Hitch

Christopher Hitchens on the Australian program Lateline:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS, JOURNALIST: Well, I hate to sound banal, but to me what it means is a crushing defeat for the racket that is formed by the media and the opinion poll industry, who have for weeks, months, been telling us it's a cliffhanger, purely in order as far as I can see to attract attention to themselves and the enormous tranche of campaign money that goes into their pockets the closer it is.If this wasn't being done by the American press and poll industry, it would be being reported by the American press.All I wanted, I have to say, is a result that made the pollsters look stupid and it well exceeded my expectations in this respect.As to what it means otherwise, there wasn't anything very much between the candidates that you could say was a moral or political issue.I mean, there was no big trouble between them about, for example, the war in Iraq, which did in the end I think become the single issue of the campaign even if not the only one.TONY JONES: It could, of course, have turned -- CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: But above all else, people will laugh when they hear the name Zogby from now on, and I can't tell you how important that is.

Zogby came out of this looking worse than any polling firm. The whole exit polling racket is going to be abandoned or severely reworked after Tuesdays election.