Bush advocate caps lecture series

Michael Miller

This time last year, Christopher Hitchens was in Kabul, Afghanistan,

checking up on the country’s progress since the overthrow of the

Taliban. Despite the ongoing violence in that impoverished nation,

the British author and columnist found at least one thing to cheer

him.

“The first thing I did was go to a bar,” Hitchens told a crowd of

high school students Saturday at Newport Beach Public Library.

Remembering the days when alcohol, among other things, was banned

by the totalitarian government, Hitchens saw the new industry as

progress indeed.

An outspoken critic of Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa, Henry

Kissinger and many others, Hitchens has never been shy about

supporting the war on terrorism. Even as many pundits began to call

the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan a quagmire, he continued to

trumpet the Bush administration’s policies.

So when Hitchens met with a gathering of young people Saturday,

his message was this: Don’t always trust the mainstream media.

Hitchens was the final headliner in this year’s Martin W. Witte

Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series, a program presented by the

Newport Beach Public Library Foundation. In between public lectures

on Friday and Saturday, the guests meet with a high school audience

on Saturday morning.

The appearance of a previous speaker in the series, “Reefer

Madness” author Eric Schlosser, caused local controversy when a

number of parents objected to his views about U.S. drug laws.

The week before Schlosser came to the library, the Newport-Mesa

Unified School District announced that it would not permit fliers

advertising his lecture to be displayed at its campuses. When

Schlosser met with the high school crowd on April 16, however, the room was filled to capacity.

Hitchens’ appearance, which incited no protests, drew a smaller

crowd.

Jacob Silverman, a 10th-grader at Newport Harbor High School, said

after Hitchens’ speech that he found the author’s views more

provocative than Schlosser’s.

“I thought it was really interesting,” said Silverman, 15. “It was

interesting how last time there was so much controversy. I thought

this guy was more controversial.”

In his speech, Hitchens spoke about political concerns, lambasting

Michael Moore and other popular left-wing writers.

Elsewhere in his speech, he said that after Sept. 11, “It seemed

to me that it was absolutely necessary for the U.S. to intervene in

the civil war that’s going on over Islam.”

When taking questions from the students, however, Hitchens spoke

just as much about the writing process and his own experiences as a

professional author. He noted that as the son of a British naval

officer, he grew up in a house with few books and that public

libraries had given him a large part of his education.

Martha Topik, an English teacher at Newport Harbor High School who

attended the lecture with several of her students, said afterward

that Hitchens’ passion for his craft was a good model for young

writers.

“I think it’s important for them to hear that writing is something

you do beyond school,” she said. “It’s how you engage with the

world.”

* MICHAEL MILLER covers education and may be reached at (714)

966-4617 or by e-mail at [email protected].