February 04, 2008
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America�s foremost contrarian, Christopher Hitchens, has taken on controversial topics throughout his career, from criticizing Mother Teresa to speaking out in defense of the war in Iraq. His most recent book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything tangled with the most sanctified of subjects: organized religion. How will he top that? Well, we intercepted a few of Hitchens� pitches for his next tome, and while some are potentially interesting critiques, others are a little weird. By Anthony Layser. Art by Conor Buckley
10. Proposed Title: Al Gore's Whores: Fanatical Recycling and the Unrelenting Green Machine Concept: A chastisement of the Alfred Nobel Foundation for recognizing Gore, a comparison of environmentalism to Islamo-Fascism and a declaration that no one really knows what those numbered recycling triangles actually mean. Hitchens also plans to be critical of his wife for making him take out and exhaustively sort their household refuse.
9. Proposed Title: Tibetan Treachery: How the Dalai Lama Duped Hollywood Concept: Would shed light on a complicated ponzi scheme engineered by the tiny Asian mystic involving award show gift bags. Entertainment elite from Richard Gere to the Beastie Boys are claimed to have been suckered. Hitchens explains in the pitch, The 'holy' man had them. They were simply no match for his pseudo-inspirational windbaggery.
8. Proposed Title: Patriarchy, My Ass: Monogamy Has Got to Go Concept: A book that would champion promiscuity based on a study from Ghana indicating that large mammals living in pairs expedite the extinction process. It would also direct readers to casual sex dating websites and recommend tight-fitting fashions for women to get more readily noticed by men at bars. [Publishers have already shown great interest in this text.
7. Proposed Title: Feline Affront: The Dangerous Hidden Agenda of House Cats Concept: An expos on the twisted psychology of common house cats. Frankly, this seemed like more of anti-cat rant than a book pitch. However, it does frequently cite Marxist attitudes towards felines, leading one to believe the format may be similar to the Communist Manifesto or Lenin's 1902 pamphlet What is to be Done?
6. Proposed Title: E.T., Extremely Trite: The Films of Steven Spielberg Concept: A harshly critical look at America's most-celebrated movie director. Lays out an argument that embracing a film about kindly extra terrestrials makes us more susceptible as a nation to invasion and consequent enslavement by alien beings. There would also be multiple chapters devoted to debunking the idea that reconstituted Paleozoic creatures are intensely malevolent.
5. Proposed Title: Pacifism and the Cult of Pussitude Concept: A scathing assault on the principal of pacifism. Hitchens presents an equation to determine degrees of aversion to armed conflict, known as pussitude. Chapters are devoted to historical figures, like Mohandas Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy that he claims have displayed great pussitude. TV commentator Bill O'Reilly is said to be interested in writing the forward.
4. Proposed Title: Teed Off: Tiger Woods Can Suck It Concept: A critique of the world's greatest golfer. Hitchens, who admittedly struggles with the game, attempts to make a case that Woods' existence creates a talent inequality within the species that's not fair. At one point, he also insinuates that Woods may actually be a robot. Libel issues and the pitch's bitter tone have limited the number of prospective publishers.
3. Proposed Title: The Buzzkillers: How Organized Sobriety Makes Us Weak Concept: A critique of 12-step programs, substance-abuse rehabilitation and general restraint when it comes to drinking alcohol. Each chapter cites ways in which humans become needy, whiny and uninteresting when they give up booze. In fact, a section titled Hangovers postulates that incapacitating headaches and frequent vomiting builds character.
2. Proposed Titles: Heil, Oprah: Why the Fuhrer of Daytime Wont Recognize My Work in Her Damn Book Club Concept: There's not much to explain conceptually, the title says it all. Hitchens attempts to explain the exclusion of his work from Oprah Winfrey's Book Club while characterizing the talk-show host as a megalomaniac tantamount to Adolf Hitler. To keep from seeming entirely contentious, he does praise Winfrey for having never sought to exterminate an entire people.
1. Proposed Title: The Missionary Position: Obsolete Between the Sheets Concept: Besides outlining why missionary is all too often the default starting position for intercourse, the writer plans to provide an updated version of the Kama Sutra. Perhaps the most heartfelt of all his pitches, Hitchens declares, Liberating kinesiologies of passion were at the heart of history's progressive societies. Yet we remain predominantly face to face, actively ignoring the majesty of the reverse cowgirl or the T-square.
Words: Anthony Layser; Art: Conor Buckley
Christopher Victorio78 images
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10. Proposed Title: Al Gore's Whores: Fanatical Recycling and the Unrelenting Green Machine Concept: A chastisement of the Alfred Nobel Foundation for recognizing Gore, a comparison of environmentalism to Islamo-Fascism and a declaration that no one really knows what those numbered recycling triangles actually mean. Hitchens also plans to be critical of his wife for making him take out and exhaustively sort their household refuse.
