People's Witness: The Journalist in Modern Politics Book

Hitchens states that Clinton's famous statement on him not inhaling was correct. That he knew him at Oxford and that Clinton was allergic to smoke. This isn't true. I know by evidence of my own eyes and testimony from a rather involved participant that Clinton smoked huge joints and looked very happy about doing so! This has somewhat destroyed Hitchens' credibility although maybe increased the enjoyability of the book as I see if I can find any more 'errors'.

Hitchens, however, does mention Clinton's lesbian girlfriends, and this bit I know to be absolutely true. "Girlfriends" in the plural is correct, but they weren't all lesbians, some were bisexual, at least the ones I knew about.

This is how I know. There is a Guardian journalist who used to rent my flat in London, a very nice lady, very concerned and very left wing (aren't they all at the Grauniad*). Towards the end of Clinton's first term in office she showed me a photograph of the Pres in his Rhodes Scholarship days in bed naked with a huge joint in his mouth and his arms around two naked girls. One of the two girls was the journalist's much older lesbian lover :-) Yes he did inhale. He smoked for the same reason a lot of us like a puff at romantic times, really rather enhances it.

I said to her that she just had to get the photograph out there, that she would be able to retire on the proceeds, or be famous, or both. But no, she wouldn't. She said she didn't want to hurt him politically. I said that an awful lot of the youth of America don't bother voting and if they saw Bill living the Boy's Own dream - a scholarship to Oxford, in bed with two stunningly beautiful women, one of whom at least was a lezzie, smoking a big joint, they would rush to vote back in a president who they could at least relate to!

But she didn't. And I was probably wrong. Too many right wing fundamentalist killjoys in the US. But still I did see the pic and the journalist is going strong, an author now and the photo is still insurance money for her old age.

The book - oh, it's very good. Not as good as Hitchens' Arguably: Selected Essays but still an excellent read. He had a very interesting childhood and flitted around with his sexuality somewhat, the dalliances of which he obviously enjoyed recalling. He also found out that he was Jewish (a fact his mother had never mentioned) but it didn't temper his extremely left-wing atheism nor his also-famous brother Peter's very traditional right-wing Christianity.

As a strongly individualist intellectual, Hitchens never compromised and as a man with brilliant communication skills, he left a very interesting autobiography of his life and times. Recommended to everyone who is a bit of an iconoclast and enjoys cheering on others of that ilk.

Update: Look what I just found! A story in the NYPost about my little anecdote. I like he went out with the lesbian girlfriend of my friend. I don't think he ever knew the truth about Bill and inhaling. He just guessed.


*not a spelling mistake, the Guardian's nickname as its typos were the worst of all the newspapers