Friday, April 18, 2008

Interchangeable appellations:

An eccentric story, this. Not quite coherent, even for its participants:

For when Sullivan was stuck for words on an American news discussion programme last week, he was confronted by the acerbic polemicist Christopher Hitchens. "Don't be such a lesbian," intervened Mr Hitchens. "Get on with it."

Hitchens' explanation?

"Don't know what came over me: the dear boy did suddenly seem extremely sapphic, yet I think my intuitions must have been scrambled all the same, since what I was actually thinking was: 'Andrew really wants to have Barack Obama's fucking child'. Clearly some confusion of categories on my part."

I suspect, but I could be very wrong, that the Hitch had meant to say: "Don't be such bore now". (since "boring" and "lesbian" can often be used interchangeably), a very slight linguistic slippage for a nanosecond made his tongue follow his mind tweak and he blurted that seemingly incongruous epithet.

A gay man, as per definition, would never be "stuck for words"... So Hitchens' confusion must be excused.

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