THEY don't call him Christopher "Comical British Alcoholic" Hitchens for nothing. The warmonger, whose attempt to link his pro-conflict positions with the work of George Orwell offended the sensibilities of anyone who has ever read George Orwell, is at it again. "Hitch Is Not Great: How Everything In My Body Is Filled With Poison, Particularly My Liver" hits bookstores next month. The jeremiad, reports The Post's Kyle Smith, is a merciless attack on everything Hitchens holds dear—dryly called "absolutely fucking right" by its editor, Jonathan Karp, who is making it the second title in his new imprint, 12, because that's how many vodkas he drank before deciding to publish Hitchens.

So, you seriously mean to say that we would not be living in a better or safer world if the coalition forces had turned around and sailed or flown home in the spring of 2003?

• CBS News hired Rick Kaplan without consulting Katie Couric. They probably just didn't want her to worry her pretty little head about it. [NYT]
  

It's a given, at this point, that any woman writer who tries to contradict Christopher Hitchens's airtight assertion that "Women Aren't Funny" (which he later amended, of course, to 'Non-"hefty, dykey, or Jewish" women aren't funny') will be on the receiving end of a predictable, nyah-nyah "You just proved my point." But today, in a review of two new tv shows featuring "funny" men and ornamental, dim ladies, Alessandra Stanley puts herself on the line for the women-are-funny cause:

Page Six today suggests that Graydon Carter might want to watch his ass, as Maxim "has been quietly dipping into Vanity Fair's talent stable." They provide as examples "sometime VF contributor George Gurley," who interviews Val Kilmer in the current issue, and Christopher Hitchens, who has "a wide-ranging diatribe against 'Zero Tolerance,'" in the issue. We picked up a copy, and, well, let's just say that Graydo probably isn't pissing his pants in fear. Apart from being a less-focused version of Hitchens' 2004 piece on the same subject for Vanity Fair, it also contains the unforgettable note that:

• Plucky Canadian feminist Rachel Sklar (happy birthday, kiddo!) confronts Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter about that Chris Hitchens "Bitches Ain't Funny" column. Carter pal Kurt Andersen defends Carter's right to run a whole bunch of crap in his magazine without reading it first. [Observer]
  

See, once in a blue moon, we find ourselves nodding furiously in approval at something Christopher Hitchens writes. Sometimes he's just so spot-on in his crabby contrarian way that we can't help but think, "Thank God someone, somewhere, has the balls to say what's really going on!" Like that piece he has in January's Vanity Fair—"Why Women Aren't Funny." Approximately 50 percent of Gawker editors agree!

In a piece on Slate about "Tony Judt's persecution complex" (quick backfill: Judt, a professor at NYU, was recently prevented from giving a speech at the Polish Consulate, allegedly because of complaints from the Anti-Defamation League about his views on Israel), Christopher Hitchens accuses Judt of self-aggrandizement and compares the situation to another recent controversy:

Early on in this examination of "the huge rise in teen oral sex" comes one of the funniest lines we've ever seen, courtesy of author Tim Harford:

• Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein — who, with Mort Zuckerman, helped fund the baby steps of Radar 2.0 — just wants to be happy. Thus he hired a certified prostisseuse to come over work the knots out of his back and give him a happy ending. Now he's been indicted for soliciting a hooker and is charged with a third-degree felony. No word on whether or not he ever got that handjob. [Page Six]
• In an impressive psychological twist, Colin Farrell's stalker Dessarae Bradford holds a press conference on the steps of the LA federal courthouse and accuses the actor of stalking her. Crazy bitch is good. [Lowdown (last item)]
• Christopher Hitchens writes for Maxim, tells youth of America to go bareback. [Page Six]
• Tara Reid is told by her agent that she's landed the lead in Senior Skip Day and, to ensure her career's revival, she'll be starring opposite Robert De Niro. Unfortunately, De Niro's people insist he's in no way involved in the project. As for Reid's agent: cruel, but hilarious. [R&M (2nd item)]
• Gay everywhere throw tantrums as Nic Cage signs on to play Liberace. The role's really too subtle for him. [TMZ]
• Pete Doherty schedules another five-minute stint in rehab. [E!]

Obviously, you roll out of bed every morning and ask yourself, What's Christopher Hitchens been up to? Today, luckily, you have an answer: the Vanity Fair contributor and boozy British neocon has been, well, drinking. Per usual. But this time he's using his toasted powers to gain entry, despite being uninvited, into a private memorial for New York Review co-editor Barbara Epstein, who recently died of lung cancer. Alexander Cockburn, who loves nothing more than to regale the world with tales of Hitchens' liver damage, writes:

Because our slutty sister left us briefly and utterly confused earlier today, we'd like to make a brief public service announcement. It is not New York Observer senior editor and Gawker alumnus Choire Sicha in the above photo. Rather, it's Christopher Hitchens.

Our favorite intoxicated intellectual Christopher Hitchens has a very special holiday message for us all: Fuck Christmas, and fuck you, too. Unlike many anti-season types, it's not Christmas's commercialism or the loss of greater meaning that has him down — what makes Hitchens all frothy is the emphasis on assigning some sort of Christian meaning to the whole lot of bells and trees. Add to that "an insistent din of identical propaganda and identical music" and "the collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory infliction of joy," and suddenly the man has no choice but to indulge his big, angry boner with an entire column.

• Oh, now we understand: Lindsay Lohan missed her appearance on Regis & Kelly because her head got eaten by Kong. Right. Thankfully, that's not so serious as to keep her off of TRL right about now. [Popsugar & OAN]
• Christopher Hitchens predicts the death of the journalist protagonist in modern fiction, suggesting that, god forbid, such characters are replaced with bloggers — a development which could really just be the death of modern fiction altogether. [Guardian]
• Fake David Cross is alive, well, and banned from a bar for being a total boozehound. [Felber Frolics]
• How to do your holiday shopping, with helpful, implicitly violent tips from the Gap. [You Can't Make It Up]
• In a piece on "suspected" firefighting sex fiend Peter Braunstein, Dateline interviews blogger Steve Huff as an "expert" on the case. Hey, if New York's Vanessa Grigoriadis counts, we suppose a blogger can, too. [B&C Beat]
• Now you can pay the very supplies AP staffers have been stealing for years. [AP Essentials]
• It's a tourist's dream: Getting wasted in Manhattan, but not lost. [NY on Tap]
• iPorn for your iPod isn't novel, but A-list Playboy porn ups the ante just a bit. But can you get it in braille? [MDN]

• From our favorite Christian soldier, per an item yesterday: "I don't care if your researchers found out that Judith Miller and I have the same Webmaster. I am NOT Judith Miller, and I demand a retraction. Yours sincerely - Dawn Eden."
• But what if Dawn Eden is a Starlight Mints fan like our little Judy? [Lindsayism]
• You've always longed for a HitchensWatch, you just didn't know it till now. [Hitchenswatch]
• An easy guide to understanding the ASME's best mag covers. [Low Culture]
• Michael Musto ends his latest Village Voice column on a perplexing note. Although we'd not be surprised if he actually were going through menopause. [VV]
• Times Square denizens the Naked Cowboy and Naked Cowgirl join forces for the (presumably) naked interview. [Yes But No But Yes]

• WSJ's Weekend Edition launches Saturday, with nearly 100 advertisers. [NYP]
• Will Bush's popularity meltdown hurt Fox News? Nope, Fox News will just be less Republican, bets The Tina. [WP]
• Arianna loves blogs, and Adam Penenberg loves Arianna, and it's all just so lovable. [Wired News]
• John Tierney says he's not a contrarian, which is contrary to what we expected he'd say. [Reason]
• The hangover continues from the worst merger ever, and Time Warner is now in talks to sell AOL to Microsoft. [NYP]
• Google gives Technorati a big fuck you, launching its own blog search engine. [PC Mag]
• Christopher Hitchens debates British MP George Galloway in Manhattan, and we can't figure what's going on — except that Hitch was boozing at Denton's pad, and trading limericks, till the wee hours. [Times]

Let me preface this by saying that we don't get a lot of hate mail. (Yes, I know. We're more surprised than you are.) And when we do get hate mail, I have a masochistic tendency to publish most of it.

I met Observer media reporter Sridhar Pappu for the first time two weeks ago at a bar in the East Village. He was holding what looked suspiciously like a non-alcoholic beverage and glaring at people. He explained that he had resolved to stay sober for a month, and that yes, he was serious, and that no, he would not like a beer, and that yes, he was "sure." (I tried.) The month is almost up and in the time-honored tradition of journalists writing odes to alcohol (see Christopher Hitchens, March Vanity Fair), Sridhar composes a love letter to Maker's Mark as he prepares to take an enthusiastic running leap off the wagon. "...truth be told," he writes, "the anticipation of falling to the floor of some bar is all that's keeping me going these days."
28 days of sobriety have me acting like a mean drunk [Observer]

This is a must-see. Christopher Hitchens and Andrew Sullivan, and others, discussing Orwell. And discussing Orwell is a synonym for...