Self-regard

I had only a vague awareness of who Christopher Hitchens was until I read Ian Parker's profile of him in the Oct. 16 New Yorker. The profile is not flattering. To my mind, the most revealing part is this:

I sincerely believe that for some of [my critics], when they see bad news from Iraq, the reaction is simply "This will make Hitchens look bad!" I've been trying to avoid solipsism, but I've come to believe there are such people.

I would like to point out that it is not logically inconsistent for Hitchens to believe in both solipsism and in the existence of at least one person of the kind who reacts to bad news from Iraq in this way.

Much later update: I have come to see that my joke is not directly relevant. I was confused because Hitchens is using "solipsism" in a non-standard or slightly metaphorical way, one which did turn up in a single entry from one dictionary in a dictionary.com search. I naturally took it that the existence of "such people" would be evidence that solipsism is false, since that is ordinarily the consequence that the existence of others has for the doctrine of solipsism.