Christopher Hitchins on Jessica Mitford

[BaalChatzaf]

This is a riot!

"

That's why so many of us wish we'd met Jessica Mitford when she was young. Not, I hasten to add, that we weren't her pliant tools when she was in her seventies. She would tell broad jokes in male company, she quaffed, she smoked, she had faced down cops and bullies, she was screamingly witty, and she had done all her reading and homework. Dressy she wasn't. But drop-dead elegant. And cross her -- no thank you. Her claws would be across your face and back in her lap before you could notice it. The healing would come with the next limerick. Withal, a perfect mother, an ideal sister, an adored wife, and (not her fault) an exemplary widow. There was no feminine part that she had not filled to perfection. If she and Ayn Rand had ever met, Nathaniel Branden would have needed Miss Rand's dental records even sooner than he actually did."

For his entire piece please see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christopher-hitchens/margaret-thatcher-iron-lady_b_1199269.html

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

This may help with some background. Home schooled so to speak!

Jessica Mitford, the daughter of the 2nd Baron Redesdale, was born in Burford, Oxfordshire, in 1917. The sister of Diana Mitford, Nancy Mitford and Unity Mitford, she was educated at home by her mother.

Mitford's parents held right-wing political views and supported the British Union of Fascists and in 1936 their daughter, Diana Mitford, married its leader, Oswald Mosley. Another daughter, Unity Mitford, went to Nazi Germany and became a close friend of Adolf Hitler.

Unlike the rest of her family, Jessica developed left-wing political opinions. At the age of fourteen she was converted to pacifism and later, like her sister, Nancy Mitford, became a socialist. Jessica even considered the possibility of visiting Germany with her sister and murdering Hitler. She later wrote: "Unfortunately, my will to live was too strong for me actually to carry out this scheme, which would have been fully practical and might have changed the course of history. Years later, when the horrifying history of Hitler and his regime had been completely unfolded, leaving Europe half-destroyed, I often bitterly regretted my lack of courage."

In 1937 Mitford met Esmond Romilly, the nephew of Winston Churchill, who had just returned to England after fighting for the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War. He was now working as a journalist for the News Chronicle and was about to go back to Spain to report on the war. Jessica went with him and they married in June 1937. While on honeymoon he wrote Boadilla, an account of his experiences in Spain.

When the couple returned to England Esmond Romilly found work as a copywriter for a small advertising agency in London, whereas Jessica was employed in market research. Along with her husband she became involved in the struggle against the British Union of Fascists.

In 1939 Mitford and Romilly went to the United States. On the outbreak of the Second World War Romilly joined the Royal Canadian Air Force but was killed in 1941 during a bombing raid over Nazi Germany.

Mitford went to work for Office of Price Administration (OPA) where she met the radical lawyer, Robert Treuhaft, who she married in 1943. They both joined the American Communist Party and were active in the Civil Rights movement.

In 1948 they moved to Oakland and Treuhaft joined the legal firm of Oakland, Grossman, Sawyer & Edises. The company specialized in trade union and civil rights cases. This included the Willie McGee case. McGee, a 36-year-old black truck driver from Laurel, Mississippi, was convicted of raping a white woman despite evidence that the couple had been having a relationship for four years. The trial lasted less than a day and the jury took under three minutes to reach a verdict and the judge sentenced McGee to be executed. McGee's defenders argued that no white man had ever been condemned to death for rape in the deep South, while over the last forty years 51 blacks had been executed for this

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPmitford.htm

[PDS]

I am a thoroughgoing Hitch-ophile, but I wouldn't count this as one of his best essays. His blade seems fairly dull throughout, but perhaps I expect too much. Perhaps the sexual undertones related to Thatcher had him writing at psychological cross purposes--although that never seemed to bother him in other contexts.

Rather amazing how he found himself, Forrest Gump-like, in so many fascinating settings.

[9thdoctor]

He did a more recent piece on Mitford:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/10/poison-pen/5207/?single_page=true

This was in the latest collection. I don't think the Ayn Rand joke in this older piece Bob found works. Dental records? Huh? Is the idea that she left bite marks?

[Philip Coates]

No, the idea is that JM was so witty that she would have eviscerated AR and left her corpse in such totally destroyed condition that she could only be identified by dental records.

[9thdoctor]

No, the idea is that JM was so witty that she would have eviscerated AR and left her corpse in such totally destroyed condition that she could only be identified by dental records.

First, praise be to Phil for engaging me in a congenial manner. Second, I think he missed the point I was making. Yes, CH is saying that JM would have, as Phil put it, “eviscerated AR”. The trouble is how he ends the joke: “even sooner than he actually did.” When did NB ever need AR’s dental records? Did he accuse her of biting him? Ted Bundy was ultimately put away by bite mark evidence, maybe CH was thinking along those lines. In any event, the joke still doesn’t work, and I just see it as a strange kind of name-dropping exercise. I like CH’s writing, but he was too much of a name-dropper.

[9thdoctor]

Here's a new program, new to YouTube anyway, and it's shaping up to be a real hoot. Hitch goes to Texas. There are 5 parts, so it runs about an hour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA6QkM3EyEs&feature=plcp&context=C3d43aebUDOEgsToPDskKRntMayuGNg-neQEJlnO0b

[Selene]

Nobody tells it like the Kinkster!

Kinky Friedman and his Texas Jew Boy Band! Yee Haa!

[9thdoctor]

Nobody tells it like the Kinkster!

Yup. The whole program is worth watching, there were plenty of good laughs. Hitchens at the gun range, getting outfitted for hat and boots, with the border patrol chasing "wet-backs", at a HS football game...he brings that man from mars approach to it all.