Best. Editor-in-Chief. Ever.

Prose-master Marty Peretz says something that I think we can all chuckle at together:

It pains to me (sic) have to cite Christopher Hitchens to you (sic) as it pains me when I cite him to myself (sic).

Chuckle chuckle. OK. Unpack for a second. I think he means, "It pains me to have to cite Christopher Hitchens at all--whether I'm citing him to you, dear readers, or to myself." Something like that. Anyhow, we all know that Marty Peretz actually just enjoys citing himself--both to himself and to everybody else. It's his greatest pastime. And so we get this:

We met maybe 20 years ago, maybe even 25, and did not hit it off. And that's an understatement. He has written so absurdly about so many matters--but Israel especially--that I have to make an extreme effort to actually read him at all.

Still, I do read him, and, ever since he deserted the low left and shuttled over to the high right, he has been smarter and also funnier.

Here's my predictable lefty rebuttal: Anybody--including Hitchens--who has, in his ideological evolution, become more respected by Marty Perez over the years has almost certainly become neither smarter nor funnier during that time. Still, I'd like to know more details about that meeting between the two men way back in the 1980s. Would have been great fun to witness.