It is a very interesting discussion because it is deeply political: cultural / personality critique. Americans and certainly Hitchins is quickly and emotively swept up in the distraction from much more important aspects of the quality and needs of being a President of the USA.

Palin is so radical in so many ways that were she not being used as merely a hot barb to hook polls and marketing, American's could learn much here. Alas...even the substantive depth of the discussion in the political arena is carefully controlled. So far, questioning Palin is to risk being ripped as a sexist. One would like a campaign in which the Republicans did not fear Palin be set loose. But in fact, they want her to be both patronized and the Wow Queen where political radicalism and duplicitious contradictions seem "boring".

Sadly, Hitchins joins this shallowness. He sparks only a moment at Palin's Totalist Evangelical Ideos; perfect Crystal Cathedrals of Republicanism.

Hitchins de facto must embrace her one dimensional view of resolving what is the most critical, strategic national foreign policy issue: the building of a new energy system in the US. Many serious and knowledgeable scientists and commentators have tried disperately to place this on the top of the American Agenda for without producing it, there is no resolution to rebuilding the technological and employment structure of the US...and there will be no flexible, dynamic and world-leading foreign policy for America.

Hitchins is such an enjoyable and trenchant observer, but he is filled and stuck in ideological resentment. His rhetoric can be wonderfully sharp but takes us little further than an acid bath.

The so-called "benign fascism" of the Republican Corporatism of the Robber Barons will, with McCain and Palin, remain triumphant. The control of the US military posture will remain in the hands of crass Pentagon Profiteers so pleased to sell America's high technology to the highest bidder. We have a massive global recession that could easily plunge into global famine. A sharper eye than Hitchins can easily view and document the rapid disintegration of the global ecosystem.

But you will not find a careful, extended, cohesive proposal for meeting and resolving these issues by Hitchins. Like most ideologues, he delights in distractions and that is a sophmoric mistake.