First we should note that Christopher Hitchens's New York Times Review of David Mamet's The Secret History ("David Mamet's Right Wing Conversion" New York Times, 6/17/11) will do in a pinch, and he adequately conveys that we are dealing with, first and foremost, a rotten book. Hitchens's has the integrity to cite the book at its embarrassing worst; a comparison of the leaks in the BP disaster and the matter of Julian Assange.
One could quibble that Hitchens does not mention that the book is fairly ugly, racist swill (Mamet, in the now familiar tradition of the right, craps on the philosophy and accomplishments of MLK and then hypocritically praises him at book's end), though this might have been tricky, since the book draws a blurb from Shellby Steel, who is also Hitchens's go-to guy for reverse discrimination blather. Since Mamet and Hitchens are both, more or less, amazing grace babies of Bush II, the seasoned Htich watcher might take a moment to examine Hitch's equivocations.
After the now obligatory spanking of Chomsky, Hitchens writes approvingly, "Once or twice, when he attacks feminists for their silence on Bill Clinton's sleazy sex life." Well, sleazy being a relative term, I am rather thankful for the feminists of the 90s being basically a lone, mostly ignored voice on the issues of human rights in Afghanistan, while the likes of Hitchens ignored them. Yet let's examine what Mamet actually puts down on page 140: "And where was the Left, and where were the Feminists, during President Clinton's savaging of Janita Broaddrick, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and Monica Lewinsky?"
Well, I could take this apart at length, but to be generous to Mamet, he has probably mixed up Susan McDougal with Kathleen Willey, who's name I had forgotten myself. If Mamet has an editor, he or she has yet to discover the magic of Google. One wonders if Hitch took note, however, of what a considerable blunder it was to insert McDougal's name here. The woman in question was put in jail by Ken Starr for refusing to manufacture evidence against Clinton, whom she claims she never met. Though she had essentially won her case through Jury nullification, Clinton later savagely awarded her a Presidential Pardon. Her story is ignored in Hitchens's stupid book on the subject, No One Left To Lie To.
A modestly imaginative biographer is likely to conclude that the impetus for Htichens big swing to the right was hardly 9-11, but rather the Bluementhal affair. After all, he had tired to get a personal friend arrested (one who had, by all accounts, had been generous and supportive to him) on false grounds in a political case. Once the nature of Monica Lewinsky became apparent (or the fact that she would be of no use in getting Clinton), Hitchens threw her under the bus himself. In terms that harked back to his his social climbing schooldays, he told Dennis Miller, "he diddles the help."
Yet after lying and bulling his way though all this (See Cockburn, the only one who called him out) the left took him back, and all was forgiven. Knowing in his heart what he had done, how could he ever again respect the left? Liberals, always possessing a healthy dose of battered wife syndrome, made Hitchens the man of the house for a few years before he left for the younger, sexier woman that was 9-11. That fun couple would of course go on to debauchery that made Hitchens's 90s shenanigans look pretty small time in comparison.
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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