I'm Really Going to Miss Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens reviews David Mamet's new book The Secret Knowledge at NYTimes.com and he's in rare form.

One of the things that's been so dismaying about Mamet's recent screeds is not that he's embraced conservatism, but that he seems to have taken up the most angry, bitter, condescending, and intellectually dishonest form of it. As Hitchens puts it:

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.


Wham. 

Hitchens, as is his wont, acknowledges his own exasperation with what he calls "the pieties of the left," but he also has little patience with "Mamet’s commitment to the one-dimensional or the flat-out partisan."  He also touches upon  my other reason for dismay at what Mamet's been up to lately: the man who's penned so many great words of his own seems content now to parrot the work of far inferior wordsmiths like Glenn Beck. 

The whole thing is worth a read. I may not always agree with Hitchens, but I'm convinced reading him makes you smarter.