Quoted

Christopher Hitchens (AP Photo/Chad Rachman)

"Well, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have always taken the view that swastika symbols exist for one purpose only -- to be defaced."
-- Christopher Hitchens in the new Vanity Fair, on his decision last month to scribble "a well-known transitive verb" ending in a "k" on a poster in downtown Beirut for the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, prompting some street thugs to attack him. The Washington writer reports he was knocked to the ground, punched in the face.