The Errant Æsthete

A wonderful piece by the caustic, and almost always, irritatingly correct Christopher Hitchens on the miraculous sightings (most notably, the rainbow) surrounding the death of Tim Russert.

“I remain unshakably certain on two points. The first is that no benign deity plucks television news-show hosts from their desks in the prime of life and then hastily compensates their friends and family by displays of irradiated droplets in the sky. (I bet you now that it won’t happen for Brokaw or Williams or Olbermann, even if they all convert to Catholicism, and you know I am right.) My second bet is that Tim Russert, a man of firm but modest faith, would reject this foolish superstition and the silly cult of celebrity. This latter cult belongs to the material world, which, in the absence of a supernatural one, is the only world we have.” [Link]