Love or hate Bill Maher, but give him credit for pairing together people that you never ever see together. This last installment has Mos Def in a debate with Christopher Hitchens over Iran’s Nuclear Program. While Ta’ Nehisi at the Atlantic thought Mos Def came across looking paranoid and intellectually lazy, I think Hitchen’s comes off like an oaf, but I think he always comes off that way. While you won’t see Mos Def at the Oxford Union, he is posing questions that require answers.
Read Ta’ Nehisi’s post. Good food for thought.
Comments 2
andrew m. lindner — April 2, 2009
It's great fun and I think it should be said that Maher's show fosters a level of discourse well above that of your Crossfires and Hardballs. I'm not sure Hitchens is any more intellectually rigorous than Mos Def. He is a more polished in intellectual argumentation, but criticizing Mos Def on those grounds seems like ivory tower gate-keeping.
jose — April 2, 2009
Hitchens is like the intellectual version of an insult comic.