Cogburn on Leiter on Hitchens

After lamenting Leiter’s assessment of Hitchens, Cogburn closes with this:

“The guy just died, for God’s sake.”

That should not be too surprising for anyone who remembers how Leiter chose to stomp on Derrida’s face just hours after he died in 2004. (Click HERE.)

One of my theories about ethics is that people are not held to the same rules. We’re all held to different standards in different areas, and there are certain things that each of us gets away with that no one else can get away with.

Well, Leiter seems to get away with being a jerk, including towards the recently dead, and still maintaining quite a number of supporters. This is why I was not jesting when I described him as the Rush Limbaugh of analytic philosophy. There are so many parallels.

[ADDENDUM: In fact, I’m going to start using the term “dittoheads” for those analytic philosophers who always rush to Leiter’s blog to praise his churlish comments with tail-wagging admiration.]