“Hitchens has cancer? I like that”
Vanity Fair contributing editor Christopher Hitchens has been diagnosed with cancer, the Washington Post reports. Hitchens is a foremost atheist activist, and with a book titled “God is not Great,” has gained many critics on the theistic right-wing. He is also maligned by the dovish left for his interventionist, neoconservative foreign policy (though Hitchens says he is “not any kind of conservative”).
I wish Mr. Hitchens good health as he endures the chemotherapy aimed at defeating his esophageal cancer. May he stay well enough to stay robustly active in the public forum. Whether you support or oppose his views, it can’t be denied that “Hitch” is one of our era’s defining thinkers.
So what kind of public support is Hitchens getting? The only kind the lazy Internet browser knows: the Like button.
The Daily Transom, a New York Observer blog, picked up on this:
Oddly enough, the Facebook “Likes” on the Washington Post story have been growing exponentially since the news was released. It’s unclear what users are trying to say by “Liking” this story. Do they actually like the idea that the man has cancer? Are they just trying to tell their friends the news? At any rate, it’s a case of bad news made worse by social networking.
— Dan Duray, The Daily Transom, June 30, 6:39 p.m.
As of this writing, 401 people have liked the Washington Post blog post on Hitchens’ diagnosis.
Here’s to convergence, the intertwining of social networks with websites, taking a more comprehensive hold. That way, maybe we wouldn’t have to Like cancer to quickly and easily share it with our Web peers.
But keep the Like button too. With Hitchens, some people really mean it.
