Galloway vs. Hitchens

"If he turns up drunk he'll be a pushover. If he turns up sober he'll be shaking like a leaf."

-- George Galloway, before the debate

[He] says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true)... and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest).

-- Christopher Hitchens, before the debate

The widely anticipated "Grapple in the Apple" was held last night at City University of New York. Judging from early reports it was a hugely entertaining affair and the closely divided, partisan audience had multiple opportunities to whoop it up.

Anti-war British MP George Galloway slung a bag full of articulate insults at his opponent, such as 'Hitchens metamorphosed from a butterfly into a slug'. And former peacenik-turned-hawk Hitchens stooped just as low to accuse Galloway of being a "disgrace" and "beneath contempt" for coming to America.

Galloway exploded a lot of our home-grown politicians' heads last Spring when he clearly bested the insipid Minnesota senator, Norm Coleman, from the witness chair during a Senate subcommittee hearing. To add profit to insult, Galloway is now touring the U.S. to promote his latest book about the incident, aptly titled " Mr. Galloway Goes To Washington."

Hitchens is an acid-penned Vanity Fair columnist and former British leftist who often can be found trying to cadge free drinks backstage at Fox TV News. Incongruously, he opposed the 1991 Iraq war but supports the current version, which looks to be rapidly decomposing into intractable chaos and civil war.

The Galloway-Hitchens debate will be re-broadcast several times over the next week on cable station C-SPAN2. The first showing is at 9:00 pm (EDT) Saturday, September 17.