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asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Illtratn by Ralph Steadman" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Ralph Steadman</span></div></figure></div><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">Until not long ago, Christopher Hchens, the Brish-born journalist, was a valued asset of the Amerin left: an tellectual willg to show his teeth the e of righteons. Today, Hchens supports the Iraq war and is ntemptuo of those who do not—a turn that has nfed and dismayed former ras, and brought him to odd new allianc. But his life looks much the same. He still wr a great al, at a speed at which most people read. And, at fifty-seven, he still has an arrt-photograph air about him—lookg like someone who, wh as much digny as possible, has smoothed his hair and straightened his llar after knockg the helmet off a policeman.</p><p class="paywall">At a dner a few months ago San Francis wh his wife, Carol Blue, and some others, Hchens wore a pale jacket and a shirt unbuttoned far enough to ht at what one ex-girliend has lled “the pelt of the Hch.” Hchens, who only recently gave up the hab of smokg the shower, was workg through a pack of cigarett while talkg to two women at his end of the table: a Stanford doctor her early thirti whom he’d met once before, and a iend of hers, a librarian. He spoke wh w and eloquence about Iranian polics and what he saw as the unnecsary handsomens of Gav Newsom, the mayor of San Francis.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens wr on polics and lerature; and both l of work he tends to start om textual readgs of a subtle and spic-md kd. When he is not wrg, he talks the same measured, ironic voice as his prose, wh the same fluency and tellectual momentum, as if he were troubled by the thought that he might never fd another dience. Hchens lik to have his say: he tak his arguments to the ble-news channels, to Wt Pot ts, to panel discsns wdowls hotel nference rooms. He stays at public meetgs until the crowd—hydrated and fat—has no more qutns to ask, and then he giv out his e-mail addrs. He is a fe, funny orator, wh the mock-heroic manner of an English barrister sure of his ground (“by all means,” “if you will”), g risn, a grand dictn, and loopg subcls that always rry him back to the ma path. He also has the polician’s trick of elidg the last word of one sentence to the first of the next, while strsg both words, orr to close a gate agast terptn. In more private settgs, the rhetoric is the same—except that there are filthy jok drawn out to twenty mut, and longer quotatns om his vast stock of remembered English poetry. He seems to be perpetually dng for the role of bt man. Ian McEwan, the novelist, recently said of Hchens, “It all seems stantly, nrologilly available: everythg he’s ever read, everyone he’s ever met, every story he’s ever heard.”</p><p class="paywall">In the noisy ont room of the North Beach rtrant where the iends had met, Hchens ma a toast: “To the Constutn of the Uned Stat, and nfn to s enemi!” The nversatn was amiable and boozy; Hchens might be said to re more for history than for dividual humans, but he was an easy mood, after a drive, betiful early-eveng light, om Menlo Park. (He and Blue, a wrer workg on a novel, live wh their thirteen-year-old dghter Washgton, D.C., but spend the summer California, where her parents live.) Durg the ri, he had discsed wh the Pakistani-born taxi-driver the virtu and vic of Benazir Bhutto, while surreptly g a bottle of Evian to put out a small but smoky fire that he had set the ashtray.</p><p class="paywall">And then the young doctor to his left ma a passg but sympathetic remark about Howard Dean, the 2004 Printial ndidate; she said that he had been unfairly treated the Amerin media. Hchens, the clear, helpful voice one might e to give street directns, replied that Dean was “a ravg nut bag,” and then rrected himself: “A ravg, sister, magogic nut bag.” He said, “I and a few other people saw he should be stroyed.” He noted that, 2003, Dean had given a speech at an abortn-rights gatherg which he relled beg vised, as a doctor, by a twelve-year-old who was pregnant by her father. (“You expla that to the Amerin people who thk that parental notifitn is a good ia,” Dean said, to applse.) Dean appeared not to have referred the alleged rape to the police; he also, when prsed, admted that the story was not, all tails, te. For Hchens, this tablished that Dean was a “pathologil liar.”</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">“All policians lie!” the women said.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“He’s a <em>doctor</em>,” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">“But he’s a polician.”</p><p class="paywall">“No, exce me,” Hchens said. His tone tightened, and his mouth shnk like a sea anemone poked wh a stick; the Hchens face n, at moments of dialectil urgency, or when seen an unkdly l Fox News stud, transform om roguish to sour. (Hchens’s iend Mart Amis, the novelist, has chid Hchens for “dog that horrible thg wh your lips.”) “Fe,” Hchens said. “Now that I know that, to you, medil ethics are nothg, you’ve told me all I need to know. I’m not tryg to persua you. Do you thk I re whether you agree wh me? No. I’m tellg you why I disagree wh you. That I <em>do</em> re about. I have no further tert any of your opns. There’s nothg you wouldn’t make an exce for.”</p><p class="paywall">“That’s wrong!” they said.</p><p class="paywall">“You know what? I wouldn’t want you on my si.” His tone was bslike; the lghg protts died away. “I was tellg you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a d, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean : fuck off. I’m tellg you what I thk are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fe, he’s agast the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bh, he n say what he lik.’ Fuck off. You thk a doctor n lie ont of an dience of women on a major qutn, and claim to have supprsed evince on rape and ct and then to have said he ma up?”</p><p class="paywall">“But Christopher . . .”</p><p class="paywall">“Save , sweetie, for someone who r. It will not be me. You love , you suck on . I now know what your standards are, and now you know what me are, and that’s all the difference—I hope— the world.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">What happened to Christopher Hchens? How did a longtime lumnist at <em>The Natn</em> bee a ntributor to the <em>Weekly Standard</em>, a supporter of Print Bh the 2004 electn, and an ved speaker at the nservative activist David Horowz’s forthg Rtoratn Weekend, along wh Ann Coulter and Rh Limbgh? Or, to put another way, how did Hchens e to be a “Lyg, Self-Servg, Fat-Assed, Cha-Smokg, Dnken, Opportunistic, Cynil Contrarian”? (This is om the tle of an say posted on CounterPunch, a Web se -eded by Hchens’s former iend and <em>Natn</em> lleague Alexanr Cockburn.) The qutn, pole and impole forms, go around and around at Washgton dner parti: did Hchens mata high prcipl while the left drifted om him, or did he lose himself vany and ambn? The matter has even spired a forthg anthology of attack and unterattack, “Terror, Iraq, and the Left: Christopher Hchens and His Crics.”</p><p class="paywall">On the time le of the Hchens apostasy, which ns om revolutnary socialism to a kd of neonservatism, many dat are marked boldface—his reasssment nnot be fixed to any one of them—and those faiar wh Hchens’s work know that he has always thrived on sectarian battl, and always looked for “enuragg signs of polarizatn,” a phrase he has borrowed om his late iend Israel Shahak, the Israeli activist. But, when I talked wh Hchens, our nversatn began wh events 2001. By that year, Hchens said, he had begun to doubt if his future lay polil journalism. He had, by then, published fifteen books, cludg one on the Elg Marbl dispute, and slim, srnful volum—morn versns of eighteenth-century pamphleteerg—makg the se agast Henry Kissger (mass murrer), Bill Clton (sex crimal), and Mother Tera (iend of spots). He had wrten, but not yet published, an admirg book about Gee Orwell’s polil clear-sightedns. He had a lumn for <em>Vany Fair</em>, addn to his “Mory Report” for <em>The Natn</em>, which he had started 1982, a year after movg to Ameri. But, he said, polil mentary had bee “creasgly borg. There were tim when I was due to wre a <em>Natn</em> lumn and I hadn’t got a hugely strong motive to wre.” He no longer scribed himself as a socialist, an inty he had formed as a teen-ager, the late sixti. He had taken to scribg palism as the world’s only te revolutnary force.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“I was beg post-iologil,” Hchens relled. “And I thought, Well, what I want is to wre more about lerature—not to dump polics, bee one n never do that, but I remember thkg that I would make a real effort to unrstand Prot.” Wherever possible, Hchens wr as an opposnist, which means that his panegyrics are livered the form of a bodyguard’s shove agast trs; and this se he had cid on a book-length riposte to Ala Botton’s “How Prot Can Change Your Life.” Hchens fished wrg his not on September 9th, then flew to Walla Walla, Washgton, to give a lecture on Henry Kissger that cid wh the filg of a feral lawsu agast Kissger and other Nixon Admistratn officials by the fay of René Schneir, the Chilean ary manr murred 1970. “I ma a speech to an exced dience, and I end, ‘I like to thk that tomorrow, 11th September 2001, will be remembered for a long time as a landmark day the stggle for human rights’—a prcient remark, I hope you’ll agree. I got a standg ovatn, signed a few books, kissed a few people, went to bed reasonably ntented. You know the rt.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="owp5an"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="n54g9a"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">He went on, “The advice I’ve been givg to people all my life—that you may not be terted the dialectic but the dialectic is terted you; you n’t give up polics, won’t give you up—was the advice I should have been takg myself. Bee I did know that somethg like 9/11 would happen.” So “ was goodbye to Marcel for a b.” (He has not wrten his Prot book, but, 2004, he published a limpid say on a new translatn of “Swann’s Way”: “Through his ey we see what actuat the dandy and the lover and the grane and the hypocre and the posr, wh a transparency unexampled except Shakpeare or Gee Elt,” he wrote <em>The Atlantic</em>. “And this abily, so piercg and at tim even alarmg, is not mere knowgns. It is not, other words, the product of cynicism. To be so perceptive and yet so nocent—that, a phrase, is the achievement of Prot.”)</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In a 2003 terview, Hchens said that the events of September 11th filled him wh “exhilaratn.” His iend Ian Buma, the wrer, told me, “I don’t que see Christopher as a ‘man of actn,’ but he’s always lookg for the fg moment—as were, our Spanish Civil War, where you put yourself on the right si, and stand up to the enemy.” Hchens foraw “a war to the fish between everythg I love and everythg I hate.” Here was a qutn on which history would judge him; and jt as Orwell had ( his view) got right on the greatt qutns of the twentieth century—Communism, Fascism, and imperialism—so Hchens wanted a future stunt to see that he had been siarly scpulo and clear-eyed. (He once wrote, “I have tried for much of my life to wre as if I was posg my sentenc to be read posthumoly.”) His enemi stood two groups: first, the forc of jihad, and, send, those “the Chomsky-Zn-Fkelste quarter,” as he has put —the hort of Amerin leftists who seemed too ready to see the attacks as a rebe to Amerin imperialism. In his first <em>Natn</em> lumn after September 11th, Hchens wrote that “the bombers of Manhattan reprent fascism wh an Islamic face. . . . What they abomate about ‘the Wt,’ to put a phrase, is not what Wtern liberals don’t like and n’t fend about their own system, but what they <em>do</em> like about and mt fend: s emancipated women, s scientific quiry, s separatn of relign om the state. Loose talk about chickens g home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emted by Falwell and Robertson.”</p><p class="paywall">Many Amerin liberals would have had no argument wh that; nor, ed, wh the way Hchens jabbed at the film-maker Oliver Stone at a public meetg Manhattan a few weeks later, when Stone referred to the “revolt of September 11th.” (“Exce me. Revolt? It was state-supported mass murr, g civilians as missil.”) Neverthels, Hchens felt pelled formally to remove himself om the Amerin left. In a clarifyg sign-off a few months later, he dropped his <em>Natn</em> lumn. This may have been largely a change of addrs rather than a change of md—movg out of the hoe long after the divorce—but he tected some ner shift 2001. “For the first time my life, I felt myself the posn of the policeman,” he told me. In part, this was a rponse to Ameri’s panic. “Nobody knew what was gog on. This giant ernment, and huge empire. Bh was missg. Panic, impotence, shame. I’ve never known any feelg like . What do one do when the forc of law and orr have let you down, and the whole of society is stunned and terrified? Simply, I mt fd out what ’s like to thk like a p. It shifts the angle, a way that n’t really be wrenched back aga.” Durg the I.R.A. bombg mpaigns on the Brish maland, which began the neteen-seventi, this had not happened. Then he had “kept two sets of books: I didn’t like bombs, I didn’t like the partn of Ireland.” Now he felt as if he had “taken an oath to uphold and fend the Constutn agast all enemi, foreign and domtic.”</p><p class="paywall">We were Hchens’s home Washgton. His top-floor apartment, wh a wi view that clus No. 1 Observatory Circle, the Vice-Printial rince, is large and handsome: sparely furnished, wh a grand piano, books piled on the floor, a few embassy vatns on the mantelpiece, and prts and patgs propped agast the walls rather than hung om them; the clu an oil patg of Hchens and Blue (a dark-haired, darkly drsed woman—a young San Sontag) wh ffee, whiskey, and cigarett on a table ont of them.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens has the life that a spired thirteen-year-old boy might hope adulthood to be: he wak up when he lik, works om home, is married to someone who wears leopard-sk high heels, and nducts heady, ser discsns late to the night. I arrived jt after midday, and Hchens said that was “time for a cktail”; he poured a large drk. His hair flopped over his forehead, and he phed back g jt the tips of his fgers, his hand as unbendg as a mannequ’s.</p><p class="paywall">He noted that he never lik gog to bed. “I’m not that keen on the ia of beg unnsc,” he said. “There’s plenty of time to be unnsc g up.” In Washgton, his socializg ually tak place at home. “I n have some sort of ntrol over who , what gets talked about, what gets eaten, what gets dnk, and the ashtrays,” he said. “Call me set my ways.” (Hchens’s predomant tone is quietly self-parodyg. Even his farewells are ironic: “It’s been real,” “Stay ol.”) Guts at the Hchens salon clu people he first knew London, who ll him “Hch,” cludg Salman Rhdie, Ian McEwan, and his great iend Mart Amis (“The only blond I have ever really loved,” Hchens once said); long-standg Amerin iends like Christopher Buckley and Graydon Carter; an ternatnal work of dissints and tellectuals; and, the days, such figur as David Fm, the former Bh Admistratn speechwrer, and Grover Norquist, the nservative activist. In September, he hosted Barham Salih, a Kurd who is a Deputy Prime Mister of the new Iraqi ernment. Many guts n report seeg Hchens step out of the room after dner, wre a lumn, then step back almost before the topic of nversatn has changed.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="apcm"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Rhdie relled an eveng last year. “I met Pl Wolfowz,” he said, lghg. “And I disvered, to my immense surprise, that he’s a very nice man.” Wolfowz, the neonservative who served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense between 2001 and 2005, and who now ns the World Bank, was a primary archect of the vasn of Iraq; he has bee the emblem of Hchens’s new polil alignments. Wolfowz rpected Hchens’s rerd as a wrer on human rights. He lled Hchens the fall of 2002, at the promptg of Kev Kellems, then his special adviser, and now an adviser at the World Bank. “It felt like Cold War pnage,” Kellems relled. “Contactg someone on the other si you thk might want to fect.” Hchens accepted an vatn to lunch at the Pentagon. “I snuck him ,” Kellems said. “We didn’t put his name on the schle.”</p><p class="paywall">As Wolfowz knew, Hchens was a longtime observer of the celty of Saddam Hse, and had spoken publicly for his removal sce 1998. He supported the e of Kurdish pennce, and had been to Halabja and seen the juri ed there by Iraqi chemil weapons; and he was iendly wh dissint Iraqis exile, cludg Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi Natnal Congrs, which aggrsively promoted the notn, now wily disunted, that Saddam was poised to bee a nuclear power. After September 11th, and the subsequent feat of the Taliban Afghanistan (upon which Hchens addrsed the Brish antiwar left the pag of the <em>Guardian</em>, “Ha ha ha, and yah, boo”), he had thrown himself to the bate over Iraq, makg speech and wrg for <em>Slate</em>. Brandishg the neteen-thirti slogan “Fascism Means War,” he argued that Saddam was somethg more than another tyrant; though he did not have nuclear weapons, he aspired to have them; his regime was on the verge of implosn, and better that should implo unr supervisn, wh the Wt providg “armed assistance to the imment Iraqi and Kurdish revolutns.” Hchens told me, “The number of who would have cricized Bh if he <em>hadn’t</em> removed Saddam—that’s certaly the smallt mory I’ve ever been a member of.”</p><p class="paywall">I mentned the Pentagon meetg. “Wolfowz was not askg my advice about Iraq—don’t n away wh that ia,” Hchens said. “He jt felt that those who worked for the otg of Saddam should get on closer terms wh each other.” Acrdg to Kellems, who attend the meetg, “Hchens said, ‘I was tryg to signal you’ ”—through his wrg—“and Wolfowz said, ‘I wonred.’” Hchens disput that memory; he do remember askg Wolfowz for reassuranc that, the event of an vasn, the Uned Stat would protect the Kurds om the Turks. They talked about Rwanda and Bosnia, about the history of genoci and the st of actn. Kellems, who has sce bee a iend of Hchens, scribed “two giant mds unleashed the room. They were fishg each other’s sentenc.” Acrdg to Hchens, Wolfowz is a “bleedg heart,” and he went on, “There are not many Republins, or Democrats, who lie awake at night worryg about what’s happeng to the Paltians, but he do.” (Hchens has been a s-long agator for the Paltian e; he -eded a book on the subject wh Edward Said, the late Paltian-Amerin scholar.) “And Wolfowz wants Ameri’s human-rights ethic to be straight and nsistent as far as possible. And if there’s an anomaly he’s aware of .”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">On April 9, 2003, the day the statue of Saddam was pulled down central Baghdad, Hchens wrote, “So turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their mands were jt. ‘No War on Iraq,’ they said—and there wasn’t a war on Iraq. Ined, there was barely a ‘war’ at all. ‘No Blood for Oil,’ they cried, and the oil wealth of Iraq has been duly rcued om attempted sabotage wh srcely a drop spilled.” That July, Hchens and a few other reporters flew to Baghdad wh Wolfowz. “It’s que extraordary to see the way that Amerin soldiers are weled,” Hchens told Fox News upon his return. “To see the work that they’re dog and not jt rollg up the filthy works of Baathists and jihadists, but buildg schools, openg soccer stadiums, helpg people nnect to the Inter, there is a really telligent polil program as well as a very tough ary one.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Three years later, Hchens is still on Fox News talkg about the Iraq war. He has not flched om his posn that the vasn was necsary, nor cled any ser vatn to fend that posn publicly, even as the vlence Iraq has creased, and Amerin opn has turned agast the terventn and the Print who lnched . In this role, he has prented himself wh an immense tt of his rhetoril mettle—one n say that whout doubtg his scery. He often seems to have had more at stake, and certaly more oratoril energy, than anyone the ernment. (In recent months, the trope of “Islamic fascism,” which Hchens has ed equently sce his 2001 <em>Natn</em> lumn, has reached the top layers of ernment— Augt, Bh said that the untry was “at war wh Islamic fascists”—and he has had to ny the charge that he is wrg Admistratn speech.) Today, he always rri wh him—like the Kurdistan flag his lapel—batg pots, worn smooth wh e: Abdul Rahman Yas, who was volved the 1993 World Tra Center attack, took refuge Iraq; Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam’s senr physicist, had centrifuge parts buried his garn; as late as 2003, Iraqi agents were tryg to buy missil om North Korea; Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s Deputy Prime Mister, offered Hchens’s iend Rolf Eké, the weapons spector, a two-and-a-half-ln-dollar bribe. “I feel like Bellow’s Herzog, wrg crazed letters,” Hchens said, sg. “The occupatn has not turned out as one would have liked, but the ma problem is to have unrtimated the utter evil of the other si. I wouldn’t have believed they uld keep up a mpaign of murrg people at random.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens asks his opponents this: “We should have left Iraq the way was? However I replay the tape, however much I wish thgs had been done differently, I n’t get to that posn.” He acknowledged that his support of the war had ed him some tellectual disfort. “The most difficult thg is havg to fend an Admistratn that isn’t fensible,” he said. On televisn and rad, he explaed, “you’re ved on to fend the Admistratn’s view on somethg and then someone’s ved on to attack . You don’t want to beg by puttg distance, bee then looks like you’re verg your ass. You take the nontatn as actually is. I’m not gog to spend a few silky mut sayg, ‘You know, I don’t really like Bh and his attu toward stem cells.’ No. Wa. The motn before the hoe is this: Is this a jt and necsary war or is not?”</p><p class="paywall">He went on, “I’m open to the prosecutn of the Admistratn, even the impeachment of some members, for the way they’ve fucked up the war, and also the way they explo domtilly. But do not n away wh the ia that my tellg you this would satisfy any of my crics. They want me to immolate myself, and I scerely believe that for some of them, when they see bad news om Iraq, the reactn is simply ‘This will make Hchens look bad!’ I’ve been tryg to avoid solipsism, but I’ve e to believe there are such people.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens fds support on the right, of urse. Peter Wehner, a puty assistant to the Print and the director of the office of strategic iativ the Whe Hoe, ved Hchens to give a lecture to Whe Hoe staff a few years ago, and now jokgly addrs him as “Comra” e-mails. Wehner admired Hchens as a “fantastic polil pugilist” even when they were on opposg mps the eighti. Now, he said, “On the issu of greatt gravy and historil importance—the war agast global jihadism and the liberatn of Iraq—I am thrilled to be on the same si of the divi as Christopher.”</p><p class="paywall">To Hchens’s left, there is enmy and risn. This summer, a mock-obuary, published onle, scribed him dyg the manner of Major Kong: ridg a warhead out of a B-52 a future Amerin war Iran. Another Inter tribute posted a photograph of him wh the ptn “Hchens: ‘I’ll Kick Saddam’s Fuckg Teeth In.’ ”A parodic MySpace page troduc Hchens this way: “I am a man of the Enlightenment. Words fall om my tongue and you eat them up like a starvg kten on the street.” Last year, Hchens was jeered when he bated the Brish M.P. Gee Galloway New York. When he appeared on “Real Time wh Bill Maher,” this summer, Hchens said “Fuck you” to a hostile crowd and, to Maher, “Your dience, which will clap at apparently anythg, is ivolo.”</p><p class="paywall">Many iends and former iends have been watchg Hchens’s progrs wh disappotment, or somethg sharper. Col Robson, his former publisher at Verso Books, said, “I hope might be possible to save some bs of Christopher. It’s a terrible loss to the left—’s so rare to have someone the mastream media who uld go out and give the other si a dtg.” Usg a siar tone of regret, Eric Alterman, a <em>Natn</em> lumnist and an tranged iend, lled him a “performance artist.” Alexanr Cockburn told me, “Between the two of them, my sympathi were wh Mother Tera. If you were stg rags a gutter Calcutta, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup?”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens claims to be unperturbed by his crics. “You’d thk I’d driven over their pets and abducted their dghters,” Hchens said. “I’d like to know what brgs that on.” A pse. “So I uld do more.” He add, “People say, ‘What’s like to be a mory of one, or a kick-bag for the Inter?’ It wash off me like jizz off a porn star’s face.” (Thomas Chman, one of the edors of “Terror, Iraq, and the Left,” said of Hchens, “What’s great about him is that beg spised is actually the source of his creativy.”)</p><p class="paywall">I asked Rhdie if recent events had taken their toll on his iend. “Christopher is well equipped to take re of himself,” Rhdie said, “but I do thk that some of the people that he is now aligned wh are not really people that he’s like. That mt be very strange for him, and I worry about that.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="qpddg9"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="sodl0n"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When I told Hchens that some iends were worried, he sed through his annoyance. “I suppose ’s nice to be worried about,” he said. “It’s almost like beg red about.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In 1982, Hchens wrote an say for <em>The Natn</em> about Evelyn Wgh’s “Brishead Revised,” and the pot he was most keen to make was that although the First World War predat the actn of the novel, remas at the center of the story. Hchens quoted at length om Wgh’s honeyed scriptn of the excursn ma by Charl Ryr and Sebastian Flyte to the Venice of the early twenti, a passage of champagne cktails and gondolas that ends wh Sebastian sayg, “It’s rather sad to thk that whatever happens you and I n never possibly get volved a war.”</p><p class="paywall">I asked Carol Blue about this passage. She said that her hband, who was brought up an English ary fay the years followg the Send World War, had an aspect of “those men who were never really battle and wished they had been. There’s a whole tough-guy, ‘I am vlent, I will e vlence, I will take some of the people out before I die’ talk, which is really key to his psychology—I don’t re what he says. I thk is partly to do wh his upbrgg.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The Send World War was “the entire subject of nversatn” when Hchens was growg up, he told me: “I didn’t know films were ma out of anythg else.” Every Boxg Day, the fay would toast the skg of the German battlhip Scharnhorst. Portsmouth, where he first lived, was still srred by Nazi air raids. Hchens’s father was a reer Navy man om a workg-class fay who reached the rank of manr and, wh that, a foothold the middle class. He met Hchens’s mother, who was om a lower-middle-class Liverpudlian fay, durg the war. Commanr Hchens was not a garlo man, but some observatns of his have stuck wh his son. “They are all kd of solid,” Christopher said. “He said, ‘Beware of girls wh th lips’; ‘Don’t let them see you wh jt your socks on’; and ‘Socialism is found on sand.’ ” His father also said that “the war was the only time when he knew what he was dog.”</p><p class="paywall">His parents, Hchens said, were of a class that “rent but sort of envy the rich, but they’re terrified of anized labor, and feel themselv to be the neglected, solid cizens.” Commanr Hchens was a nservative of the peeved, untry-gog-to-the-dogs sort—a Thatchere wag. Christopher abandoned that nservatism as a boy but perhaps absorbed the lson that polics is a form of anger. “My father was not a misanthrope, exactly, but he thought that the whole thg”—that is, life—“was a b overrated.”</p><p class="paywall">Commanr Hchens had a Baptist-Calvist background. His wife was Jewish, but she never told her hband or her children. Hchens learned this about her—and himself—only long after her ath. (“On hearg the tidgs, I was pleased to fd that I was pleased,” he has wrten.) She was more social than Hchens’s father, and more alert to signs of class slippage: was val to nt k to a jug before takg to the table, and to avoid sayg “toilet.” Hchens once overheard an argument between his parents about the st of boardg school, which his mother said, “If there is gog to be a lg class this untry, then Christopher is gog to be .”</p><p class="paywall">She succeed: Christopher was privately and expensively ted (as was Peter, his younger brother, who is a proment right-wg newspaper lumnist London) and now has the accent—and whe su—of the English upper-middle class. Ian Buma tects Hchens some mix of regard and disda “for the ‘real’ officer class. Wgh had a b of that, and Wohoe—Christopher’s favore wrers—which is one reason that Wohoe end up Ameri. Ameri allows you to play the role of the uy upper-class Englishman, whereas En-gland you’d feel vulnerable to exposure.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens went to boardg school, Devon, at the age of eight. He was happy, but, he said, “a radilizg thg for me was the realizatn that my parents had scrimped and saved to allow me to be the first member of my fay to go to boardg school. I was surround by the sons of Lanstrian bsmen who thought was their perfect right to be there. That had a huge effect: the fuckers don’t even know when they’re well off.” He also saw through Mrs. Watts, his stctor on relig matters, “who told how good was of God to make all our vegetatn green, bee was the lor that was most rtful for our ey, and how horrible would be if was orange. I remember stg there, my shorts and sandals, and thkg, That <em>n’t</em> be right.” Hchens has jt fished a book rmed by a lifetime of steely anticleril thought, “God Is Not Great,” to be published next year, which begs wh Mrs. Watts, and go on to say of his relig iends, “I would be que ntent to go to their children’s bar-mzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic thedrals, to ‘rpect’ their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclively Arabic, to an illerate prophet, or to tert myself Wic and Hdu and Ja nsolatns. And as happens, I will ntue to do this whout sistg on the pole reciprol ndn—<em>which is that they turn leave me alone</em>. But this, relign is ultimately pable of dog. As I wre the words, and as you read them, people of fah are their different ways planng your and my stctn. . . . <em>Relign poisons everythg.</em>”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens ed to have, at tim, a “pronounced” stutter. “One way of curg was to force yourself to speak public,” he said. In his first school bate, Hchens spoke agast new immigratn rtrictns (nobody else would), and found that the techniqu required—such as charm and the sudn, cutthroat whdrawal of charm—me naturally to him. His later succs Ameri rived part om his bisg rhetoril talents. In Bra, such quali are on show every week at Prime Mister’s Qutn Time, but Ameri Hchens was a novel act. “It’s extraordary,” he said. “I’ve been ved onto shows like ‘Crossfire’ and told, ‘Can’t you hold down a b?’ ”</p><p class="paywall">In 1964, he ran as the Labour Party ndidate his school’s mock electn (aga, nobody else would). He lost, but the Labour Party won the untry. The new ernment quickly proved self to be, Hchens’s words, “pletely rpt and cynil”—backg Print Johnson on Vietnam, for example. His rponse was to jo the Party, th startg a reer of antagonistic ialism. “That’s why you jo a party, to take up the stggl wh ,” Hchens explaed. “And that’s what phed me to the left—the huiatn of the Labour Government.” By the time he me to study polics, philosophy, and enomics at Balll College, Oxford—semi-official motto: “Effortls Superry”—he had been ved to jo a Trotskyist group, the Internatnal Socialists. (He was spotted while skillfully hecklg a Maoist at a public meetg.)</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="l822qa"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">As a stunt, Hchens was good-lookg and charismatic. He do not remember ever havg met Bill Clton, his Oxford ntemporary, but he told me that there was a stunt who, at different tim, was his girliend and Clton’s, before she began a lifetime of lbianism. He met Mart Amis and, for a time, shared a hoe wh Jam Fenton, the poet, whom Hchens had brought to the Internatnal Socialists. “He wore a beret—I have to tell you that he did,” Fenton said of Hchens, rememberg that his ra “was not known as a stalwart of the ‘gettg up at six to go to the factory gat’ briga. I ed to thk that the revolutn would break out and I’d be wakg Christopher, tryg to get him out of bed.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In fact, somethg a ltle like this happened. Durg the Paris uprisgs of 1968, transport lks wh France were cut before many, cludg Hchens, uld cross the Channel. “It’s a big regret of my life,” he said. Ined, when he talks about the Cromwellian and Amerin revolutns, his tone is almost nostalgic. (His personal intifitn wh Thomas Pae is nearly as strong as is wh Orwell; his short study of Pae, published this year, was dited to Jalal Talabani—“first elected print of the Republic of Iraq; sworn foe of fascism and theocracy”—rather as “The Rights of Man” was dited to Gee Washgton and the Marquis Lafayette.) But wherever Hchens might have been a wns to an explosn of popular feelg, eher no explosn occurred or was layed until he left. He relled flyg out of Iraq the day before the aths, July, 2003, of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qay. When Hchens scribed the celebratns that followed, you uld hear a man stgglg to transform a sendhand report to a firsthand one by force of will power alone: “I uld have been there— kills me! That night, the entire cyspe was a blaze of weapons beg fired celebratn. It was like ten ln Fourth of Julys . . .”</p><p class="paywall">At tim, Hchens n look like a bra tryg to pass as a mcle. He reads the world tellectually, but emphasiz his physil rpons to . Talkg of jihadism, he said, “You know, regnizg an enemy—’s not jt your mental rtex. Everythg you <em>physilly</em> ndns you to realize that this means no good, like when you see a pperhead g toward you. It’s basic: liv or I do.” When Hchens’s prose hs an off note, often clus the visceral or the psdo-visceral, whether a paean to oral sex for <em>Vany Fair</em> (“I was at once bewched and sla by the warm, moist ve of her mouth”) or mentari on current affairs: “reekg fum of the suici-murrers,” “the stench of mon bribery, pungently reekg of c oil.” On the ocsns, the bookish Hchens is elbowed asi by an alternate self: a man as twchgly alert as Trotsky at the head of the Red Army.</p><p class="paywall">Such performanc of masculy don’t appear exclively on the page. Not long ago, Baltimore, I saw Hchens challenge a man—perhaps homels and a ltle unglued mentally—who had started walkg step wh his wife and a woman iend of hers while Hchens walked some way ahead. Hchens dropped back to form a flank between the women and the man, then said, “This is the pole versn. Go away.” The man ambled off. Hchens prsed home the victory. “Go away <em>faster</em>,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">“Wouldn’t have been easier to cross the road?” Blue asked, nocently.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">While still at Oxford, Hchens wrote his first article for the <em>New Statman</em>, a left-leang weekly. Upon graduatg and movg to London, he beme an ocsnal ntributor, while takg a number of jobs mastream journalism, and sellg the <em>Socialist Worker</em> on street rners. The <em>New Statman</em> was enjoyg a goln moment: s staff and wrers clud Amis, Fenton, McEwan, and Julian Barn, the novelist. The Friday-lunch gathergs of <em>Statman</em> hot shots and other wrers, which they out-joked each other on matters of sex, lerature, and nuclear disarmament, now have the stat of lerary legend. (The <em>Statman</em> staff played a game which the task was to thk of the phrase least likely to be uttered by each member. For Hchens: “I don’t re how rich you are, I’m not g to your party.” For Amis: “You look a b prsed, why don’t you s down and tell me all about ?”)</p><p class="paywall">Romantilly, Hchens scribed himself as playg send fiddle to an unstoppable Amis: “I’d basilly be holdg his at and refillg his glass, and tryg to learn om the Master.” In fact, Hchens’s own appeal was nsirable; among the girliends he had before his first marriage was Anna Wtour, who is now the edor of <em>Vogue</em>. Hchens told me, “When I was younger—this will surprise you, seeg now the bloated rss of the Hch—I ed to get que a b of attentn om men. And, um. It was sometim que difficult, pecially when you hadn’t seen g. I was nsired reasonably pretty, I suppose, between seventeen and twenty-five. I remember noticg when stopped, and thkg, Oh ar. What? None of the guys want to sleep wh me anymore?” Asked about his own activi, he said, “Nobody who’s been to public school n pretend to know nothg of the subject. And even at universy there was an epicene terlu. But wasn’t what I wanted at all.” (In 1999, Alexanr Cockburn wrote, “Many’s the time male iends have had to ph Hchens’s mouth, agrant wh martis, away” durg hellos and goodby; Hchens said that he had no memory of “makg a bid for the clean-limbed and cupid-lipped Alexanr Cockburn.”)</p><p class="paywall">In December, 1973, Hchens, then twenty-four, published a lead article about Greek polics the <em>New Statman</em>. Dateled Athens, was a ser, rather dry analysis of polil velopments followg the otg of the dictator Gee Papadopoulos. It avoid the kd of foreign-crisis wrg he abhors. (His parody: “As I stand here pissed and weepg this burng hell, the body of a child li like a broken doll the street.”) Almost the only lol lor was a glimpse of civil and relig ins on the wall of an Athens police statn.</p><p class="paywall">Although the article do not ht at , there was an awful reason for Hchens seeg the police-statn wall. He told me the story: Not long after Hchens graduated om Oxford, his mother left his father, and moved wh another man. “He was a charmer, which my father was not. He was wty, burblg, uld do mic, poetry, but uldn’t make a livg. He was a flake, and not always so lic. He had this dark, prsive si.” In the fall of 1973, a iend lled Hchens one morng his London apartment to say she’d jt read a newspaper article about the ath of a Mrs. Hchens Athens. Hchens flew alone to Greece, to learn that, a suici pact, his mother had taken an overdose of sleepg pills a bedroom of the Ge V Hotel, while, the bathroom, her pann had done the same, and also cut himself severely. “It was a terrible Polanski scene,” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">At the hotel, he said, “I went out of the bathroom to the wdow and had my first view of the Acropolis. It was a perfect view.” He learned that his mother had tried his number London many tim the prev days, but he had missed the lls. “Before the days of answerg mach,” he said. “If I’d picked up, uld have been enough to stop her, bee I ually uld make her lgh. That was a bter reflectn.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Athens was polil turmoil— “this mad, Costa-Gavras world.” Hchens, whose skills and taste journalism draw him to peratg quick studi, sized the cy up. “You n learn a lot a short time when there are tanks the street,” he said. He wrote the article when he got home. “Everyone said, ‘Christopher, how uld you?’ I said, ‘How uld I not?’ It was theraptic to wre. No—nsolg. Useful.” He add that, the fifteen years before his father’s ath, Hchens never aga discsed wh him the ath of his mother.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="uno92"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="x2sipj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When Turkey vad Cyps the followg summer, Hchens realized that he had neglected an important part of the story. Cyps beme a specialty, and, later, the subject of his first book, which scribed the island as havg been betrayed by outsi powers; an accg fger was poted at Henry Kissger. Hchens beme a figure radil Cyprt circl, where he met his first wife, Eleni Meleagrou, whom he ed to troduce as “the terrorist.” Jam Fenton se Cyps as cisive Hchens’s polil velopment, not only bee he had the experience of beg a “mi-celebry” but bee of his disappotment the Brish failure to protect Cyps durg the vasn: other words, the dishonorable failure of an imperial power to make a ary terventn. Hchens, unlike Fenton and most others on the Brish left, supported Margaret Thatcher’s gunboat rponse to the Argente occupatn of the Falkland Islands, 1982.</p><p class="paywall">By then, Hchens and Meleagrou had married and moved to Ameri. Hchens pound away at Reagan and pal punishment as <em>The Natn’s</em> Washgton lumnist, and reported for other magaz om the Middle East, Central Ameri, and Eastern Europe. The uple spl up 1989, not long after Hchens met Carol Blue Los Angel. (Meleagrou and their two children, now aged twenty-two and seventeen, live London.) That wter, Hchens and Blue flew to Eastern Europe, to be wns to the revolutnary events of the time. It may need to be said: The were events that Hchens weled. In 2001, Peter Hchens—who has Christopher’s voice exactly, but is a churchgoer who is unpersuad by Darw—wrote an article <em>The Spectator</em> (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) that relled “a Reagan-era discsn about the relative mers and flts of the Wtern and Soviet systems, durg which Christopher said that he didn’t re if the Red Army watered s hors Hendon,” a London suburb. On the ocsn beg scribed, as Christopher later tartly explaed to rears of <em>Vany Fair</em> ( an article entled “O Brother, Why Art Thou?”), he had been tellg a joke. The brothers did not speak for four years. Hchens said to me, “I’ve spent far more time talkg to <em>you</em> than to him the last twenty-five years.” Peter Hchens said, “If we weren’t related, I don’t thk we’d have much to do wh each other,” but he showed a kd of regard for what he se as the nsistency of his brother’s posn: “He’s a Trotskyist, really, not terms of beg a Bolshevik revolutnary but that he is an ialist and he is imprsed by ary mand.” (Peter, too, was once the Internatnal Socialists.)</p><p class="paywall">In a siar dispute, Mart Amis, “Koba the Dread,” a nonfictn book on Stal, st Hchens as, sentially, an apologist for Soviet Communism. Hchens was irrated. He had always been “solid” on the subject of the Soviet bloc, he said; he was as much a iend of the opposn there as he was of the opposn South Ai or El Salvador. “Everythg I’ve <em>thought</em> is on the rerd,” Hchens went on. If he had been a Stalist, “It would show, even if I was tryg to nceal .” Hchens wrote two barbed rpons: one <em>The Atlantic</em>, and the other the <em>Guardian</em>, which was headled “<em class="small">DON’T</em>. <em class="small">BE</em>. <em class="small">SILLY</em>.” He told me, “Mart do not know the fuckg difference between Bhar and Bakun.” (His iendship wh Amis survived this disrd.)</p><p class="paywall">In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomei issued a fatwa agast Salman Rhdie, on the ground that his novel “The Satanic Vers” famed Islam. “There’s a sense which all this—Christopher’s move—is partly my flt,” Rhdie said. “The fatwa ma Christopher feel that radil Islam was not only tryg to kill his iend; was a huge new threat to the kd of world he wanted to live . And I have the sense he felt there was a liberal failure to get the pot of what was happeng.” The fatwa spl the left. As Ian Buma put , “The stct was, whenever there was any nflict between Third World opn and the Wtern metropole, you’d always favor the Third World. Yet here was a se where people were forced to take the oppose view.” For Hchens, that task was simplified by his ntempt for relign.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens helped arrange a meetg between Rhdie and Print Clton, 1993. But he had by then taken a posn on the Print, rived om policy difference and spicn of Clton’s character (but also, possibly, om awarens of the gap polil potency between two Oxford ntemporari, one of them beg the lear of the ee world). Hchens spised him, and charged him wh dg nng, rape, and other crim. He also beme one of the loust crics of Clton’s bombg of the Al-Shifa pharmactil factory Sudan at the time of the Moni Lewsky sndal: Clton had “killed wogs,” he wrote, to save his sk. While Hchens’s lerary and historil wrg has allowed for nuanced appraisals, even fivens, of morally plex figur— a 2005 book on Jefferson, for example, Hchens fds his way past the fact of his slaveowng—the polil prent elics prosecutorial zeal.</p><p class="paywall">In 1992, Hchens had begun a lumn for <em>Vany Fair;</em> he was happy to disver that he uld vastly crease his e and rearship whout havg to watch his tongue—“a breakthrough for me,” he said. The same year, he went to Bosnia at his own expense; as he lled for armed terventn there, three years before the Clton Admistratn acted, he found himself endorsg the same petns as many neonservativ, cludg Wolfowz. In 1999, an cint that some see as the te start of Hchens’s polil pilgrimage, he told Hoe Judiciary Commtee staff members who approached him that Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime iend who was then workg the Clton Whe Hoe, had gossiped to Hchens about Moni Lewsky beg a “stalker.” Blumenthal had ttified that he had not ma such remarks, so the claim put him at risk of a perjury charge and, potentially, strengthened the impeachment se agast Clton. It was possible to read Hchens’s actn as a gture of prciple, but many who knew him saw as a vic act: he was “Snchens.” “He’d got to that moment life when he was askg himself if he uld Make A Difference,” Alexanr Cockburn told me, an e-mail. “So he sloshed his way across his own personal Rubin and tried to topple Clton via a betrayal of his close iendship.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="i8p667"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When I asked Hchens about this perd, he fend his actns but also said, “It seems to me to have happened to somebody else. That’s te of a lot of the fights I took part before 2001. Seemed like a good ia at the time, but shrks credibly pared to Baghdad and Beit and New York.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“That episo did hurt him,” Buma said. “He lost iends, he felt isolated Washgton, and I thk there was a time when he really felt bised.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens’s spleic Clton book, “No One Left to Lie To,” was published months after the Blumenthal cint. Verso, his publishg hoe, threw a party at Pravda, a SoHo rtrant. Col Robson relled, “It’s the only lnch party I’ve ever been to where people booed the thor.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The Hchens-Blue partnership has a grad-school air. It’s hard to see who pays the bills or fills the idge. Blue n get stuck at the post-shower, towel-wearg stage of the day. (Her hband, wh affectn: “Darlg, you would be so much more nvcg if you were drsed.”) Hchens is not hapls—he meets his many adl and tch his many plan—but ’s unsettlg to watch him rse a sgle spoon for four mut, or hear the panmonium over the supply of cigarette lighters. (He has cut back om smokg three packs a day.) He is a late-learng and sry driver. He do not wear a watch, although he looks at his bare left wrist when tryg to lculate the time.</p><p class="paywall">One morng durg the fay’s summer pe to Northern California—they stay a guthoe built next to the home of Blue’s parents—Blue and I drove to a lol supermarket. She walked the store’s aisl wh an air of rock-star puzzlement that may have been heightened for my benef; she did not want to seem like a hoewife. We left wh sandwich, a cherry pie, and two bottl of whiskey, and nothg that looked beyond the horizon of the next meal.</p><p class="paywall">When we returned wh our provisns, at about one o’clock, Hchens, who had been workg, was stg at his sk wh a drk. On the walls around him were some lor prtouts of ktens and puppi stg l. He poted to a mancript of “God Is Not Great,” a book that he thks may have more heft and permanence than anythg he has wrten before, a reer of rapid rpons and public lashgs. “I have been, my head, wrg for many years,” he said. “Relign is gog to be the big subject until the end of my life. And I wanted to make an terventn.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had already fished the morng perd of mail and e-mail he refers to as “telegrams and anger” (a quotatn om “Howards End”). He had given his attentn that day to the wiretap lawsu brought by the Amerin Civil Liberti Unn agast the Natnal Secury Agency; January, he accepted the A.C.L.U.’s vatn to bee a named platiff, ntg his reputatn as an Admistratn cheerlear. He had also begun a review of Ann Coulter’s “Godls: The Church of Liberalism,” for an obscure new Brish journal. He was not dog for ee, but the gture was still genero; Hchens, who is unually lackg profsnal petivens, mak himself available to younger wrers and edors. He also teach: he is prently a visg profsor at the New School, and he is supervisg the Ph.D. this, on Orwell, of Thomas Veale, a U.S. Army major, who lls Hchens the “only neteen-thirti liberal existence.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had started wrg an hour or so before, planng on leniency: “I was thkg of hammerg her for the first half and beg a b gentle the send.” (He shar Coulter’s disregard for Joseph Wilson, the diplomat.) But he had wrten a thoand words, and he was not through hammerg. “I thought I’d do a thoand words by lunchtime—my ual ambn if I’m dog a short piece,” he said. But he now saw that he uld get all done before eatg. “If I n’t fuck up Ann Coulter before lunch then I shouldn’t be this bs,” he said. Not long afterward, he me to the kchen and hand me the fished review.</p><p class="paywall">We had lunch outsi. Hchens ignored the sandwich and put his fork the cherry pie, movg outward om the center. He had a postproductn glow. “Wrg is maly recreatnal,” he said. “I’m not happy when I’m not dog .” He n enterta himself other ways—he straed to remember them—such as “playg wh the ts and the dghter. But if I take even a day away om I’m very uneasy.”</p><p class="paywall">In the past few years, Hchens has published, addn to his books on Orwell, Jefferson, and Pae, a book of opposnist advice entled “Letters to a Young Contrarian”; a llectn of his wrgs on the Iraq war; and a giant miscellany, “Love, Poverty, and War.” He wrote “God Is Not Great” four months. He has ntributed to dozens of publitns (cludg <em>Golf Digt</em>—he plays the game). He almost never the backspace, lete, or cut-and-paste keys. He wr a sgle draft, at a speed that ed his <em>New Statman</em> lleagu to place bets on how long would take him to fish an edorial. What emerg is ready for publitn, except for one weakns: he’s not an expert punctuator, which rerc the notn that he is the bs of transcribg a lecture he n hear himself givg.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Earlier, answer to a qutn I hadn’t asked, Blue had said to me, “Once a while, seems like he might be dnk. Asi om that, even though he’s obvly an alholic, he functns at a really high level and he don’t act like a dnk, so the only reason ’s a bad thg is ’s takg out his liver, prumably. It would be a drag for Henry Kissger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens, too, brought up the subject of alhol before I did. “You’re gog to want to talk about this,” he said, not wrongly, potg at his glass. (A wrer lik a öperative subject, but n be dispirg to make a portra the shadow of a gigantic self-portra.) He was not a “piss artist,” he explaed, “someone who n’t get gog whout a load of beer, who’s a dnk—overnfint and flhed. I n’t bear that.” He went on, “I know what I’m dog wh . And I n time . It’s a self-meditg thg.” I took his pot. Hchens do drk a very great al (and said of Mel Gibson’s blood-alhol level at the time of his recent Malibu arrt—0.12 per cent—“that’s as sober as you’d ever want to be”). But he drks like a Hemgway character: ntually and to no apparent effect.</p><p class="paywall">That eveng at the guthoe, Peter Berkowz, the Strssian tellectual and Hoover Instutn fellow, and Tod Ldberg, the edor of <em>Policy Review</em>, dropped by wh fay members. The back-yard pool was sudnly full of children. Someone had brought champagne, and Hchens poured wh exaggerated disapproval. (A few years ago, he claimed that the four most overrated thgs life were champagne, lobsters, anal sex, and piics.) Hchens went to the hoe and put on Bob Dylan’s “Try’ to Get to Heaven”; he stood the doorway and sung quietly along. He quoted Philip Lark on Dylan: a “wg, risive voice.” He repeated Lark’s words a few tim, approvgly. His dghter got out of the pool, and said, pleasantly, “Can we close the door, so nobody else has to hear this?”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="kclvs6"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="6j4a6v"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">She went back to her iends. “Look,” Hchens said happily. “They’re wag for to die.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Hchens and Blue flew back to Washgton jt after Labor Day. At the end of that week, the Madison Hotel, Hchens sat alongsi William Kristol, the edor of the <em>Weekly Standard</em>, and others on a panel nvened by the David Horowz Freedom Center. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, the nservative thor and former Whe Hoe ary ai, troduced the event, and was appld for a passg dig at the A.C.L.U. Hchens, whose remarks were livered to a warm hum of approval—“too easy,” he later said—scribed as “a pleasure as well as a duty” to kill Islamic terrorists.</p><p class="paywall">Horowz has often spoken and wrten about his upbrgg by Communist parents. Hchens’s rponse, years ago, was to ask, “Who r about his pathetic fay?” But Horowz holds no gdge, and the two men talked the bar afterward, wh the rapport that om beg the only people a ten-block radi who uld say they had read all three volum of Isaac Dtscher’s bgraphy of Leon Trotsky. Horowz asked about Hchens’s mment to his Rtoratn Weekend, Palm Beach, later the year. Hchens would never apologize for sharg a platform wh anyone, but he wanted to know what Horowz saw Ann Coulter: Hadn’t he noticed the creatnism “Godls”?</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t read the Darw pag,” Horowz admted.</p><p class="paywall">“It’s nearly a third of the soddg book!” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had to be up early the morng, and he began to make his way out. But a iend me up and asked him a favor, leadg Hchens to a group of young Horowz fans. Hchens sat down. “You really want to hear the most obscene joke the world?” he asked them.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-9 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">An hour later, Hchens was at home, makg a ban sandwich. I asked him if he had felt a pang of envy when, 2005, Michael Ignatieff, the thor, public tellectual, and longtime U.K. rint, moved back to his native Canada to bee a Liberal M.P.—and a likely future lear of his party. Hchens replied, “Not a pang. A twge.” When he was a young man, Hchens was once sound out about standg for Parliament as a Labour ndidate. He took another path, but subsequent years has ocsnally thought of the polician he did not bee. And today Bra the polil furnure is arranged as he would like to be; that is, wh opposn to the Iraq terventn heard as loudly on the Conservative si as on the left, and—as he se —a Labour Government actg acrdance wh the radil, humanist, ternatnalist ialism of his youth. Earlier this year, Hchens had a private meetg wh Prime Mister Tony Blair.</p><p class="paywall">I asked Hchens if he would accept a life peerage and a seat the Hoe of Lords. “It would be fantastilly temptg,” he said, showg more eagerns than I’d expected. “I thk I uldn’t do , even though ’s no longer heredary. I uldn’t que see the term ‘Lord Hchens.’ ” He add, wh some feelg, “That I never had the right to walk to Parliament is somethg I’ll always be sorry about.”</p><p class="paywall">This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hchens’s move to Ameri. Barrg a last-mute plitn, this will also be the year he be a cizen. He began the procs not long after the attacks of 2001. The paperwork is done, he has passed the exam, and he was terviewed June.</p><p class="paywall">I asked if he’d vote November. “I’ll <em>n</em> November,” he said. “Don’t le out.” He add, “I n’t be Print. So we n relax about that.” ♦</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="3kg3sr"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS kLQIUk grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div 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Can he make to 10 Downg Street?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ian Parker</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Mugglemarch" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Profil</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Mugglemarch</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Mugglemarch" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">J. K. Rowlg wr a realist novel for adults.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ian Parker</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Iphigenia Fort Hills" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Iphigenia Fort Hills</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Iphigenia Fort Hills" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">Anatomy of a murr trial.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ja Mallm</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Transn" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Annals of History</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">The Transn</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-4" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="The Transn" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">Lyndon Johnson and the events Dallas.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Robert A. Caro</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY ad ad--read-more"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--read-more" data-no-id="9ue9ho"></div></div></div><div class="SummaryCollectnGridToActnWrapper-gnReGN eGayfk"></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="TaboolaWrapper-hMVdpE iYfBhy"><div class="TaboolaWidgetWrapper-egPIjc hkSrgt TaboolaWidget-eUSdED hQCCRa" data-ttid="TaboolaWidgetWrapper"><div class="TaboolaWidgetContent-iBEQTO eXroXG TABOOLA" id="taboola-below-article-thumbnails---f" data-ttid="TaboolaWidgetContent"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--footer should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--footer" data-no-id="8ld1ol"></div></div></div></div></div></ma><div class="BasePageMaFooterFiller-hTlZph jSriYf page__ma-footer-filler"></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div 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iRsSlw"><a class="RubricLk-gRWSOU fgWnkQ bric__lk" href="/magaze/profil"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Profil</span></a></div></div></div><h1 data-ttid="ContentHearHed" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ContentHearHed-NCyCC iUEiRd NbxED hpJvIc">He Knew He Was Right</h1></div><div class="ContentHearAccredatn-lfctVB enhwXT ntent-hear__accredatn" data-ttid="ContentHearAccredatn"><div class="ContentHearDek-bIqFFZ Mtme">How a former socialist beme the Iraq war’s fierct fenr.</div><div class="ContentHearByle-kmPyCa gvUmxJ"><div class="ContentHearByleContent-dpPmNn DRFq"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl ContentHearByl-cZqgyJ bqbBYQ"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH ivtvgj byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span><a class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BaseLk-eNWuiM ByleLk-gEnFiw iUEiRd ggMZaT cXqSTL eErqIx byle__name-lk button" href="/ntributors/ian-parker">Ian Parker</a></span></span></p></div><time data-ttid="ContentHearPublishDate" dateTime="2006-10-08T20:00:00-04:00" class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ContentHearPublishDate-eIBicG iUEiRd kYZrFA kEBrdf">October 8, 2006</time></div></div></div></div></div></hear></div><div data-attribute-verso-pattern="article-body" class="ArticlePageContentBackGround-cNiFNN kbAoLA article-body__ntent"><div class="ActnBarWrapperContent-lasBkU cAHp"><div class="ActnBarWrapperComponent-cjwxLS bEeSLb"><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="ActnBarWrapper-dhxmQh kNjTbQ viewport-monor-anchor"><button id="bookmark" aria-label="Save this story" class="ActnBarButton-dyFOZU hQrwCF bookmark large-screen"><span class="ActnBarSendaryButtonPrimaryIn-isbvyN cAwccV bookmark-button-in"><svg class="in in-bookmark" width="24" height="24" 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class="in-bookmark-fill" d="M23 3H20V0H19V3H16V4H19V7H20V4H23V3Z"></path></svg></span><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ ActnBarButtonText-bYXYuh iUEiRd bkefvo gkccfO">Save this story</span></button></div></div></div><div class="LightboxWrapper-dxsWBV hhylRt"><div class="ArticlePageChunksContent-etcMtP bwyLBj"><div data-ttid="ArticlePageChunks" class="ArticlePageChunks-fLyCVG gBDqlf"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><div class="GenericCalloutWrapper-tojWn iHBnEl llout--has-top-borr set-embedd-le" data-ttid="GenericCallout"><figure class="AssetEmbedWrapper-eVDQiB byBkf asset-embed"><div class="AssetEmbedAssetContaer-eJxoAx dBHGoQ asset-embed__asset-ntaer"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO KhjZz AssetEmbedRponsiveAsset-cXBNxi eCxVQK asset-embed__rponsive-asset rponsive-image rponsive-image--expandable"><noscript><img alt="Illtratn by Ralph Steadman" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src=" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w, 960w, 1280w, 1600w, 1920w, 2240w" siz="100vw"/></noscript></picture></span></div><div class="CaptnWrapper-jSZdqE iTuhkZ ptn AssetEmbedCaptn-fNQBPI fmQnYP asset-embed__ptn"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ CaptnCred-ejegDm iUEiRd iicloT jbIJNS ptn__cred">Illtratn by Ralph Steadman</span></div></figure></div><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg">Until not long ago, Christopher Hchens, the Brish-born journalist, was a valued asset of the Amerin left: an tellectual willg to show his teeth the e of righteons. Today, Hchens supports the Iraq war and is ntemptuo of those who do not—a turn that has nfed and dismayed former ras, and brought him to odd new allianc. But his life looks much the same. He still wr a great al, at a speed at which most people read. And, at fifty-seven, he still has an arrt-photograph air about him—lookg like someone who, wh as much digny as possible, has smoothed his hair and straightened his llar after knockg the helmet off a policeman.</p><p class="paywall">At a dner a few months ago San Francis wh his wife, Carol Blue, and some others, Hchens wore a pale jacket and a shirt unbuttoned far enough to ht at what one ex-girliend has lled “the pelt of the Hch.” Hchens, who only recently gave up the hab of smokg the shower, was workg through a pack of cigarett while talkg to two women at his end of the table: a Stanford doctor her early thirti whom he’d met once before, and a iend of hers, a librarian. He spoke wh w and eloquence about Iranian polics and what he saw as the unnecsary handsomens of Gav Newsom, the mayor of San Francis.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens wr on polics and lerature; and both l of work he tends to start om textual readgs of a subtle and spic-md kd. When he is not wrg, he talks the same measured, ironic voice as his prose, wh the same fluency and tellectual momentum, as if he were troubled by the thought that he might never fd another dience. Hchens lik to have his say: he tak his arguments to the ble-news channels, to Wt Pot ts, to panel discsns wdowls hotel nference rooms. He stays at public meetgs until the crowd—hydrated and fat—has no more qutns to ask, and then he giv out his e-mail addrs. He is a fe, funny orator, wh the mock-heroic manner of an English barrister sure of his ground (“by all means,” “if you will”), g risn, a grand dictn, and loopg subcls that always rry him back to the ma path. He also has the polician’s trick of elidg the last word of one sentence to the first of the next, while strsg both words, orr to close a gate agast terptn. In more private settgs, the rhetoric is the same—except that there are filthy jok drawn out to twenty mut, and longer quotatns om his vast stock of remembered English poetry. He seems to be perpetually dng for the role of bt man. Ian McEwan, the novelist, recently said of Hchens, “It all seems stantly, nrologilly available: everythg he’s ever read, everyone he’s ever met, every story he’s ever heard.”</p><p class="paywall">In the noisy ont room of the North Beach rtrant where the iends had met, Hchens ma a toast: “To the Constutn of the Uned Stat, and nfn to s enemi!” The nversatn was amiable and boozy; Hchens might be said to re more for history than for dividual humans, but he was an easy mood, after a drive, betiful early-eveng light, om Menlo Park. (He and Blue, a wrer workg on a novel, live wh their thirteen-year-old dghter Washgton, D.C., but spend the summer California, where her parents live.) Durg the ri, he had discsed wh the Pakistani-born taxi-driver the virtu and vic of Benazir Bhutto, while surreptly g a bottle of Evian to put out a small but smoky fire that he had set the ashtray.</p><p class="paywall">And then the young doctor to his left ma a passg but sympathetic remark about Howard Dean, the 2004 Printial ndidate; she said that he had been unfairly treated the Amerin media. Hchens, the clear, helpful voice one might e to give street directns, replied that Dean was “a ravg nut bag,” and then rrected himself: “A ravg, sister, magogic nut bag.” He said, “I and a few other people saw he should be stroyed.” He noted that, 2003, Dean had given a speech at an abortn-rights gatherg which he relled beg vised, as a doctor, by a twelve-year-old who was pregnant by her father. (“You expla that to the Amerin people who thk that parental notifitn is a good ia,” Dean said, to applse.) Dean appeared not to have referred the alleged rape to the police; he also, when prsed, admted that the story was not, all tails, te. For Hchens, this tablished that Dean was a “pathologil liar.”</p><div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-mid-ntent" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-mid-ntent nsumer-marketg-un__slot---ntent"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><p class="paywall">“All policians lie!” the women said.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-1 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“He’s a <em>doctor</em>,” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">“But he’s a polician.”</p><p class="paywall">“No, exce me,” Hchens said. His tone tightened, and his mouth shnk like a sea anemone poked wh a stick; the Hchens face n, at moments of dialectil urgency, or when seen an unkdly l Fox News stud, transform om roguish to sour. (Hchens’s iend Mart Amis, the novelist, has chid Hchens for “dog that horrible thg wh your lips.”) “Fe,” Hchens said. “Now that I know that, to you, medil ethics are nothg, you’ve told me all I need to know. I’m not tryg to persua you. Do you thk I re whether you agree wh me? No. I’m tellg you why I disagree wh you. That I <em>do</em> re about. I have no further tert any of your opns. There’s nothg you wouldn’t make an exce for.”</p><p class="paywall">“That’s wrong!” they said.</p><p class="paywall">“You know what? I wouldn’t want you on my si.” His tone was bslike; the lghg protts died away. “I was tellg you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a d, and you say, ‘That’s O.K.’ Fuck off. No, I mean : fuck off. I’m tellg you what I thk are standards, and you say, ‘What standards? It’s fe, he’s agast the Iraq war.’ Fuck. Off. You’re ‘Any liar will do. He’s anti-Bh, he n say what he lik.’ Fuck off. You thk a doctor n lie ont of an dience of women on a major qutn, and claim to have supprsed evince on rape and ct and then to have said he ma up?”</p><p class="paywall">“But Christopher . . .”</p><p class="paywall">“Save , sweetie, for someone who r. It will not be me. You love , you suck on . I now know what your standards are, and now you know what me are, and that’s all the difference—I hope— the world.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">What happened to Christopher Hchens? How did a longtime lumnist at <em>The Natn</em> bee a ntributor to the <em>Weekly Standard</em>, a supporter of Print Bh the 2004 electn, and an ved speaker at the nservative activist David Horowz’s forthg Rtoratn Weekend, along wh Ann Coulter and Rh Limbgh? Or, to put another way, how did Hchens e to be a “Lyg, Self-Servg, Fat-Assed, Cha-Smokg, Dnken, Opportunistic, Cynil Contrarian”? (This is om the tle of an say posted on CounterPunch, a Web se -eded by Hchens’s former iend and <em>Natn</em> lleague Alexanr Cockburn.) The qutn, pole and impole forms, go around and around at Washgton dner parti: did Hchens mata high prcipl while the left drifted om him, or did he lose himself vany and ambn? The matter has even spired a forthg anthology of attack and unterattack, “Terror, Iraq, and the Left: Christopher Hchens and His Crics.”</p><p class="paywall">On the time le of the Hchens apostasy, which ns om revolutnary socialism to a kd of neonservatism, many dat are marked boldface—his reasssment nnot be fixed to any one of them—and those faiar wh Hchens’s work know that he has always thrived on sectarian battl, and always looked for “enuragg signs of polarizatn,” a phrase he has borrowed om his late iend Israel Shahak, the Israeli activist. But, when I talked wh Hchens, our nversatn began wh events 2001. By that year, Hchens said, he had begun to doubt if his future lay polil journalism. He had, by then, published fifteen books, cludg one on the Elg Marbl dispute, and slim, srnful volum—morn versns of eighteenth-century pamphleteerg—makg the se agast Henry Kissger (mass murrer), Bill Clton (sex crimal), and Mother Tera (iend of spots). He had wrten, but not yet published, an admirg book about Gee Orwell’s polil clear-sightedns. He had a lumn for <em>Vany Fair</em>, addn to his “Mory Report” for <em>The Natn</em>, which he had started 1982, a year after movg to Ameri. But, he said, polil mentary had bee “creasgly borg. There were tim when I was due to wre a <em>Natn</em> lumn and I hadn’t got a hugely strong motive to wre.” He no longer scribed himself as a socialist, an inty he had formed as a teen-ager, the late sixti. He had taken to scribg palism as the world’s only te revolutnary force.</p><div class="Contaer-bkChBi byNLHx"></div><p class="paywall">“I was beg post-iologil,” Hchens relled. “And I thought, Well, what I want is to wre more about lerature—not to dump polics, bee one n never do that, but I remember thkg that I would make a real effort to unrstand Prot.” Wherever possible, Hchens wr as an opposnist, which means that his panegyrics are livered the form of a bodyguard’s shove agast trs; and this se he had cid on a book-length riposte to Ala Botton’s “How Prot Can Change Your Life.” Hchens fished wrg his not on September 9th, then flew to Walla Walla, Washgton, to give a lecture on Henry Kissger that cid wh the filg of a feral lawsu agast Kissger and other Nixon Admistratn officials by the fay of René Schneir, the Chilean ary manr murred 1970. “I ma a speech to an exced dience, and I end, ‘I like to thk that tomorrow, 11th September 2001, will be remembered for a long time as a landmark day the stggle for human rights’—a prcient remark, I hope you’ll agree. I got a standg ovatn, signed a few books, kissed a few people, went to bed reasonably ntented. You know the rt.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><asi class="PersistentAsiWrapper-VGrR daRVRt persistent-asi" style="posn:absolute;top:to;height:to" data-ttid="PersistentAsiWrapper"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="owp5an"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></asi></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="n54g9a"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">He went on, “The advice I’ve been givg to people all my life—that you may not be terted the dialectic but the dialectic is terted you; you n’t give up polics, won’t give you up—was the advice I should have been takg myself. Bee I did know that somethg like 9/11 would happen.” So “ was goodbye to Marcel for a b.” (He has not wrten his Prot book, but, 2004, he published a limpid say on a new translatn of “Swann’s Way”: “Through his ey we see what actuat the dandy and the lover and the grane and the hypocre and the posr, wh a transparency unexampled except Shakpeare or Gee Elt,” he wrote <em>The Atlantic</em>. “And this abily, so piercg and at tim even alarmg, is not mere knowgns. It is not, other words, the product of cynicism. To be so perceptive and yet so nocent—that, a phrase, is the achievement of Prot.”)</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-2 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In a 2003 terview, Hchens said that the events of September 11th filled him wh “exhilaratn.” His iend Ian Buma, the wrer, told me, “I don’t que see Christopher as a ‘man of actn,’ but he’s always lookg for the fg moment—as were, our Spanish Civil War, where you put yourself on the right si, and stand up to the enemy.” Hchens foraw “a war to the fish between everythg I love and everythg I hate.” Here was a qutn on which history would judge him; and jt as Orwell had ( his view) got right on the greatt qutns of the twentieth century—Communism, Fascism, and imperialism—so Hchens wanted a future stunt to see that he had been siarly scpulo and clear-eyed. (He once wrote, “I have tried for much of my life to wre as if I was posg my sentenc to be read posthumoly.”) His enemi stood two groups: first, the forc of jihad, and, send, those “the Chomsky-Zn-Fkelste quarter,” as he has put —the hort of Amerin leftists who seemed too ready to see the attacks as a rebe to Amerin imperialism. In his first <em>Natn</em> lumn after September 11th, Hchens wrote that “the bombers of Manhattan reprent fascism wh an Islamic face. . . . What they abomate about ‘the Wt,’ to put a phrase, is not what Wtern liberals don’t like and n’t fend about their own system, but what they <em>do</em> like about and mt fend: s emancipated women, s scientific quiry, s separatn of relign om the state. Loose talk about chickens g home to roost is the moral equivalent of the hateful garbage emted by Falwell and Robertson.”</p><p class="paywall">Many Amerin liberals would have had no argument wh that; nor, ed, wh the way Hchens jabbed at the film-maker Oliver Stone at a public meetg Manhattan a few weeks later, when Stone referred to the “revolt of September 11th.” (“Exce me. Revolt? It was state-supported mass murr, g civilians as missil.”) Neverthels, Hchens felt pelled formally to remove himself om the Amerin left. In a clarifyg sign-off a few months later, he dropped his <em>Natn</em> lumn. This may have been largely a change of addrs rather than a change of md—movg out of the hoe long after the divorce—but he tected some ner shift 2001. “For the first time my life, I felt myself the posn of the policeman,” he told me. In part, this was a rponse to Ameri’s panic. “Nobody knew what was gog on. This giant ernment, and huge empire. Bh was missg. Panic, impotence, shame. I’ve never known any feelg like . What do one do when the forc of law and orr have let you down, and the whole of society is stunned and terrified? Simply, I mt fd out what ’s like to thk like a p. It shifts the angle, a way that n’t really be wrenched back aga.” Durg the I.R.A. bombg mpaigns on the Brish maland, which began the neteen-seventi, this had not happened. Then he had “kept two sets of books: I didn’t like bombs, I didn’t like the partn of Ireland.” Now he felt as if he had “taken an oath to uphold and fend the Constutn agast all enemi, foreign and domtic.”</p><p class="paywall">We were Hchens’s home Washgton. His top-floor apartment, wh a wi view that clus No. 1 Observatory Circle, the Vice-Printial rince, is large and handsome: sparely furnished, wh a grand piano, books piled on the floor, a few embassy vatns on the mantelpiece, and prts and patgs propped agast the walls rather than hung om them; the clu an oil patg of Hchens and Blue (a dark-haired, darkly drsed woman—a young San Sontag) wh ffee, whiskey, and cigarett on a table ont of them.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens has the life that a spired thirteen-year-old boy might hope adulthood to be: he wak up when he lik, works om home, is married to someone who wears leopard-sk high heels, and nducts heady, ser discsns late to the night. I arrived jt after midday, and Hchens said that was “time for a cktail”; he poured a large drk. His hair flopped over his forehead, and he phed back g jt the tips of his fgers, his hand as unbendg as a mannequ’s.</p><p class="paywall">He noted that he never lik gog to bed. “I’m not that keen on the ia of beg unnsc,” he said. “There’s plenty of time to be unnsc g up.” In Washgton, his socializg ually tak place at home. “I n have some sort of ntrol over who , what gets talked about, what gets eaten, what gets dnk, and the ashtrays,” he said. “Call me set my ways.” (Hchens’s predomant tone is quietly self-parodyg. Even his farewells are ironic: “It’s been real,” “Stay ol.”) Guts at the Hchens salon clu people he first knew London, who ll him “Hch,” cludg Salman Rhdie, Ian McEwan, and his great iend Mart Amis (“The only blond I have ever really loved,” Hchens once said); long-standg Amerin iends like Christopher Buckley and Graydon Carter; an ternatnal work of dissints and tellectuals; and, the days, such figur as David Fm, the former Bh Admistratn speechwrer, and Grover Norquist, the nservative activist. In September, he hosted Barham Salih, a Kurd who is a Deputy Prime Mister of the new Iraqi ernment. Many guts n report seeg Hchens step out of the room after dner, wre a lumn, then step back almost before the topic of nversatn has changed.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="apcm"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">Rhdie relled an eveng last year. “I met Pl Wolfowz,” he said, lghg. “And I disvered, to my immense surprise, that he’s a very nice man.” Wolfowz, the neonservative who served as the Deputy Secretary of Defense between 2001 and 2005, and who now ns the World Bank, was a primary archect of the vasn of Iraq; he has bee the emblem of Hchens’s new polil alignments. Wolfowz rpected Hchens’s rerd as a wrer on human rights. He lled Hchens the fall of 2002, at the promptg of Kev Kellems, then his special adviser, and now an adviser at the World Bank. “It felt like Cold War pnage,” Kellems relled. “Contactg someone on the other si you thk might want to fect.” Hchens accepted an vatn to lunch at the Pentagon. “I snuck him ,” Kellems said. “We didn’t put his name on the schle.”</p><p class="paywall">As Wolfowz knew, Hchens was a longtime observer of the celty of Saddam Hse, and had spoken publicly for his removal sce 1998. He supported the e of Kurdish pennce, and had been to Halabja and seen the juri ed there by Iraqi chemil weapons; and he was iendly wh dissint Iraqis exile, cludg Ahmed Chalabi, of the Iraqi Natnal Congrs, which aggrsively promoted the notn, now wily disunted, that Saddam was poised to bee a nuclear power. After September 11th, and the subsequent feat of the Taliban Afghanistan (upon which Hchens addrsed the Brish antiwar left the pag of the <em>Guardian</em>, “Ha ha ha, and yah, boo”), he had thrown himself to the bate over Iraq, makg speech and wrg for <em>Slate</em>. Brandishg the neteen-thirti slogan “Fascism Means War,” he argued that Saddam was somethg more than another tyrant; though he did not have nuclear weapons, he aspired to have them; his regime was on the verge of implosn, and better that should implo unr supervisn, wh the Wt providg “armed assistance to the imment Iraqi and Kurdish revolutns.” Hchens told me, “The number of who would have cricized Bh if he <em>hadn’t</em> removed Saddam—that’s certaly the smallt mory I’ve ever been a member of.”</p><p class="paywall">I mentned the Pentagon meetg. “Wolfowz was not askg my advice about Iraq—don’t n away wh that ia,” Hchens said. “He jt felt that those who worked for the otg of Saddam should get on closer terms wh each other.” Acrdg to Kellems, who attend the meetg, “Hchens said, ‘I was tryg to signal you’ ”—through his wrg—“and Wolfowz said, ‘I wonred.’” Hchens disput that memory; he do remember askg Wolfowz for reassuranc that, the event of an vasn, the Uned Stat would protect the Kurds om the Turks. They talked about Rwanda and Bosnia, about the history of genoci and the st of actn. Kellems, who has sce bee a iend of Hchens, scribed “two giant mds unleashed the room. They were fishg each other’s sentenc.” Acrdg to Hchens, Wolfowz is a “bleedg heart,” and he went on, “There are not many Republins, or Democrats, who lie awake at night worryg about what’s happeng to the Paltians, but he do.” (Hchens has been a s-long agator for the Paltian e; he -eded a book on the subject wh Edward Said, the late Paltian-Amerin scholar.) “And Wolfowz wants Ameri’s human-rights ethic to be straight and nsistent as far as possible. And if there’s an anomaly he’s aware of .”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-3 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">On April 9, 2003, the day the statue of Saddam was pulled down central Baghdad, Hchens wrote, “So turns out that all the slogans of the anti-war movement were right after all. And their mands were jt. ‘No War on Iraq,’ they said—and there wasn’t a war on Iraq. Ined, there was barely a ‘war’ at all. ‘No Blood for Oil,’ they cried, and the oil wealth of Iraq has been duly rcued om attempted sabotage wh srcely a drop spilled.” That July, Hchens and a few other reporters flew to Baghdad wh Wolfowz. “It’s que extraordary to see the way that Amerin soldiers are weled,” Hchens told Fox News upon his return. “To see the work that they’re dog and not jt rollg up the filthy works of Baathists and jihadists, but buildg schools, openg soccer stadiums, helpg people nnect to the Inter, there is a really telligent polil program as well as a very tough ary one.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Three years later, Hchens is still on Fox News talkg about the Iraq war. He has not flched om his posn that the vasn was necsary, nor cled any ser vatn to fend that posn publicly, even as the vlence Iraq has creased, and Amerin opn has turned agast the terventn and the Print who lnched . In this role, he has prented himself wh an immense tt of his rhetoril mettle—one n say that whout doubtg his scery. He often seems to have had more at stake, and certaly more oratoril energy, than anyone the ernment. (In recent months, the trope of “Islamic fascism,” which Hchens has ed equently sce his 2001 <em>Natn</em> lumn, has reached the top layers of ernment— Augt, Bh said that the untry was “at war wh Islamic fascists”—and he has had to ny the charge that he is wrg Admistratn speech.) Today, he always rri wh him—like the Kurdistan flag his lapel—batg pots, worn smooth wh e: Abdul Rahman Yas, who was volved the 1993 World Tra Center attack, took refuge Iraq; Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam’s senr physicist, had centrifuge parts buried his garn; as late as 2003, Iraqi agents were tryg to buy missil om North Korea; Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s Deputy Prime Mister, offered Hchens’s iend Rolf Eké, the weapons spector, a two-and-a-half-ln-dollar bribe. “I feel like Bellow’s Herzog, wrg crazed letters,” Hchens said, sg. “The occupatn has not turned out as one would have liked, but the ma problem is to have unrtimated the utter evil of the other si. I wouldn’t have believed they uld keep up a mpaign of murrg people at random.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens asks his opponents this: “We should have left Iraq the way was? However I replay the tape, however much I wish thgs had been done differently, I n’t get to that posn.” He acknowledged that his support of the war had ed him some tellectual disfort. “The most difficult thg is havg to fend an Admistratn that isn’t fensible,” he said. On televisn and rad, he explaed, “you’re ved on to fend the Admistratn’s view on somethg and then someone’s ved on to attack . You don’t want to beg by puttg distance, bee then looks like you’re verg your ass. You take the nontatn as actually is. I’m not gog to spend a few silky mut sayg, ‘You know, I don’t really like Bh and his attu toward stem cells.’ No. Wa. The motn before the hoe is this: Is this a jt and necsary war or is not?”</p><p class="paywall">He went on, “I’m open to the prosecutn of the Admistratn, even the impeachment of some members, for the way they’ve fucked up the war, and also the way they explo domtilly. But do not n away wh the ia that my tellg you this would satisfy any of my crics. They want me to immolate myself, and I scerely believe that for some of them, when they see bad news om Iraq, the reactn is simply ‘This will make Hchens look bad!’ I’ve been tryg to avoid solipsism, but I’ve e to believe there are such people.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens fds support on the right, of urse. Peter Wehner, a puty assistant to the Print and the director of the office of strategic iativ the Whe Hoe, ved Hchens to give a lecture to Whe Hoe staff a few years ago, and now jokgly addrs him as “Comra” e-mails. Wehner admired Hchens as a “fantastic polil pugilist” even when they were on opposg mps the eighti. Now, he said, “On the issu of greatt gravy and historil importance—the war agast global jihadism and the liberatn of Iraq—I am thrilled to be on the same si of the divi as Christopher.”</p><p class="paywall">To Hchens’s left, there is enmy and risn. This summer, a mock-obuary, published onle, scribed him dyg the manner of Major Kong: ridg a warhead out of a B-52 a future Amerin war Iran. Another Inter tribute posted a photograph of him wh the ptn “Hchens: ‘I’ll Kick Saddam’s Fuckg Teeth In.’ ”A parodic MySpace page troduc Hchens this way: “I am a man of the Enlightenment. Words fall om my tongue and you eat them up like a starvg kten on the street.” Last year, Hchens was jeered when he bated the Brish M.P. Gee Galloway New York. When he appeared on “Real Time wh Bill Maher,” this summer, Hchens said “Fuck you” to a hostile crowd and, to Maher, “Your dience, which will clap at apparently anythg, is ivolo.”</p><p class="paywall">Many iends and former iends have been watchg Hchens’s progrs wh disappotment, or somethg sharper. Col Robson, his former publisher at Verso Books, said, “I hope might be possible to save some bs of Christopher. It’s a terrible loss to the left—’s so rare to have someone the mastream media who uld go out and give the other si a dtg.” Usg a siar tone of regret, Eric Alterman, a <em>Natn</em> lumnist and an tranged iend, lled him a “performance artist.” Alexanr Cockburn told me, “Between the two of them, my sympathi were wh Mother Tera. If you were stg rags a gutter Calcutta, who would be more likely to give you a bowl of soup?”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens claims to be unperturbed by his crics. “You’d thk I’d driven over their pets and abducted their dghters,” Hchens said. “I’d like to know what brgs that on.” A pse. “So I uld do more.” He add, “People say, ‘What’s like to be a mory of one, or a kick-bag for the Inter?’ It wash off me like jizz off a porn star’s face.” (Thomas Chman, one of the edors of “Terror, Iraq, and the Left,” said of Hchens, “What’s great about him is that beg spised is actually the source of his creativy.”)</p><p class="paywall">I asked Rhdie if recent events had taken their toll on his iend. “Christopher is well equipped to take re of himself,” Rhdie said, “but I do thk that some of the people that he is now aligned wh are not really people that he’s like. That mt be very strange for him, and I worry about that.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="qpddg9"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="sodl0n"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When I told Hchens that some iends were worried, he sed through his annoyance. “I suppose ’s nice to be worried about,” he said. “It’s almost like beg red about.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">In 1982, Hchens wrote an say for <em>The Natn</em> about Evelyn Wgh’s “Brishead Revised,” and the pot he was most keen to make was that although the First World War predat the actn of the novel, remas at the center of the story. Hchens quoted at length om Wgh’s honeyed scriptn of the excursn ma by Charl Ryr and Sebastian Flyte to the Venice of the early twenti, a passage of champagne cktails and gondolas that ends wh Sebastian sayg, “It’s rather sad to thk that whatever happens you and I n never possibly get volved a war.”</p><p class="paywall">I asked Carol Blue about this passage. She said that her hband, who was brought up an English ary fay the years followg the Send World War, had an aspect of “those men who were never really battle and wished they had been. There’s a whole tough-guy, ‘I am vlent, I will e vlence, I will take some of the people out before I die’ talk, which is really key to his psychology—I don’t re what he says. I thk is partly to do wh his upbrgg.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-4 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">The Send World War was “the entire subject of nversatn” when Hchens was growg up, he told me: “I didn’t know films were ma out of anythg else.” Every Boxg Day, the fay would toast the skg of the German battlhip Scharnhorst. Portsmouth, where he first lived, was still srred by Nazi air raids. Hchens’s father was a reer Navy man om a workg-class fay who reached the rank of manr and, wh that, a foothold the middle class. He met Hchens’s mother, who was om a lower-middle-class Liverpudlian fay, durg the war. Commanr Hchens was not a garlo man, but some observatns of his have stuck wh his son. “They are all kd of solid,” Christopher said. “He said, ‘Beware of girls wh th lips’; ‘Don’t let them see you wh jt your socks on’; and ‘Socialism is found on sand.’ ” His father also said that “the war was the only time when he knew what he was dog.”</p><p class="paywall">His parents, Hchens said, were of a class that “rent but sort of envy the rich, but they’re terrified of anized labor, and feel themselv to be the neglected, solid cizens.” Commanr Hchens was a nservative of the peeved, untry-gog-to-the-dogs sort—a Thatchere wag. Christopher abandoned that nservatism as a boy but perhaps absorbed the lson that polics is a form of anger. “My father was not a misanthrope, exactly, but he thought that the whole thg”—that is, life—“was a b overrated.”</p><p class="paywall">Commanr Hchens had a Baptist-Calvist background. His wife was Jewish, but she never told her hband or her children. Hchens learned this about her—and himself—only long after her ath. (“On hearg the tidgs, I was pleased to fd that I was pleased,” he has wrten.) She was more social than Hchens’s father, and more alert to signs of class slippage: was val to nt k to a jug before takg to the table, and to avoid sayg “toilet.” Hchens once overheard an argument between his parents about the st of boardg school, which his mother said, “If there is gog to be a lg class this untry, then Christopher is gog to be .”</p><p class="paywall">She succeed: Christopher was privately and expensively ted (as was Peter, his younger brother, who is a proment right-wg newspaper lumnist London) and now has the accent—and whe su—of the English upper-middle class. Ian Buma tects Hchens some mix of regard and disda “for the ‘real’ officer class. Wgh had a b of that, and Wohoe—Christopher’s favore wrers—which is one reason that Wohoe end up Ameri. Ameri allows you to play the role of the uy upper-class Englishman, whereas En-gland you’d feel vulnerable to exposure.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens went to boardg school, Devon, at the age of eight. He was happy, but, he said, “a radilizg thg for me was the realizatn that my parents had scrimped and saved to allow me to be the first member of my fay to go to boardg school. I was surround by the sons of Lanstrian bsmen who thought was their perfect right to be there. That had a huge effect: the fuckers don’t even know when they’re well off.” He also saw through Mrs. Watts, his stctor on relig matters, “who told how good was of God to make all our vegetatn green, bee was the lor that was most rtful for our ey, and how horrible would be if was orange. I remember stg there, my shorts and sandals, and thkg, That <em>n’t</em> be right.” Hchens has jt fished a book rmed by a lifetime of steely anticleril thought, “God Is Not Great,” to be published next year, which begs wh Mrs. Watts, and go on to say of his relig iends, “I would be que ntent to go to their children’s bar-mzvahs, to marvel at their Gothic thedrals, to ‘rpect’ their belief that the Koran was dictated, though exclively Arabic, to an illerate prophet, or to tert myself Wic and Hdu and Ja nsolatns. And as happens, I will ntue to do this whout sistg on the pole reciprol ndn—<em>which is that they turn leave me alone</em>. But this, relign is ultimately pable of dog. As I wre the words, and as you read them, people of fah are their different ways planng your and my stctn. . . . <em>Relign poisons everythg.</em>”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens ed to have, at tim, a “pronounced” stutter. “One way of curg was to force yourself to speak public,” he said. In his first school bate, Hchens spoke agast new immigratn rtrictns (nobody else would), and found that the techniqu required—such as charm and the sudn, cutthroat whdrawal of charm—me naturally to him. His later succs Ameri rived part om his bisg rhetoril talents. In Bra, such quali are on show every week at Prime Mister’s Qutn Time, but Ameri Hchens was a novel act. “It’s extraordary,” he said. “I’ve been ved onto shows like ‘Crossfire’ and told, ‘Can’t you hold down a b?’ ”</p><p class="paywall">In 1964, he ran as the Labour Party ndidate his school’s mock electn (aga, nobody else would). He lost, but the Labour Party won the untry. The new ernment quickly proved self to be, Hchens’s words, “pletely rpt and cynil”—backg Print Johnson on Vietnam, for example. His rponse was to jo the Party, th startg a reer of antagonistic ialism. “That’s why you jo a party, to take up the stggl wh ,” Hchens explaed. “And that’s what phed me to the left—the huiatn of the Labour Government.” By the time he me to study polics, philosophy, and enomics at Balll College, Oxford—semi-official motto: “Effortls Superry”—he had been ved to jo a Trotskyist group, the Internatnal Socialists. (He was spotted while skillfully hecklg a Maoist at a public meetg.)</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="l822qa"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">As a stunt, Hchens was good-lookg and charismatic. He do not remember ever havg met Bill Clton, his Oxford ntemporary, but he told me that there was a stunt who, at different tim, was his girliend and Clton’s, before she began a lifetime of lbianism. He met Mart Amis and, for a time, shared a hoe wh Jam Fenton, the poet, whom Hchens had brought to the Internatnal Socialists. “He wore a beret—I have to tell you that he did,” Fenton said of Hchens, rememberg that his ra “was not known as a stalwart of the ‘gettg up at six to go to the factory gat’ briga. I ed to thk that the revolutn would break out and I’d be wakg Christopher, tryg to get him out of bed.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-5 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">In fact, somethg a ltle like this happened. Durg the Paris uprisgs of 1968, transport lks wh France were cut before many, cludg Hchens, uld cross the Channel. “It’s a big regret of my life,” he said. Ined, when he talks about the Cromwellian and Amerin revolutns, his tone is almost nostalgic. (His personal intifitn wh Thomas Pae is nearly as strong as is wh Orwell; his short study of Pae, published this year, was dited to Jalal Talabani—“first elected print of the Republic of Iraq; sworn foe of fascism and theocracy”—rather as “The Rights of Man” was dited to Gee Washgton and the Marquis Lafayette.) But wherever Hchens might have been a wns to an explosn of popular feelg, eher no explosn occurred or was layed until he left. He relled flyg out of Iraq the day before the aths, July, 2003, of Saddam’s sons, Uday and Qay. When Hchens scribed the celebratns that followed, you uld hear a man stgglg to transform a sendhand report to a firsthand one by force of will power alone: “I uld have been there— kills me! That night, the entire cyspe was a blaze of weapons beg fired celebratn. It was like ten ln Fourth of Julys . . .”</p><p class="paywall">At tim, Hchens n look like a bra tryg to pass as a mcle. He reads the world tellectually, but emphasiz his physil rpons to . Talkg of jihadism, he said, “You know, regnizg an enemy—’s not jt your mental rtex. Everythg you <em>physilly</em> ndns you to realize that this means no good, like when you see a pperhead g toward you. It’s basic: liv or I do.” When Hchens’s prose hs an off note, often clus the visceral or the psdo-visceral, whether a paean to oral sex for <em>Vany Fair</em> (“I was at once bewched and sla by the warm, moist ve of her mouth”) or mentari on current affairs: “reekg fum of the suici-murrers,” “the stench of mon bribery, pungently reekg of c oil.” On the ocsns, the bookish Hchens is elbowed asi by an alternate self: a man as twchgly alert as Trotsky at the head of the Red Army.</p><p class="paywall">Such performanc of masculy don’t appear exclively on the page. Not long ago, Baltimore, I saw Hchens challenge a man—perhaps homels and a ltle unglued mentally—who had started walkg step wh his wife and a woman iend of hers while Hchens walked some way ahead. Hchens dropped back to form a flank between the women and the man, then said, “This is the pole versn. Go away.” The man ambled off. Hchens prsed home the victory. “Go away <em>faster</em>,” he said.</p><p class="paywall">“Wouldn’t have been easier to cross the road?” Blue asked, nocently.</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">While still at Oxford, Hchens wrote his first article for the <em>New Statman</em>, a left-leang weekly. Upon graduatg and movg to London, he beme an ocsnal ntributor, while takg a number of jobs mastream journalism, and sellg the <em>Socialist Worker</em> on street rners. The <em>New Statman</em> was enjoyg a goln moment: s staff and wrers clud Amis, Fenton, McEwan, and Julian Barn, the novelist. The Friday-lunch gathergs of <em>Statman</em> hot shots and other wrers, which they out-joked each other on matters of sex, lerature, and nuclear disarmament, now have the stat of lerary legend. (The <em>Statman</em> staff played a game which the task was to thk of the phrase least likely to be uttered by each member. For Hchens: “I don’t re how rich you are, I’m not g to your party.” For Amis: “You look a b prsed, why don’t you s down and tell me all about ?”)</p><p class="paywall">Romantilly, Hchens scribed himself as playg send fiddle to an unstoppable Amis: “I’d basilly be holdg his at and refillg his glass, and tryg to learn om the Master.” In fact, Hchens’s own appeal was nsirable; among the girliends he had before his first marriage was Anna Wtour, who is now the edor of <em>Vogue</em>. Hchens told me, “When I was younger—this will surprise you, seeg now the bloated rss of the Hch—I ed to get que a b of attentn om men. And, um. It was sometim que difficult, pecially when you hadn’t seen g. I was nsired reasonably pretty, I suppose, between seventeen and twenty-five. I remember noticg when stopped, and thkg, Oh ar. What? None of the guys want to sleep wh me anymore?” Asked about his own activi, he said, “Nobody who’s been to public school n pretend to know nothg of the subject. And even at universy there was an epicene terlu. But wasn’t what I wanted at all.” (In 1999, Alexanr Cockburn wrote, “Many’s the time male iends have had to ph Hchens’s mouth, agrant wh martis, away” durg hellos and goodby; Hchens said that he had no memory of “makg a bid for the clean-limbed and cupid-lipped Alexanr Cockburn.”)</p><p class="paywall">In December, 1973, Hchens, then twenty-four, published a lead article about Greek polics the <em>New Statman</em>. Dateled Athens, was a ser, rather dry analysis of polil velopments followg the otg of the dictator Gee Papadopoulos. It avoid the kd of foreign-crisis wrg he abhors. (His parody: “As I stand here pissed and weepg this burng hell, the body of a child li like a broken doll the street.”) Almost the only lol lor was a glimpse of civil and relig ins on the wall of an Athens police statn.</p><p class="paywall">Although the article do not ht at , there was an awful reason for Hchens seeg the police-statn wall. He told me the story: Not long after Hchens graduated om Oxford, his mother left his father, and moved wh another man. “He was a charmer, which my father was not. He was wty, burblg, uld do mic, poetry, but uldn’t make a livg. He was a flake, and not always so lic. He had this dark, prsive si.” In the fall of 1973, a iend lled Hchens one morng his London apartment to say she’d jt read a newspaper article about the ath of a Mrs. Hchens Athens. Hchens flew alone to Greece, to learn that, a suici pact, his mother had taken an overdose of sleepg pills a bedroom of the Ge V Hotel, while, the bathroom, her pann had done the same, and also cut himself severely. “It was a terrible Polanski scene,” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">At the hotel, he said, “I went out of the bathroom to the wdow and had my first view of the Acropolis. It was a perfect view.” He learned that his mother had tried his number London many tim the prev days, but he had missed the lls. “Before the days of answerg mach,” he said. “If I’d picked up, uld have been enough to stop her, bee I ually uld make her lgh. That was a bter reflectn.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-6 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Athens was polil turmoil— “this mad, Costa-Gavras world.” Hchens, whose skills and taste journalism draw him to peratg quick studi, sized the cy up. “You n learn a lot a short time when there are tanks the street,” he said. He wrote the article when he got home. “Everyone said, ‘Christopher, how uld you?’ I said, ‘How uld I not?’ It was theraptic to wre. No—nsolg. Useful.” He add that, the fifteen years before his father’s ath, Hchens never aga discsed wh him the ath of his mother.</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="uno92"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="x2sipj"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When Turkey vad Cyps the followg summer, Hchens realized that he had neglected an important part of the story. Cyps beme a specialty, and, later, the subject of his first book, which scribed the island as havg been betrayed by outsi powers; an accg fger was poted at Henry Kissger. Hchens beme a figure radil Cyprt circl, where he met his first wife, Eleni Meleagrou, whom he ed to troduce as “the terrorist.” Jam Fenton se Cyps as cisive Hchens’s polil velopment, not only bee he had the experience of beg a “mi-celebry” but bee of his disappotment the Brish failure to protect Cyps durg the vasn: other words, the dishonorable failure of an imperial power to make a ary terventn. Hchens, unlike Fenton and most others on the Brish left, supported Margaret Thatcher’s gunboat rponse to the Argente occupatn of the Falkland Islands, 1982.</p><p class="paywall">By then, Hchens and Meleagrou had married and moved to Ameri. Hchens pound away at Reagan and pal punishment as <em>The Natn’s</em> Washgton lumnist, and reported for other magaz om the Middle East, Central Ameri, and Eastern Europe. The uple spl up 1989, not long after Hchens met Carol Blue Los Angel. (Meleagrou and their two children, now aged twenty-two and seventeen, live London.) That wter, Hchens and Blue flew to Eastern Europe, to be wns to the revolutnary events of the time. It may need to be said: The were events that Hchens weled. In 2001, Peter Hchens—who has Christopher’s voice exactly, but is a churchgoer who is unpersuad by Darw—wrote an article <em>The Spectator</em> (“O Brother, Where Art Thou?”) that relled “a Reagan-era discsn about the relative mers and flts of the Wtern and Soviet systems, durg which Christopher said that he didn’t re if the Red Army watered s hors Hendon,” a London suburb. On the ocsn beg scribed, as Christopher later tartly explaed to rears of <em>Vany Fair</em> ( an article entled “O Brother, Why Art Thou?”), he had been tellg a joke. The brothers did not speak for four years. Hchens said to me, “I’ve spent far more time talkg to <em>you</em> than to him the last twenty-five years.” Peter Hchens said, “If we weren’t related, I don’t thk we’d have much to do wh each other,” but he showed a kd of regard for what he se as the nsistency of his brother’s posn: “He’s a Trotskyist, really, not terms of beg a Bolshevik revolutnary but that he is an ialist and he is imprsed by ary mand.” (Peter, too, was once the Internatnal Socialists.)</p><p class="paywall">In a siar dispute, Mart Amis, “Koba the Dread,” a nonfictn book on Stal, st Hchens as, sentially, an apologist for Soviet Communism. Hchens was irrated. He had always been “solid” on the subject of the Soviet bloc, he said; he was as much a iend of the opposn there as he was of the opposn South Ai or El Salvador. “Everythg I’ve <em>thought</em> is on the rerd,” Hchens went on. If he had been a Stalist, “It would show, even if I was tryg to nceal .” Hchens wrote two barbed rpons: one <em>The Atlantic</em>, and the other the <em>Guardian</em>, which was headled “<em class="small">DON’T</em>. <em class="small">BE</em>. <em class="small">SILLY</em>.” He told me, “Mart do not know the fuckg difference between Bhar and Bakun.” (His iendship wh Amis survived this disrd.)</p><p class="paywall">In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomei issued a fatwa agast Salman Rhdie, on the ground that his novel “The Satanic Vers” famed Islam. “There’s a sense which all this—Christopher’s move—is partly my flt,” Rhdie said. “The fatwa ma Christopher feel that radil Islam was not only tryg to kill his iend; was a huge new threat to the kd of world he wanted to live . And I have the sense he felt there was a liberal failure to get the pot of what was happeng.” The fatwa spl the left. As Ian Buma put , “The stct was, whenever there was any nflict between Third World opn and the Wtern metropole, you’d always favor the Third World. Yet here was a se where people were forced to take the oppose view.” For Hchens, that task was simplified by his ntempt for relign.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens helped arrange a meetg between Rhdie and Print Clton, 1993. But he had by then taken a posn on the Print, rived om policy difference and spicn of Clton’s character (but also, possibly, om awarens of the gap polil potency between two Oxford ntemporari, one of them beg the lear of the ee world). Hchens spised him, and charged him wh dg nng, rape, and other crim. He also beme one of the loust crics of Clton’s bombg of the Al-Shifa pharmactil factory Sudan at the time of the Moni Lewsky sndal: Clton had “killed wogs,” he wrote, to save his sk. While Hchens’s lerary and historil wrg has allowed for nuanced appraisals, even fivens, of morally plex figur— a 2005 book on Jefferson, for example, Hchens fds his way past the fact of his slaveowng—the polil prent elics prosecutorial zeal.</p><p class="paywall">In 1992, Hchens had begun a lumn for <em>Vany Fair;</em> he was happy to disver that he uld vastly crease his e and rearship whout havg to watch his tongue—“a breakthrough for me,” he said. The same year, he went to Bosnia at his own expense; as he lled for armed terventn there, three years before the Clton Admistratn acted, he found himself endorsg the same petns as many neonservativ, cludg Wolfowz. In 1999, an cint that some see as the te start of Hchens’s polil pilgrimage, he told Hoe Judiciary Commtee staff members who approached him that Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime iend who was then workg the Clton Whe Hoe, had gossiped to Hchens about Moni Lewsky beg a “stalker.” Blumenthal had ttified that he had not ma such remarks, so the claim put him at risk of a perjury charge and, potentially, strengthened the impeachment se agast Clton. It was possible to read Hchens’s actn as a gture of prciple, but many who knew him saw as a vic act: he was “Snchens.” “He’d got to that moment life when he was askg himself if he uld Make A Difference,” Alexanr Cockburn told me, an e-mail. “So he sloshed his way across his own personal Rubin and tried to topple Clton via a betrayal of his close iendship.”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="i8p667"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">When I asked Hchens about this perd, he fend his actns but also said, “It seems to me to have happened to somebody else. That’s te of a lot of the fights I took part before 2001. Seemed like a good ia at the time, but shrks credibly pared to Baghdad and Beit and New York.”</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-7 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">“That episo did hurt him,” Buma said. “He lost iends, he felt isolated Washgton, and I thk there was a time when he really felt bised.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens’s spleic Clton book, “No One Left to Lie To,” was published months after the Blumenthal cint. Verso, his publishg hoe, threw a party at Pravda, a SoHo rtrant. Col Robson relled, “It’s the only lnch party I’ve ever been to where people booed the thor.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">The Hchens-Blue partnership has a grad-school air. It’s hard to see who pays the bills or fills the idge. Blue n get stuck at the post-shower, towel-wearg stage of the day. (Her hband, wh affectn: “Darlg, you would be so much more nvcg if you were drsed.”) Hchens is not hapls—he meets his many adl and tch his many plan—but ’s unsettlg to watch him rse a sgle spoon for four mut, or hear the panmonium over the supply of cigarette lighters. (He has cut back om smokg three packs a day.) He is a late-learng and sry driver. He do not wear a watch, although he looks at his bare left wrist when tryg to lculate the time.</p><p class="paywall">One morng durg the fay’s summer pe to Northern California—they stay a guthoe built next to the home of Blue’s parents—Blue and I drove to a lol supermarket. She walked the store’s aisl wh an air of rock-star puzzlement that may have been heightened for my benef; she did not want to seem like a hoewife. We left wh sandwich, a cherry pie, and two bottl of whiskey, and nothg that looked beyond the horizon of the next meal.</p><p class="paywall">When we returned wh our provisns, at about one o’clock, Hchens, who had been workg, was stg at his sk wh a drk. On the walls around him were some lor prtouts of ktens and puppi stg l. He poted to a mancript of “God Is Not Great,” a book that he thks may have more heft and permanence than anythg he has wrten before, a reer of rapid rpons and public lashgs. “I have been, my head, wrg for many years,” he said. “Relign is gog to be the big subject until the end of my life. And I wanted to make an terventn.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had already fished the morng perd of mail and e-mail he refers to as “telegrams and anger” (a quotatn om “Howards End”). He had given his attentn that day to the wiretap lawsu brought by the Amerin Civil Liberti Unn agast the Natnal Secury Agency; January, he accepted the A.C.L.U.’s vatn to bee a named platiff, ntg his reputatn as an Admistratn cheerlear. He had also begun a review of Ann Coulter’s “Godls: The Church of Liberalism,” for an obscure new Brish journal. He was not dog for ee, but the gture was still genero; Hchens, who is unually lackg profsnal petivens, mak himself available to younger wrers and edors. He also teach: he is prently a visg profsor at the New School, and he is supervisg the Ph.D. this, on Orwell, of Thomas Veale, a U.S. Army major, who lls Hchens the “only neteen-thirti liberal existence.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had started wrg an hour or so before, planng on leniency: “I was thkg of hammerg her for the first half and beg a b gentle the send.” (He shar Coulter’s disregard for Joseph Wilson, the diplomat.) But he had wrten a thoand words, and he was not through hammerg. “I thought I’d do a thoand words by lunchtime—my ual ambn if I’m dog a short piece,” he said. But he now saw that he uld get all done before eatg. “If I n’t fuck up Ann Coulter before lunch then I shouldn’t be this bs,” he said. Not long afterward, he me to the kchen and hand me the fished review.</p><p class="paywall">We had lunch outsi. Hchens ignored the sandwich and put his fork the cherry pie, movg outward om the center. He had a postproductn glow. “Wrg is maly recreatnal,” he said. “I’m not happy when I’m not dog .” He n enterta himself other ways—he straed to remember them—such as “playg wh the ts and the dghter. But if I take even a day away om I’m very uneasy.”</p><p class="paywall">In the past few years, Hchens has published, addn to his books on Orwell, Jefferson, and Pae, a book of opposnist advice entled “Letters to a Young Contrarian”; a llectn of his wrgs on the Iraq war; and a giant miscellany, “Love, Poverty, and War.” He wrote “God Is Not Great” four months. He has ntributed to dozens of publitns (cludg <em>Golf Digt</em>—he plays the game). He almost never the backspace, lete, or cut-and-paste keys. He wr a sgle draft, at a speed that ed his <em>New Statman</em> lleagu to place bets on how long would take him to fish an edorial. What emerg is ready for publitn, except for one weakns: he’s not an expert punctuator, which rerc the notn that he is the bs of transcribg a lecture he n hear himself givg.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-8 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">Earlier, answer to a qutn I hadn’t asked, Blue had said to me, “Once a while, seems like he might be dnk. Asi om that, even though he’s obvly an alholic, he functns at a really high level and he don’t act like a dnk, so the only reason ’s a bad thg is ’s takg out his liver, prumably. It would be a drag for Henry Kissger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.”</p><p class="paywall">Hchens, too, brought up the subject of alhol before I did. “You’re gog to want to talk about this,” he said, not wrongly, potg at his glass. (A wrer lik a öperative subject, but n be dispirg to make a portra the shadow of a gigantic self-portra.) He was not a “piss artist,” he explaed, “someone who n’t get gog whout a load of beer, who’s a dnk—overnfint and flhed. I n’t bear that.” He went on, “I know what I’m dog wh . And I n time . It’s a self-meditg thg.” I took his pot. Hchens do drk a very great al (and said of Mel Gibson’s blood-alhol level at the time of his recent Malibu arrt—0.12 per cent—“that’s as sober as you’d ever want to be”). But he drks like a Hemgway character: ntually and to no apparent effect.</p><p class="paywall">That eveng at the guthoe, Peter Berkowz, the Strssian tellectual and Hoover Instutn fellow, and Tod Ldberg, the edor of <em>Policy Review</em>, dropped by wh fay members. The back-yard pool was sudnly full of children. Someone had brought champagne, and Hchens poured wh exaggerated disapproval. (A few years ago, he claimed that the four most overrated thgs life were champagne, lobsters, anal sex, and piics.) Hchens went to the hoe and put on Bob Dylan’s “Try’ to Get to Heaven”; he stood the doorway and sung quietly along. He quoted Philip Lark on Dylan: a “wg, risive voice.” He repeated Lark’s words a few tim, approvgly. His dghter got out of the pool, and said, pleasantly, “Can we close the door, so nobody else has to hear this?”</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="kclvs6"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan full-bleed-ad row-mid-ntent-ad"><div class="StickyMidContentAdWrapper-fSBzwl drzyIa ad-stickymidntent"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--mid-ntent should-hold-space"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--mid-ntent" data-no-id="6j4a6v"></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ArticlePageChunksGrid-hfxa bjczjj grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="BodyWrapper-kufPGa bDyAMU body body__ntaer article__body" data-journey-hook="client-ntent" data-ttid="BodyWrapper"><div class="body__ner-ntaer"><p class="paywall">She went back to her iends. “Look,” Hchens said happily. “They’re wag for to die.”</p><p class="has-dropp has-dropp__lead-standard-headg paywall">Hchens and Blue flew back to Washgton jt after Labor Day. At the end of that week, the Madison Hotel, Hchens sat alongsi William Kristol, the edor of the <em>Weekly Standard</em>, and others on a panel nvened by the David Horowz Freedom Center. Robert (Buzz) Patterson, the nservative thor and former Whe Hoe ary ai, troduced the event, and was appld for a passg dig at the A.C.L.U. Hchens, whose remarks were livered to a warm hum of approval—“too easy,” he later said—scribed as “a pleasure as well as a duty” to kill Islamic terrorists.</p><p class="paywall">Horowz has often spoken and wrten about his upbrgg by Communist parents. Hchens’s rponse, years ago, was to ask, “Who r about his pathetic fay?” But Horowz holds no gdge, and the two men talked the bar afterward, wh the rapport that om beg the only people a ten-block radi who uld say they had read all three volum of Isaac Dtscher’s bgraphy of Leon Trotsky. Horowz asked about Hchens’s mment to his Rtoratn Weekend, Palm Beach, later the year. Hchens would never apologize for sharg a platform wh anyone, but he wanted to know what Horowz saw Ann Coulter: Hadn’t he noticed the creatnism “Godls”?</p><p class="paywall">“I didn’t read the Darw pag,” Horowz admted.</p><p class="paywall">“It’s nearly a third of the soddg book!” Hchens said.</p><p class="paywall">Hchens had to be up early the morng, and he began to make his way out. But a iend me up and asked him a favor, leadg Hchens to a group of young Horowz fans. Hchens sat down. “You really want to hear the most obscene joke the world?” he asked them.</p><div data-attr-viewport-monor="le-recirc" class="le-recirc-wrapper le-recirc-observer-target-9 viewport-monor-anchor"></div><p class="paywall">An hour later, Hchens was at home, makg a ban sandwich. I asked him if he had felt a pang of envy when, 2005, Michael Ignatieff, the thor, public tellectual, and longtime U.K. rint, moved back to his native Canada to bee a Liberal M.P.—and a likely future lear of his party. Hchens replied, “Not a pang. A twge.” When he was a young man, Hchens was once sound out about standg for Parliament as a Labour ndidate. He took another path, but subsequent years has ocsnally thought of the polician he did not bee. And today Bra the polil furnure is arranged as he would like to be; that is, wh opposn to the Iraq terventn heard as loudly on the Conservative si as on the left, and—as he se —a Labour Government actg acrdance wh the radil, humanist, ternatnalist ialism of his youth. Earlier this year, Hchens had a private meetg wh Prime Mister Tony Blair.</p><p class="paywall">I asked Hchens if he would accept a life peerage and a seat the Hoe of Lords. “It would be fantastilly temptg,” he said, showg more eagerns than I’d expected. “I thk I uldn’t do , even though ’s no longer heredary. I uldn’t que see the term ‘Lord Hchens.’ ” He add, wh some feelg, “That I never had the right to walk to Parliament is somethg I’ll always be sorry about.”</p><p class="paywall">This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of Hchens’s move to Ameri. Barrg a last-mute plitn, this will also be the year he be a cizen. He began the procs not long after the attacks of 2001. The paperwork is done, he has passed the exam, and he was terviewed June.</p><p class="paywall">I asked if he’d vote November. “I’ll <em>n</em> November,” he said. “Don’t le out.” He add, “I n’t be Print. So we n relax about that.” ♦</p></div></div></div><div class="GridItem-buujkM fVLMby grid--em grid-layout__asi"><div class="StickyBoxWrapper-jfYB jxBcTH sticky-box"><div class="StickyBoxPrimary-dzWDWL cdhYoN sticky-box__primary"><div class="AdWrapper-dQtivb fZrssQ ad ad--rail"><div class="ad__slot ad__slot--rail" data-no-id="3kg3sr"></div></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--display-rail" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--display-rail"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></div><div class="StickyBoxPlaceholr-grPmrg dxAvXx"></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 PaywallInleBarrierWhWrapperGrid-fyrGfS kLQIUk grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__le-barrier article__body"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"><asi class="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper-iBnuqk lfXXa-D" data-ttid="PaywallInleBarrierWrapper"><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--paywall-le-barrier" role="prentatn" aria-live="pole" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--paywall-le-barrier"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div></asi></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 ContentWrapperGrid-fvkmBv brYtrA grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="body body__ntaer"><div class="ntaer ntaer--body"><div class="ntaer--body-ner"></div></div></div></div></div></div></article><div class="ContentFooterWrapper-jVNdRG dTJkpP ArticlePageContentFooterGrid-ccsXYy eMZRHU article-body__footer"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><footer class="ContentFooterMagazeDisclaimer-gzKAqo iZIuUU" data-ttid="MagazeDisclaimerWrapper">Published the prt edn of the <a href="/magaze/2006/10/16" data-reactroot="">October 16, 2006</a>, issue.</footer></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div class="ContributorsWrapper-eNpWFu GWFsc ntributors" data-ttid="Contributors"><div class="ContributorBWrapper-bnVHbt gMon"><div class="ContributorBContent-ubQdr jZTSSi"><div class="ContributorBHear-ledood XOIEx"></div><div class="ContributorBB-fBolsO giFhKz"><a href="/ntributors/ian-parker">Ian Parker</a> has been a staff wrer at The New Yorker sce 2000.</div><div class="ContributorBFooter-brqDlv ezUmSv"></div></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"></div></div></div><div data-ttid="ContentFooterBottom" class="ContentFooterBottom-jwWZfC kcbyiW"><div class="ContentFooterNewsletterContentWrapper-bmjtna kixtae"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK kHBDeH grid grid-margs grid-ems-2 grid-layout--adrail narrow wi-adrail"><div class="GridItem-buujkM stRKV grid--em grid-layout__ntent"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormWrapper-fCqqkN jKSBhE newsletter-subscribe-form ContentFooterNewsletterForm-hKeYwa liPqcf"><div data-ttid="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper" class="NewsletterSubscribeFormHedDekWrapper-fpMElW 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This se is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google<a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Privacy Policy</a> and<a href=" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Terms of Service</a> apply.</p></span></div></form></div></div></div></div></div><div class="ntent-bottom-anchor"></div><div class="ConsumerMarketgUnThemedWrapper-iUTMTf jssHut nsumer-marketg-un nsumer-marketg-un--article-footer" role="prentatn" aria-hidn="te"><div class="nsumer-marketg-un__slot nsumer-marketg-un__slot--article-footer"></div><div class="journey-un"></div></div><div data-attr-viewport-monor="" class="recirc-list-wrapper viewport-monor-anchor"><div class="RowWrapper-UmqTg HEhan ContentFooterRelated-kEBiFe kVUuwq"><div class="GridWrapper-cAzTTK eRggVV grid grid-margs grid-ems-0 SummaryCollectnGridComponent-ktyEog bdTTVU summary-llectn-grid RecircListDefltOverlaySummaryCollectnGrid-AHJhY bEaXiL recirc-list__ems summary-llectn-grid--four-lumns summary-llectn-grid--DenseDktopStack"><div class="GridItem-buujkM kHPPIF grid--em"><div class="SummaryCollectnGridContent-eVUpRm jTGbEO"><div class="SectnTleRoot-dBGvdq kjAxEG SummaryCollectnGridSectnTle-fCmYwG izjbVn" data-ttid="SectnTle"><hear class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SectnTleHed-dKqZet dxqEAa dqtvfu jttyjJ">Read More</hear></div><div class="SummaryCollectnGridItems-DZShR jBCYOL hi-read-more-ad" data-ttid="SummaryCollectnGridItems"><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2010/11/15/paths-of-glory-ian-parker" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-1" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Paths of Glory" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Profil</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-1" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/magaze/2010/11/15/paths-of-glory-ian-parker" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Paths of Glory</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2010/11/15/paths-of-glory-ian-parker" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-1" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Paths of Glory" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan. Can he make to 10 Downg Street?</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ian Parker</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--article summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Mugglemarch" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">Profil</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Mugglemarch</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href="/magaze/2012/10/01/mugglemarch" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-2" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Mugglemarch" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ SummaryItemDek-CRfsi iUEiRd jxOIpm cPtisA summary-em__k">J. K. Rowlg wr a realist novel for adults.</div><div class="SummaryItemByleWrapper-boCfbi cuRXdL summary-em__byle-date-in"><div class="SummaryItemBaseByle-fFbXkY cgDBtc summary-em__byle"><div class="summary-em__byle__ntent"><div data-ttid="BylWrapper" class="BylWrapper-KIudk irTIfE byl"><p class="ByleWrapper-jWHrLH dSEWiO byle byl__byle" data-ttid="ByleWrapper" emProp="thor" emType="><span emProp="name" class="ByleNamWrapper-jbHncj fuDQVo"><span data-ttid="ByleName" class="ByleName-kwmrLn cYaBaU byle__name"><span class="BaseWrap-sc-gjQpdd BaseText-ewhhUZ BylePreamble-iJolpQ iUEiRd jslZfG gnILss byle__preamble">By </span>Ian Parker</span></span></p></div></div></div></div></div></div><div class="SummaryItemWrapper-iwvBff ewgXAt summary-em summary-em--ARTICLE summary-em--no-in summary-em--text-align-left summary-em--layout-placement-text-below-sktop-only summary-em--layout-posn-image-right summary-em--layout-proportns-33-66 summary-em--si-by-si-align-center summary-em--si-by-si-image-right-mobile-false summary-em--standard SummaryCollectnGridSummaryItem-WColm kdEfwY" role="button" tabx="0"><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span class="SpanWrapper-umhxW kGxnNB rponsive-asset SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image"><div data-tt="aspect-rat-ntaer" class="AspectRatContaer-bJHpJz jMoLpX"><div class="aspect-rat--overlay-ntaer"><picture class="RponsiveImagePicture-cWuUZO dUOtEa SummaryItemRponsiveAsset-hjGIGg egpoQR summary-em__image rponsive-image"><noscript><source media="(max-width: 767px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w, 640w" siz="100vw"/><source media="(m-width: 768px)" srcSet=" 120w, 240w, 320w" siz="100vw"/><img alt="Iphigenia Fort Hills" class="RponsiveImageContaer-eybHBd fptoWY rponsive-image__image" src="></noscript></picture></div></div></span></a></div><div class="SummaryItemContent-eiDYMl bcywvc summary-em__ntent"><div class="RubricWrapper-dKmCNX kImuKS bric bric--disvery SummaryItemRubric-dguGKN fYiFyD summary-em__bric"><span class="RubricName-fVtemz cLxcNi">A Reporter at Large</span></div><a class="SummaryItemHedLk-civM cZPaWG summary-em-trackg__hed-lk summary-em__hed-lk" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-hed-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" href=" target="_self"><div class="SummaryItemHedBase-hiFYpQ iIjKeM summary-em__hed" data-ttid="SummaryItemHed">Iphigenia Fort Hills</div></a><div class="SummaryItemAssetContaer-gwhFFH VOyg summary-em__asset-ntaer"><a class="SummaryItemImageLk-dshqxb USLvL summary-em__image-lk summary-em-trackg__image-lk" href=" aria-hidn="te" tabx="-1" data-ponent-type="recirc-river" data-recirc-id="em-image-3" data-recirc-pattern="summary-em" target="_self"><span 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