No doubt Mssr. Hitchens defenders will be coming out of the woodwork finding propriety in the bizarre use of "shoal" in the phrase "shoal of mail." Obscurity works for literary phonies, no one would attempt "school of mail" or "band of mail" in this context. "[S]hoal of mail" is like misusing a foreign term, only "pedants" notice how ridiculous and pretentious it is. "Shoal" is only common in the parlance of sailors today. The word means shallow and it is a perilous thing to be avoided.

John McCain is a fine one to find a new way spotlight himself and national legislators, people who enjoy access to everybody's ears already. This is the guy that is responsible for the greatest deprivation of free speech in American history. So called "campaign finance reform" prevents common citizens from using their own money to call politicians out on television and other media. Meanwhile celebs like Bill O'Reilly, Oprah, Sean Hannity and the rest of their abominable horde proceed without interruption. And likewise nationally known politicians. A tiny church group must be stopped from reaching airwaves with the paltry funds they might raise while subliminal propagandists that produce TV "dramas" and other hypish trash do their dirty work unhindered. John McCain's collusion with Russ Feingold is the greatest legislative treason against the American ideal extant.

Christopher Hitchens is not an American and his enthusiasm for foreign elitism evinces that fact. The US is foundering on the shoals of supra-constitutionalism. The constitution is not a suicide pact, the sub-rosa agreement to ignore it certainly is.

Well, I agree with you about "shoal." If that word's tertiary meaning ("a large amount") had been as effective as Hitchens intended, he wouldn't have felt it necessary to add the redundant modifier "huge." That's being arch for archness' sake -- typical of a certain kind of British schoolboy rhetoric and the vulgar-Anglophile American who admires it.

I disagree, however, with the notion of campaign finance reform as "treason." It's no limitation on anyone's claim to freedom to put limits on the extent to which any one candidate for high office will be beholden to any one contributor. Nothing prevents an individual from starting their own political or media organization financed with their own money. The 527 rule is being exploited by various groups with private money to put across specific points of view on various issues.

It certainly would be, however, a very great restriction on the people's political freedom to allow the public space -- which in our day of communications technologies is reducible to media broadcast and publishing capability, a tangible, finite resource - to be bought up and controlled by a tiny circle of wealthy insiders. Concern for "freedom" absolutely excludes any supposed (and oxymoronic) "freedom to dominate" social discourse, to crowd out less profitable points of view by means of an imposed market censorship -- freedom and domination being mutually exclusive concepts!

Hitch is exceedingly arrogant, but while I don't mean to nit pick a nit picker, didn't C.H. become a citizen recently, Mactosh?

I read foreign allegiance much better than the INS that gave visa extensions to two hijackers that died on 9-11 in Febuary of 2002 5 months after they killed themselves and thousands of others.

such a scenario was imminent, this absurd argument is merely creative incumbent protectionism. The airwaves are already dominated by media personalities, as I have pointed out repeatedly, and owned by large corporations anyway. It's the little guy that is crowded out by this law that restricts one's right to use private resources to reach a mass audience. The specter dominating your "freedom" is only facillitated by this traitorous law. A thirty second spot by forces outside the media is only viewed as a threat by entrenched interests that already enjoy a chokehold on what is disseminated. Public financing is even worse as govt. would decide who is qualified to run. Your vague treatment of this arrogation is exceedingly dangerous to what vestiges of freedom of action we retain.

Mactosh,

I claim to be no real critic of writers, as you seem to think you are, but how is it you cannot comprehend Christopher Hitchens’ use of the word ‘shoal’? One of the senses or meanings of the word is: “a sandbank or sandbar in the bed of a body of water, esp. one that is exposed above the surface of the water at low tide.” <link> Did you not even look it up before posting? Do you even know what a shoal is?

You are looking at it just the opposite way (as usual) the author is using it. A shoal is an elevated shelf or ‘rising’. Shoal jives perfectly with the previous two sentences. It even links to the second sentence of the first paragraph, starting with, “As a consequence…”

By the way, Mactosh, I happen to be Scotch, Irish, English and German on me mother’s side, and there’s a nice example of a shoal 2 miles off the coast of Sea Isle City in New Jersey. Great fishing there. Thought you might like to know.

Lalex,

(There's always a first, for God's sake, so I shall be me own critic.)

What's wrong with you Lalex, have ye' lost yer' mind and gone beserk?! Not only did ya' forget to install the link, ya' got the wrong sense Mr. Hitchens was aiming for. Though only Mr. Hitchens could tell us for sure, I'm going with the American Heritage Dictionary definition this time around, sense 1. A large group; a crowd. And that's final. There it is.

Makes sense now, don't it, Mactosh?

Did you even read my post? What do you think nautically means?

is not a word used to describe messages. It usually referred to fish in its original usage. You would not say "crowd" of mail, a mob of mail, a herd of mail. It does not make sense and is imporoperly used. There is no conceivable reason to choose that word for that place except for its obscurity. That's what makes sense.

Mactosh,

As detective Columbo used to say on TV, “Just one more thing.” After reading the sentence containing the word “shoal” again, it looks like Christopher Hitchens was using the word “shoal” instead of the word “pile” or even “groundswell” in order to refer to the amount of mail. As a writer, you should be able to figure out why. It simply sounds better, right?

And what about a few uses of obscurity that I found in your post like: “abominable horde” or “hypish trash” or “the American ideal extant”? A little on the obscure side, wouldn’t you say? In fact, there is no word hypish.

Like a good gumshoe, I was curious to find out whether there was anyone else complaining about Hitchens using the word “shoal.” Turns out, there is a shoal of disagreement - by your standards.