A fellow member of the "dumb"

Christopher Hitchens got some space in the Daily Mirror last week to take issue with the paper's front page from November 4.

I don't mind being shouted at, while having discussions around the dinner table or the studio set. After all, I have done some yelling on my own account.

What I do mind is the pitying glance, or the heavy sigh, that is deployed these days. I am not ready to be patronised, or condescended to, unless by someone of some eminence who has earned that right. And even then I regard it as a sign of weakness rather than strength.

To be frank about it, I don't know all that many geniuses in the anti-Bush camp. In Britain, I gather, conceited nonentities such as Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy (neither of whom could be elected as mayor of Hogwallow, Nebraska, in a bad year) are treated as serious party leaders, while George Galloway and Tariq Ali pose as leaders of an "anti-war" movement.

{Link found thanks to Slugger O'Toole.}