Blacklisting Myself: Memoir of a Hollywood Apostate in the Age of Terror

Like _The Kite Runner_, this is an impeccably written picture of horrors. If you've ever wondered what's wrong with American conservatism, this guy gives a very complete explanation. Religious conservatives, people who value virtue more than ideology, self-interest, and self-preservation, are significantly less common than 'paleocons,' the Kissinger or Metternich type who think nothing of selling out brown people for their own advantage and comfort, and 'neocons,' people like Mr. Simon here, who combines an aggressive and pragmatic geopolitical outlook with mockery of the bourgeois scruples that made him reluctant to commit adultery. (He is proud to say that he overcame those scruples.)

He also writes that he was a radical -- pro-Communist, pro-abortion, pro-drugs (apparently still a user; why is this scoundrel not in jail?), pro-you-name-it-if-it-kills-people -- back in the 1960s, and to a great extent even at the present; and he has no regrets, because it was the spirit of the times, and anyone who wasn't going along with that spirit was missing out on something memorable. A friend of mine wonders how that defense would have fared at Nuremburg. ( )