The The Crommunist Manifesto has a very unexciting banner, and he’s looking for help fixing it. If you’ve got any artistic talent at all, get on over there and put something better together.
Also the quote from Christopher Hitchens that he wants to display is fabulous and wonderfully appropriate:
The stubborn persistence of chauvinism in our life and letters is or ought to be the proper subject for critical study, not the occasion for displays of shock.
Hutchins continued: “Also, did I mention women aren’t funny?”
Yeah, the irony is not lost on me. The quote itself is still valid, despite the hypocrisy of the speaker. Or maybe it becomes more poignant because of it.
Where is the hypocrisy in the statement?
Just that Hitchens has a terrible sense of what it means to support women. And that is ironic, given the otherwise excellent quote above.
It’s a good thing we atheists don’t feel a need to defend our spokespeople as infallible in every respect. For all the good Hitchens and Dawkins do, that we can also feel free to tell them when they’re doing bad, is rather freeing by comparison with the “circle the wagons” mentality you often get among theists.
@1 Who’s Hutchins?
Unplugged my scriptkiller and ad-blocker to see the boring banner (which, actually, is kinda tasteless: centre alignment, ‘manifesto’ in capitals, yu-uck), and what I see uncovered in this blog:
‘Get equipped to serve god. Free taster package.’
I’m not saying anything about the religious turn of the banner (it has been touched upon here before), but is it just me, or it is insanely sexually suggestive?
Sorry, my comment was a bit disingenuous (bit ratty at the end of a tough day). I feel like an arse now, which is probably a fair assessment. The quote though isn’t about male chauvinism, it’s about chauvinism – as in excess patriotism. The quote comes from an article about Philip Larkin and in the paragraph that ends with this he is writing about surges in English national feeling following wars.
Actually I just looked up the quote and what I wrote above isn’t quite right apart from how he is using the word chauvinism.
@ SimBri:
The hypocrisy isn’t internal to the statement, but to Hitchens. That’s all you missed. (Well, if you didn’t miss this, then I suppose you were a wee bit disingenuous. :p )
And here I was looking at the banner ad here, which said ‘4 ways to avoid running out of money in retirement – if you have $500,000 invested, click here!’ If you have half a million dollars invested, I don’t think you want a scam advice you gotta pay money for. How many people have half a million socked away anyhow?
Dawkins and Hitchens just conjure up images of priviledge for me now. Nothing else. I admired both their intellects at one stage, but when they proved they were sexist bigots, all that admiration went away.
I assume Hutchens is the Hitch’s long lost brother from New Zealand.
What do you expect of Englishmen of that age, though? They’re not as bad as many others. It’s not realistic to insist on total ideological purity from everyone you admire. Feet of clay, human imperfections, everybody’s got them. I don’t man don’t call them on it, just don’t expect people to be saints and gods. Gods don’t exist.
Crom sits on his mountain and laughs at your design gods in Helvetica