failed neo-con, failed comedy analyst.

He deserves a poem:

Pisstopher Hitchens
never stops bitching
To get his drunk-ass face on TV
His opinions are shallow
his intuition is narrow
Which perfectly suits Hannitty
and all the other misfits
and liars and clowns
who whore their asses for money
who'll gratefully use Piss for a muse
to expain why women aren't funny.
corporal waldo | 03.24.08 - 11:06 pm | #

To think that Vanity Fair let that nice Mr. Hitchens make a total ass out of himself in front of the whole world and nobody even thought to do an intervention on him!
Delia | 03.24.08 - 11:35 pm | #

Shorter Christopher Hitchens: Women don't take me seriously.
jcricket | 03.25.08 - 12:31 am | #

I'm leery of any theories that propose evolutionary reasons for behavioral differences between men and women, especially when there are such obvious social pressures!
It's almost a tautology that anything we women have to be taught to do--like being "ladylike," bolstering male egos, etc.--is not "natural." When women for centuries have been handed manuals and magazines about how to behave properly, you can be sure none of the mandated behaviors are innate.
And even those evolutionary pressures that create changes in one gender for some particular advantage (nipples!) usually affect the other gender also.

So although men might historically have received greater benefits for being funny--Hitchens doesn't provide any evidence--any evolutionary cause might easily have affected women also.

On the flip side, you might plausibly suggest that it's a greater evolutionary advantage for women to be pretty than it is for men to be handsome--that historically, looks are more important for women than for men--but I don't think there's a relative shortage of good-looking men!
I don't think Hitchens really understands evolutionary theory. He might more productively have looked into social pressures on women to NOT be funny, but that would have taken some research, while "evolution" is such a convenient excuse to do no work at all.
Ann | 03.25.08 - 1:51 am | #

Okay, since I started this little name dropping thing (and don’t think I’m not proud of it!), I’ll give you this partial list of Famous Alumni/Alumnae of Oak Park River Forest High School:

Ernest Hemingway (Wrote some books, apparently; fought in the Spanish Civil War)
Dan Castellaneta (Doh! Voice of Homer Simpson)
Ray Kroc (Mmmmm. Big Macs!)
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (Made some movies; her sister was in my class)
Marjory Vincent (Miss America 1991)
Kathy Griffin (“Gay icon,” according to Wikipedia; see above)
Thomas Lennon (Not sure if he’s a “gay icon,” but he plays one on TV)
Judy Tenuta (I once saw her in a local grocery store; her bodyguard was wearing an 8-ball jacket …)
Anna Chlumsky (Made some movies I never saw)
Ludacris (This I didn’t know; I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing …)

And …

The members of Off Broadway, which may not mean anything anymore, but in 1980 they signed what was then the biggest debut-album contract in rock music history.

Then again, Styx used to play locally on a fairly regular basis back in the day … so, we had our moments of dark, depressing shame, too.

Ah, the good ol’ days.
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 10:37 am | #

Present company excluded, nobody famous attended Farmington High School, ever. But we did have our own Brushes with Greatness to boast of. Bob Seger (w/out the Silver Bullet Band) and Iggy Pop (w/the Stooges) played in our high school gymnasium on the odd Friday night. In fact, it was during a performace by the latter that I saw somebody shoot up in the boys bathroom for the first time. Might have been insulin, I dunno. But it was a Stooge so I kinda doubt it. Besides, do you have to tie off your arm with a rubber tube to inject insulin? Didn't think so.
Rueben Drones | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 1:36 pm | #

Reuben D:

I’m bored
I’m the chairman of the bored …

’79 was a good year …
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 3:47 pm | #

Ooops. I meant “Rueben,” of course.
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 3:48 pm | #

Thanks, Dave for the burnout memories. Now, 'scuse me while I kiss the sky...
Rueben Drones | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 5:33 pm | #

Hey, no prob. Jus’ pass the dutchie over here.
Dave von Ebers | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 6:05 pm | #

oooh, I get to be contrarian.

While Hitchens is, in general, a drunken ass, and I completely disagree with the whole 'women comedians are dykes, jewish, or butch' bullshit, I agree that on average, there are a lot more funny men than funny women (unfortunately). My *exceedingly* funny gf agrees, and once noted that in general, the humor hierarchy goes something like "gay males, straight males, straight women, gay women" -- on average.

On Hitchen's whole evolutionary thang, I kinda tend to agree, without any solid evidence, admittedly . . . I imagine that if you took a poll about important characteristics in a prospective mate, 'makes me laugh' would be higher up on the list on average among women than it is among men.
Forrester | 03.26.08 - 6:43 pm | #