Kim Jong-Il and other people are dead

KJI's death, of course, is the most important thing to happen this month. For a great many people (at least 40 million people on the Korean peninsula), it is the most important thing to happen in 15 years. I assume it will get vastly less press than Christopher Hitchens' death. The Hitch could drink, and write, and sleep around. He was the kind of public intellectual that journalists think public intellectuals should be: glib and impressive to people who had a B average (these days, an A-) in their English major at a "good" school. Update: iOz does it better.