Christopher Hitchens at Politics and Prose Bookstore

Somebody please get Christopher Hitchens a hip flask. The poor man was taking slugs from one of those little mini bottles of what looked like vodka. It was pretty clear that he desperately wanted to take a bigger belt from the bottle but had to pace himself because of its small size.

Christopher Hitchens was at Politics and Prose on Connecticut Avenue at 7 PM to promote his new book, God Is Not Great: How Religion Ruins Everything. The bookstore was packed. Hitchens can draw as big a crowd as Mark Steyn and P.J. O'Rourke can for their speaking engagements. The man is a brilliant public speaker, and is able to dominate a room like no one else I have ever seen. My old parish priest had a similar effect, but he had the benefit of a captive audience.

There were a lot of believers who came looking to score points against Hitchens during the time alloted for questions. Hitchens would always listen politely, if not attentively, and then proceed to tear them a new one in the figurative rather than the literal sense of the word.

One of the believers in the crowd apologized for not reading the book as attentively as he could have while he struggled to frame his incoherent question. Hitchens brought down the house when he responded, "As long as you got a receipt for it I don't care."

Maybe the air conditioning could have been turned up a little higher, but this was one of the most ornery crowds I'd ever seen. Some of the believers, and one of the atheists got booed by the audience for their questions or comments.

I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for any speaking engagements Christopher Hitchens has in Washington D.C. - seeing him on C-Span is one thing, seeing him live is quite another!