A sure sign of ineptitude and malice is manifested when one's attacker is willing to cover himself with mud in order to try and make some of it adhere to his target.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the futility and moral bankruptcy of attacking someone while resorting to underhanded tactics.
Christopher Hitchens emphasizes that individuals lacking virtue are willing to engage in dirty tactics to undermine others. This quote serves as a cautionary observation on the nature of personal attacks, revealing how those who resort to dishonest behavior do so out of a place of ineptitude and malice, rather than genuine conflict. It suggests that the actions and motivations of the attacker speak more about their character than the target's shortcomings.
In practice
During a debate, I used this quote to illustrate how attacks with no grounding reflect poorly on the attacker.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
I believe you are your work. Don't trade the stuff of your life, time, for nothing more than dollars. That's a rotten bargain.
I've learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. There is a certain anger: it reaches such intensity that to express it fully would require homicidal rage--self destructive, destroy the world rage--and its flame burns because the world is so unjust. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness.
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Pain is a treasure, for it contains mercies.
Ignorance and error are necessary to life, like bread and water.
We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine, but if defer tasting them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
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