Good riddance...

...or, what is my response to Arafat's passing. Especially during the past few years, he had shown himself to be less a leader of the Palestinian people than a corrupt collar about their collective neck. When Christopher Hitchens isn't stroking his Orwell complex by siding in high contrarian fashion with the most powerful people on earth, he can still write a good column, which is what he's done here as one of the few commentators to acknowledge the deleterious effects of Arafat's stunted, autocratic leadership on the Palestinians while maintaining the underlying legitimacy of that people's struggle for self-determination.