On Cspan right now is the debate between Christopher Hitchens, and Gorgeous George Galloway. It was absolutely brutal, in a really polite kinda british way. Recap below the fold. Check it out.
It was billed as the Grapple in the Big Apple and two of Britain's leading political bruisers did not disappoint as they traded punches in a heavyweight debate in New York.
In the red corner, acknowledging the cheers of the crowd, was the new darling of America's Left, George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow.
Christopher Hitchens and George Galloway do battle
Coming at him from the blue corner was the columnist and apostate from the Left, Christopher Hitchens. It was not going to be a clean fight.
"You did write like an angel," Mr Galloway told his opponent as they exchanged insults over the war in Iraq. "You're now working for the Devil and damn you."
"The battle over which of us can be the ruder - I have already conceded that to him," parried Mr Hitchens. "The battle over which of us is the more cerebral he has already conceded to me."
The MP, expelled from the Labour Party for calling on British troops to defy orders, is on a nationwide tour to promote his book Mr Galloway Goes to Washington: The Brit Who Set Congress Straight about Iraq.
He is still basking in the glory of his May appearance before the Senate when he lambasted the war and called Mr Hitchens "a drink-soaked, former Trotskyist popinjay" in a brief encounter before his testimony.
"I am delighted to be called a popinjay in the proper sense of that word, which means a target for archery or shot," Mr Hitchens, a cheerleader for the war and now regarded by many of his old comrades as a traitor.
Mr Hitchens was once an elegant "butterfly", continued Mr Galloway. But "he had now done something unique in natural history: he is responsible for the first ever metamorphosis of a butterfly back into a slug. The one thing a slug does is leave a trail of slime behind it.
"I was told by my father never to wrestle with a chimney sweep, because you always come away dirty. You are not a chimney sweep. That is not coal dust on you. You are covered with stuff you like to smear on others."
Mr Hitchens opened the debate by supporting the motion: "The March 2003 war in Iraq was necessary and just."
But every time Mr Hitchens made a broad political point, Mr Galloway switched to personal invective. "The Hitch," as he is sometimes known, was forced to follow suit.
Mr Galloway accused Mr Hitchens of "Goebbelian tricks". Mr Hitchens fired back by accusing Mr Galloway of courting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, the "human toothbrush, the slobbering dauphin son of a slobbering tyrant".
"For Mr Hitchens to use the word 'slobbering' is not wise," Mr Galloway said.
"It is a disgrace that an MP should go before the Senate and decline to testify and sink to guttersnipe abuse," Mr Hitchens said.
"This war in which he glories; I wish he'd go and pick up a gun and go and fight himself," Mr Galloway responded. "He said that soldiers would be greeted by flowers. Two thousand young American soldiers are lying in the ground, a testament to the fact that they were welcomed by something else."