David Mamet’s Right-Wing Conversion

[Valin]

NY Times Book Review:

Christopher Hitchens
6/17/11

This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason. In order to be persuaded by it, you would have to be open to propositions like this:

(Snip)

Some of David Mamet’s unqualified declarations are made even more tersely. On one page affirmative action is described as being “as injust as chattel slavery”; on another as being comparable to the Japanese internment and the Dred Scott decision. We learn that 1973 was the year the United States “won” the Vietnam War, and that Karl Marx — who on the evidence was somewhat more industrious than Sarah Palin — “never worked a day in his life.” Slackness or confusion might explain his reference to the *Scottish-Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook as a Jewish courtier in the tradition of Disraeli and Kissinger, but it is more than ignorant to say of Bertrand Russell — author of one of the first reports from Moscow to analyze and excoriate Lenin — that he was a fellow-traveling dupe and tourist of the Jane Fonda style.

(Snip)

I am writing this review in the same week as I am conducting a rather exhausting exchange with Noam Chomsky in the pages of a small magazine. I have no difficulty in understanding why it is that former liberals and radicals become exasperated with the pieties of the left. I have taught at Berkeley and the New School, and I know what Mamet is on about when he evokes the dull atmosphere of campus correctness. Once or twice, as when he attacks feminists for their silence on Bill Clinton’s sleazy sex life, or points out how sinister it is that we use the word “czar” as a positive term for a political problem-solver, he is unquestionably right, or at least making a solid case. But then he writes: “The BP gulf oil leak . . . was bad. The leak of thousands of classified military documents by Julian Assange on WikiLeaks was good. Why?” This is merely lame, fails to compare like with like, appears unintentionally to be unsure why the gulf leak was “bad” and attempts an irony where none exists.

(Snip)

I LOVE Hitchens writing even when I disagree with him...which is often.

[saveliberty]

I enjoy reading Hitchens, but he is king of using stupid tactics from the 1960s which assume that if person A is not perfect, therefore he must be repudiated, unless of course, he has the same beliefs as Hitchens.

 

Example, in Hitchens' world it is not possible to agree with Hayek on The Road to Serfdom and disagree with him about anything else, such as Why I am not a Conservative.

 

Hitchens either does not know or chooses to feign ignorance that conservatism changed in the past century. Hayek uses an older definition of conservatism as opposing change and we have seen since Reagan that conservatism actually means 18th century liberalism.

 

Using his own method against him, Hitchens must necessarily reject Trotsky as he in his own words summarized communism as state ownership of people, deplorable on its own. And yet he does not.

 

Hitchens has a gift for coining phrases, one of which was about George Galloway, remarking that Galloway was prolier than thou.

 

In reading Hitchens' irritation in the book review, I do see the nuance of a privileged person writing this, not appreciating that David Mamet has done what Hitchens has not: honestly reviewed his own beliefs and prejudices and changed his worldview. Hitchens, on the other hand, will speak out against those on the left whom he believes to be corrupt, but he will go to enormous lengths to cover for a leftist whom he likes.

[righteousmomma]

GREAT POINTS, Save.

[righteousmomma]

I have to confess I scan read Hitchens opinion piece and I must confess to being disappointed in him. I agree with Save but have to add some thoughts.

 

First of all Mamet is writing from his own personal viewpoint and understanding -NOT as an expert or a pundit but the way he sees it (whatever the "it" may be).

 

Second -I realize Hitchens is hopeless to see life anyway but from his convinced atheist viewpoint. I mean Noam Chomsky!!! Come on! In the publishing bag with George Soros! A self confessed libertarian socialist!! This is the philosophizing type Hitchens has chosen to exalt in his final days?? !!

 

Then to quote Hitchens:

For example, Mamet writes in “The Secret Knowledge” that “the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.” Whatever one’s opinion of that conflict may be, this (twice-made) claim of his abolishes any need to analyze or even discuss it. It has a long way to go before it can even be called simplistic. By now, perhaps, you will not be surprised to know that Mamet regards global warming as a false alarm, and demands to be told “by what magical process” bumper stickers can “save whales, and free Tibet.” This again is not uncharacteristic of his pointlessly aggressive style: who on earth maintains that they can? If I were as prone to sloganizing as Mamet, I’d keep clear of bumper-sticker comparisons altogether.

 

So?? Tell me anything from over 4000 years of history that proves differently.

But then any man or woman who is anti the God of the Bible and the Bible itself is simply incapable of seeing life and purpose any other way. Simplistic? YES.

Or this:

 

“America is a Christian country. Its Constitution is the distillation of the wisdom and experience of Christian men, in a tradition whose codification is the Bible.

”

 

YES! Maybe the very erudite and brilliant Hitchens should reread the History of Western Civilization with the Chapters on the founding of the U.S. Apparently he is the simplistic one.

[saveliberty]

Righteousmomma! You hit the nail on the head!

[saveliberty]

I finished reading David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge today. I enjoyed it, although the read at the beginning is a little slow. But now I understand exactly what Hitchens disliked; Mamet impales every single one of Hitchens' sacred cows.

 

No wonder he was defensive about Marx being a worker. The comments about Viet Nam and Leftist hypocrisy either inflamed or went in one ear and out the other.