Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Monday, September 27, 2010

Christopher Hitchens in 1988

By John Ballard



He's dying of esophageal cancer. That's one of the bad ones.
And he's famously atheist as well, pushing some people of faith to the edge of their piety. Nevertheless, he will be missed by many.
One good commentary comes from Rabbi Jennifer Krause, writing last week at Huffpo.



Sometimes being a person of faith -- being a person in general -- means putting the needs of another before one's own. Christopher Hitchens neither wants nor needs our prayers. This is hateful to him. The rest is commentary. Go and learn it.

Non-Jews may not catch her reference to a story of Hillel.

... a heathen came to Hillel's home. Hillel thought the man had come for something very important. So Hillel said:



"What is the matter, my good man?" And the heathen answered:


"Teach me the Torah while I stand on one foot."


Of course Hillel, too, saw that the heathen was scoffing, but calmly and patiently he said:


"You want to learn a great deal quickly, don't you? Very well, I shall teach you the Torah while you stand on one foot. This is our Holy Torah: 'What is hateful to you, do not do unto others.'"



The heathen forgot that he had come only to jeer.


"Does it mean that the heathens and the Jews and all of us are brothers? Does it mean that we must be kind to one another like brothers?" asked the heathen, wonderingly.


"That's it, my son. That's the meaning of the whole Torah. All the rest is only an explanation of that. Go, go, my son. Go and study it," said Hillel kindly.


"When may I come for another lesson?" asked the heathen humbly.



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Readers with another twenty minutes to spare can enjoy this.


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