It’s remarkable how we can develop a deep fascination, sometimes to the point of fixation, toward people we despise.

This is not particularly healthy: we gain much more by studying those who are worthy of our admiration and reverence, both as models for the refinement of our own behavior and as sources of inspiration that demonstrate the heights to which human nobility can soar.

But human nature produces an incessant magnetism toward the negative, no matter how much we may know better.  So I couldn’t resist clicking on Daniel Oppenheimer’s recent retrospective* on Christopher Hitchens, one of my least favorite intellectuals.

I’m glad I did.

Click here to read the whole essay.