Got to give Christopher Hitchens credit for writing well

I'm normally not a Christopher Hitchens fan, but here's a paragraph from a piece about the reaction in Afghanistan to the burning of a Quran in Florida.

How dispiriting to see, once again, the footage of theocratic rage in Kandahar and Mazar-i-Sharif. The same old dreary formula: self-righteous frenzy married to a neurotic need to take offense; the easy resort to indiscriminate violence and cruelty; the promulgation of makeshift fatwas by mullahs on the make; those writhing mustaches framing crude slogans of piety and hatred, and yelling for death as if on first-name terms with the Almighty. The spilling of blood and the spoliation of property—all for nothing, and ostensibly 'provoked' by the corny, brainless antics of a devout American nonentity, notice of whose mere existence is beneath the dignity of any thinking person.

Very nicely put.