Critic at Large

Christopher Hitchens seems happy here in the heartland of political correctness. And he should. Hitchens, English-born columnist for Vanity Fair and The Nation and currently a visiting instructor at Cal's graduate school of journalism, likes nothing better than branding sacred cows for what they are. The Pope, President Clinton, Queen Elizabeth -- all have felt the sting of Hitchens' critical analysis.

In his 1995 book Missionary Position, Hitchens debunked saint-in-the-making Mother Teresa, pointing out that, among her many less-than-virtuous acts, she lent support to Haiti's despotic Duvalier regime, and refused to give back over $1 million she'd taken from convicted S&L fraud Charles Keating, even after she'd been informed that Keating swindled themoney. Commenting on Mother Teresa's famous home for the poor in Calcutta, Hitchens wrote that the facilities were primitive at best. Why, he wondered, didn't she spend some of her considerable fortune on an actual hospital? Because, he suggested, treatment wasn't the point -- suffering was a necessary ingredient in the Mother Teresa myth.

Soon after her death last year, Hitchens rose to amend the reputation of Princess Diana. Appearing frequently on Sunday-morning TV round tables, headded dissent to the adulation. Diana was a "spoiled brat," says Hitchens, who happens to know both of her half-brothers. He notes that in her will, which was recently made public, she left nary a pound to charity. "Everything she did in the last years of her life was done to embarrass or annoy her ex-husband," he says. "Everything."

In addition to his gigs at Vanity Fair and The Nation, Hitchens, 49, is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, New York Times Review of Books, Granta and Vogue. He spends most of his time in Washington D.C., where he lives with his wife and two kids. I met him at a sidewalk cafe in north Berkeley, where we spoke over several late-morning glasses of wine.

The Monthly: Do you think there's any chance Clinton could be impeached?

Christopher Hitchens: No. Though it's difficult to see why not, in that no one would really miss him. It used to be said that you couldn't impeach Nixon because there was so much important business going on, crises like Vietnam andChina. There's absolutely no reason not to impeach Clinton -- he would disappear.

TM: So why is he still so popular?

CH: He's not popular. The press is less popular. People wish to be left aloneby this story. But if they're not it's not the fault of the press. The pressisn't inventing this thing. The press for a long time wouldn't print anythingon Paula Jones. It's not true the press has been looking for dirt. Quite thecontrary.

TM: What about all these European comparisons you hear -- that if Clinton werephilandering as president of France he'd be up for a medal. Is that really thecase?

CH: Americans who say that have never been to France. Francois Mitterrand could have had a baby on the side by a woman not his wife and no one would have cared. And no one should care, if that's what Clinton were doing. I certainly would not. Nor would I care if he was being sucked off on a daily basis by George Stephanopolous. But if Mr. Mitterrand had put the other lady on the payroll, the French would care just like anybody would. So all this stuff about, "Let's be more grown-up, let's be more French,"that's all crap. This is the president who thinks that homosexuals are not morally fit to be in the armed forces. Who poses with Billy Graham at the national prayer breakfast. Who preaches abstinence as a solution to teenage sexual problems. He's a big, blubbering Baptist preacher, as a matter fact. If it was just that, people would be laughing and saying serves him right, for his piety alone. As for saying he's being witch-hunted by Kenneth Starr, he should be lucky that he's not caught in any of the laws he's passed himself, to do with crime and terrorism and habeas corpus. People's doors can be kicked in and they can have everything taken away, including themselves, for having the wrong kind of cigarette. It's been the worst presidency for civil liberties since Nixon, and that's another reason why he's not being witch-hunted. In fact, I think Kenneth Starr has been a very lenient prosecutor.