BLOW-BY-BLOW

Oxblog's Patrick Belton  - still holed up in the Alps, I believe - live-blogged the Hitchens v Galloway bout. He thinks the Hitch won on points:

This match-up proved perhaps slightly less satisfying than I'd hoped, partially because the two were playing rather different rhetorical games... Galloway's is more shouted, accustomed perhaps to a larger hall or a rally of party faithful. Hitch's is conversational and detached, and paired together in this environment, Hitchens's wins... Contests generally make more edifying viewing if the two sides are playing at the same sport.... Hitchens's ability to deflate Galloway's points, and his greater variety and command of argument, made it rather more one-sided a contest to my mind than I would have hoped it to have been.

The Red Mist - who was at the ring-side in New York - clearly wasn't impressed by the Gorgeous one's fan club:

I've got lots of mates on the left... who are democratic and civil in the best sense, highly attentive to what other people say and respecting someone else's right to disagree and to say so. But tonight demonstrated that some on the hard left, the ones who congratulate themselves that they are not evangelical fundamentalists, and who tell themselves that they are the more sophisticated, more nuanced ones, are the ones who turn out to be the most intolerant, the most intimidatory and the most anti-democratic in their attitude to debate. And in their tactics. They turned up not to hear and engage, but to shut down people who disagree. Because, you see, they are so so right that there isn't time for this messy dialogue thing.

Now there's a surprise. I've been having the same experience for about twenty years. Nothing ever seems to change.

UPDATE: Englishman in New York takes a very different view. No admirer of Galloway, he still gives him the edge:

I think I just witnessed a train wreck in slow motion...Hitchens was terrible.

UPDATE 2: The BBC's James Naughtie enjoyed the spectacle ("Good old-fashioned politics....they were really chucking it around....") Listen to him here.

Harry's Place is upbeat: "Our boy done good. Galloway, by contrast, was his usual self: in other words, a blustering demagogue."

The Popinjays have a photo and a detailed eyewitness account.

The Times's report includes ex-MP Oona King's verdict. She says GG came out on top:

I think Galloway won in terms of oratory skills... But at the end of the day, they are two very arrogant men who both have very flawed arguments."

UPDATE 3: Kesher Talk and Tigerhawk were both there. Says Tigerhawk:

The division in the audience, which was profound, seemed to line up according to one’s attitude toward Israel, which more often than not predicts one’s attitude toward the forcible removal of Saddam Hussein....Galloway's most cheered and most booed moment came when he demanded that the United States stop its support for "Sharon's Israel." This remains the line that divides New York liberals, even when they quite obviously agree on just about everything else.

Exit Zero was sitting among the anti-war zealots:

The guys behind us, greying, rumpled academic types, were definitely Galloway dittoheads. Some were downright rabid. When Hitchens requested a moment of silence for the Iraqis who were sadistically murdered by the insurgency, they were among those shouting "NO! NO!" When Hitch praised the US for making life better for the Afghan people, they shouted "Who cares?"

Go here for more updates....

Comments

[Aaron Azlant]

I always think that this excerpt from Orwell is apropos anytime that I hear about the hard left bullying people out of a dialogue:

"There are families in which the father will say to his child, ‘You'll get a thick ear if you do that again’, while the mother, her eyes brimming over with tears, will take the child in her arms and murmur lovingly, ‘Now, darling, is it kind to Mummy to do that?’ And who would maintain that the second method is less tyrannous than the first? The distinction that really matters is not between violence and non-violence, but between having and not having the appetite for power. There are people who are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use violence in certain circumstances. They will not say to somebody else, ‘Do this, that and the other or you will go to prison’, but they will, if they can, get inside his brain and dictate his thoughts for him in the minutest particulars. Creeds like pacifism and anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics — a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage — surely that proves that you are in the right? And the more you are in the right, the more natural that everyone else should be bullied into thinking likewise."

--From "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool"

[flatlander100]

Flatlander tries to imagine a situation in which Hitchins is on stage with someone -- anyone -- else and the anyone else wins the prize for arrogance. Fails.

[Mahmoud ibn floupi al qoholic ibn poop]

It always boils down to Israel and the Jews.

[John Lowbridge]

Only those of the English persuasion can see through Galloway to what he really is. A superior Monty Python sketch cames to mind. Where, oh where, is Galloway's Spiny Norman. Hitch does a commendable job, but he's too civilized. Galloway's head will have to be nailed to the floor. Come the day.

[neo-neocon]

Great Orwell quote, Aaron Azlant.

[Martin]

That essay really is one of GO's greatest. It's not anthologized enough.

[Mitsu]

I think a debate between Hitchens and Galloway is not going to be very fruitful; Hitchens is incoherent and denies reality, and Galloway is an ideologue. A sensible debate would be between Christopher Hitchens, a former leftist, and someone like John Mearsheimer, a conservative realist. While both have extrmely opposing views on most everything, they would both, at least, let each other finish speaking, and we would get a much more fruitful debate.

A great interview with Mearsheimer:

http://int.usamnesia.com/mearsheimer-1.htm

All I can say is this: all of Hitchens' predictions about the effect of the war and its aftermath have so far proven woefully incorrect; Mearsheimer's, however, have proven remarkably prescient. And one can certainly not accuse him of ideological bias: Mearsheimer voted for Bush in 2000. He was forced to vote for Kerry in 2004, however, out of an excess of intellectual honesty.

[mark buehner]

"all of Hitchens' predictions about the effect of the war and its aftermath have so far proven woefully incorrect"

Which predictions would those be? Hitchens was a strong supporter of the Kurdish resistance groups for years, and the takedown of Hussein's fascist police state was reward enough for a progressive like Hitchens. Dont mistake him for a grand neo-con. And lest we forget there have been free elections in Iraq, Syria has been ejected from Lebanon with elections coming, and at least token democratic reform has taken place from Egypt to Saudi Arabia. I would call that (and Hitchens would agree) some major progress against the forces of reactionism in a region where any kind of social progress has been measured in inches per decade, at best.

[John Lowbridge]

I applaud Mark's request for some expansion of "all of Hitchens' predictions about the effect of the war and its aftermath have so far proven woefully incorrect". Even if some compelling example could be cited, which I doubt, this is a Gallowayish diversion from the proposition before the house. Oxford Rules, guys.

While we're getting down to business, perhaps we could request an example or several of Hitch's incoherence and denial of reality. I for one must have been missing that in reading his efforts these many years.

Please don't regurgitate Andrew on Hitch's recent excoriation of Catholicism and all such cults, let's stick with the matter at hand.