1. Addressing Farrakhan as Minister Farrakhan is appropriate because that's his title, as in President Bush, or Pope Benedict (though I know Mr. Hitchens would prefer Mr. Ratzinger or President-for-Life Bush.

2. Michelle Obama's thesis, while not written in elegant prose, is nevertheless decipherable to anyone accustomed to higher-ed social science writing. It's unfortunate, but true, that such writing pervades the academy. It is, however, still technically English. Hitchens' implication is that it's poorly written, ungrammatical, or otherwise incapable of reaching the lofty scholarly standards to which he has risen. Thus, it follows that Mrs. Obama must be another affirmative action graduate, undeserving of her Princeton degree.

3. All of this is typical Hitchensian misdirection. Nary a fact interrupts his fear-mongering while speculation runs rampant, further befouling the fetid air of Mr. Hitchens' parlor of lies and innuendo.

I think you completely mis-read his article. I never got the impression he was implying that Michelle was un-scholarly, rather that it was way over the top in "academia-speak" which is often unreadable to those of us with higher educations not in the social sciences (sic). And I read the thing and I agree (actually got about 1/2 the way through before giving up). I am sure her professors found it quite intelligible; to the rest of the world it is mostly pseudo-scientific gibberish, and could have been written by the smartest or the stupidest person in the class, it doesn't matter, but definitely by one who figured out the exclusive jargon of the "scientific" field in which she was writing.

I disagree this was typical Chris Hitchens. For starters he didn't mock Michelle's name, rhyming it with some monkey's ass or some other thing like that (though he did infer that there couldn't be very many black Princeton graduates--a source of shame more to Princeton than to blacks as a group). Second, he didn't name-drop an important literary figure (unless you count Stokely Standiford Churchill Carmichael) in the piece. Thirdly, he didn't pull out his thesaurus and give us countless lists of different ways of saying the same thing (something that reduces his time at the keyboard, while at the same time filling the column up with less of his mind-numbing 'logic'). Also, he didn't inflate to his word count by throwing in a gratuitous Shakespeare quote. I almost forgot, he didn't remind us that he's a Brit.

Incidentally, Hitchens does benefit from the perception of being a scholar. If the definition is limited to someone who has done well in their university work to have earned a graduate degree or otherwise excelled academically, then Hitchens is no scholar. His Wikipedia page defines his UK degree as "a gentleman's degree". Ergo, his dismissive comment of Barak Obama being a Harvard-educated pinhead.

Hitchens' college years were basically like John McCain graduating at the very bottom of his Annapolis class. (Come to think, kind of like George W. and his Yale flunky Dick Cheney: maybe that's why Chris loves them so, they share so much.)

Hitchens' intention was never to warn the American public that Barak Obama's wife was too much of an egg-head. Hitchens' sole objective is to manufacture the perception that Michelle Obama is an anti-semite, that the problem wasn't Jeremiah Wright, but the woman that kept insisting to Barak Obama that Jeremiah Wright was the voice of reason.

Whoa, you're clearly projecting a little there when you ascribe an inference by Hitchens that "Mrs. Obama must be another affirmative action graduate, undeserving of her Princeton degree." I think the vast majority of readers never drew that inference, and I don't think Hitchens meant it as such.

Reading Michelle Obama's thesis, the thought of her being unqualified as an 'affirmative action graduate' never crossed my mind. The thought of her being an unqualified sociology major, however, certainly was a prominent consideration.

Rather than conceiving of it in terms of race, perhaps you should have considered the implication in terms of class/status: say, that Princeton is obviously an overrated institution if its thesis-writers are producing such schlock; that its thesis-advisers aren't directing their students towards worthwhile research or acceptable research methods; that a 'sociology' project directed at Princeton alum reeks of typical Princetonian self-regard.

Honestly, this paranoia that any criticism of an African American graduate of an elite institution is based on an assumption that they weren't qualified in the first place is really racially divisive. (And for the record, though I find his jurisprudence absurd and erroneous, this is exactly why Clarence Thomas opposed Affirmative Action. I didn't understand what he meant when reading the dissenting opinion at the time, but wow, he was indeed quite prescient).

Rather than an inference about race and affirmative action with respect to Princeton, I took away two things from reading the thesis:

1. She isn't deserving of the accolades associated with a Princeton degree because her scholarship is absolutely pathetic. (And yes, I realize that she was only 21-22; as a recent college-grad, trust me when I say that the vast majority of theses I have read surpass the analytical and intellectual ability, much less the writing ability, of Michelle Obama by leaps and bounds)

2. Princeton isn't deserving of all the accolades and distinctions given to its Undergraduate program. As a pedagogical matter, the scholarship produced by its undergraduates is really astonishing bad.

If Hitchens knows so much about higher education, he should know that the thesis is a big exercise in form over content, limited to what your advisor can judge. Its purpose is to demonstrate that you can write with extreme rigour (usually at the expense of readability) on a given subject. It isn't going to reflect your beliefs or what you've learned in the degree, since it's very hard to get funding on the subject of your choice at this level. You can't do truly original research in your own area unless you get a Ph.D. and work in academia. You need to "prove yourself" first.

Of course, this is different if Daddy is paying for your education. Then you can do anything you want. The rest of us have to write whatever will get us a job after.