Christopher Hitchens "can tell the difference between a true tumbrel remark and a false one."

And, he assures us, it's not John McCain saying -- asked about his houses -- "I think—I'll have my staff get to you. It's condominiums where—I'll have them get to you." It's:

The late queen mother, being driven in a Rolls-Royce through a stricken district of Manchester, England, said as she winced at the view, "I see no point at all in being poor." The Duke of St. Albans once told an interviewer that an ancestor of his had lost about 50 million pounds in a foolish speculation in South African goldfields, adding after a pause, "That was a lot of money in those days." The Duke of Devonshire, having been criticized in the London Times, announced in an annoyed and plaintive tone that he would no longer have the newspaper "in any of my houses."

Get it?