I would never accept a demi. A pint perhaps of honest English Ale, frothy and redolent of hops, and accompanied by the faintest echoes of leather on willow and enveloped by much hearty guffawing of stout yeomanry types. Paris? Perhaps in Henry Miller’s day. But now? Mercenaries and pseudo-intellectuals infest the place bringing foppery and meretriciousness. Where are the poets and the artists? The money-god like some bastard cuckoo has sent them packing. Now tourists trapse the Montmartre and all is shallow, empty, materialism. The wannabes stalk the streets, the cash-nexus seduces all, and the soul of Paris is moribund beyond redemption. Even the wailings of Baudelaire can’t save it now. Thank god Miller is in his grave for it would have grieved him indeed to see the American air-conditioned nightmare ravage his beloved Paree. We are all doomed of course – rapacious, insatiable, humanity.

I hope I convey something of my feelings on the matter.

However your keenly honed anti-semitic radar has set the blue lights off and the sirens whirring and now, by God, you’re on the scent. But I shall give up re-emphasising my emphasis and allow you your ‘illumination’. It’s of no consequence to me. After all, in circuitous fashion you’re getting paid for this stuff; I’m not. I hope in my modest way that I have made some small contribution to the furtherance of your career, or metier, as they say in Paris. In which case perhaps you would bung me a few bob sometime; circumstances permitting of course.

Of course, to “make the Hitchens connection” there is no need for vague insinuations of “disproportionality”; and the “connection” itself is rather tenuous if it depends merely on this and not on anything Hitchens has in fact written. But I do find it illuminating when people are careful to point out who is Jewish and who not, and how many of them there are.

In a sense this ethnic composition is irrelevant. I mention it only to make the Hitchens connection. In fact despite Strauss’s own jewish background there is a strong anti-religious element to his philosophy which again accords well with Hitchens’ position. Both would view Islamic fundamentalism as anathema and an enemy of American-style democracy. I am interested in the Straussian influences within the neocon group as well as with Hitchens. It means he has been influenced, of course, but that doesn’t require him to be signed up to the whole kit and caboodle. Hitchens distancing himself from the ‘noble lies’ stuff for example. But the beauty of the Straussian is that nothing is what it seems. So Hitchens may be doing what any good Straussian would do – dissimulate. It’s intellectual conspiracy theory really – and I love it. Oh yes I do.

with a disproportionate jewish representation

What do you mean by that, exactly?

There were plenty of articles surfacing even in the mid to late eighties on the growing influence of Straussians and the wider neocon movement within the GOP. The whole intellectual movement in origin and development was New York-centred with a disproportionate jewish representation.
The fact that Hitch’s episode of discovery is the only biographical subject he has chosen to write about is in itself revelatory. I’m surprised Steven doesn’t take more interest in Strauss – after all he thought most of history’s great philosophers were ‘masters of unspeak’ rather like the Government’s of GW and TB.