Hitchens on Sullivan

There's a wee bit of a kerfuffle about what Christopher Hitchens said to Andrew Sullivan on the US political chat show Media Matters. Sullivan got a bit stuck for words when discussing Barack Obama and Hitchens, ever sensitive in these matters, helped him out:

"Don't be such a lesbian," intervened Mr Hitchens. "Get on with it."

Now, given the rather frenetic nature of American attitudes towards political correctness, you might imagine that the mighty Hitchens would be a little bit embarrassed by this outburst - but if you think that, you don't know the man.

In an email to The Independent on Sunday, the commentator wrote: "Don't know what came over me: the dear boy did suddenly seem extremely sapphic, yet I think my intuitions must have been scrambled all the same, since what I was actually thinking was: 'Andrew really wants to have Barack Obama's fucking child'. Clearly some confusion of categories on my part."