Sunday, February 7, 1999 -- WASHINGTON -- Christopher Hitchens, who claims he is self-employed and deals in a "service," couldn't have made his hybrid leftist/rightist hatred of Bill Clinton more apparent than when he released his pathetically composed "affidavit" on Saturday -- just as White House lawyer and formidable adversary Nicole Seligman was about to cut the throats of the solaced House Managers who had engaged, just minutes before, in lying outright to the Senate of the United States.

The silly document "exposed" his "friend" Sid Blumenthal for talking trash about Monica Lewinsky -- as if she were Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.

Hitchens was on the side of Clinton haters and the House Managers in general.

Hitchens, proud of his British citizenship, makes his home in the States while posing as an intellectual -- a pose based primarily on his foppish accent with little intellect to back it up. For more than a year, Hitchens has been appearing, albeit with no regularity, on television pundit shows, where he pontificates like an obese buffoon on the "crimes" of William Jefferson Clinton. Hitchens, once the closest thing to a living, breathing socialist that the Immigration and Naturalization Service will actually allow in this country, has in his mind become the self-appointed spokesboy of the ultra-left angry at Clinton for capitulating on everything from welfare reform to Rwanda.

Hitchens' problem is that in America, the ultra-left has become the ultra-right.

Not that we don't agree on the shortcomings of Bill Clinton's policies, but Hitchens -- with absolutely no standing to criticize, alien that he is -- suddenly decided he hated White House spinmeister Sid Blumenthal enough to tell the world that Blumenthal characterized Monica Lewinsky as "a stalker" and worse while Hitchens, his wife, and Blumenthal sat stuffing their faces at Washington's posh and oh-so-middle-class Occidental Grill, which coincidentally stands in the exact spot where Abraham Lincoln lay dying after being shot at nearby Ford's Theater.

You can assess Hitchens as a journalist, by reading this single quote, made while talking to C-SPAN about his first book. Hitchens told Brian Lamb:

"For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going."

That's what makes the buffoon tick: hate.

And who does he hate more than Sidney Blumenthal, who is so much more the master of magic and deception?

Hitchens, a remarkable bore, attempted to resurrect himself and his fake-lefty viewpoints by engaging in the same kind of conspiratorial nonsense that the right wing so eagerly embraces. The plot: terrorize the New Democrats and the working man who support Clinton at 90% levels. The means: he "stuns the nation" by tattling on Blumenthal -- who knows Monica truly is a stalker -- and using off-the-record comments to do so.

But Hitchens short-circuited his own resurrection this very morning on NBC's Clinton hatefest, Meet the Press, where he claimed -- and claimed correctly, as anyone who has read the transcript can tell -- that Blumenthal did not commit perjury during his deposition in front of the House Managers -- and, further, that Hitchens would refuse to testify to Congress that Blumenthal committed perjury.

And there you have it: tragedy, traitorousness, and duplicity by a self-important journalist self-aggrandizingly speaking out of both the left and right sides of his mouth.

Hitchens' support of Ken Starr shows him for what he is -- a wanna-be Limousine Liberal who is embracing the right and discarding any trappings of decency he may have once had, exchanging money and fame for principle. His degeneracy eclipses even the President's public embarrassment. He has made some money -- and now identifies with that group of the "Old Left" which accepts poverty and downright misery as a fact of American life. He is a proud Authoritarian.

So when you read anything Christopher Hitchens writes, keep one thing in in mind; he is an agent of the right clothed in the mantle of the left.

-- Mac MacArthur