When Eszterhas writes about Nixon, and his admirers like Lucianne Goldberg, he hits an overdrive button and summons the bat cave of purest evil. He hasn't read as much recent history as he thinks he has, or he would know that his forebears were mesmerized in precisely the same way to believe that Alger Hiss was framed. Thus does Nixon inherit an undeserved and posthumous victory. If by chance we ever elect a bent and unscrupulous Republican president, he or she will have a whole new thesaurus of excuses, public and ''private,'' with which to fend off impeachment. These ''bipartisan'' excuses will have been partly furnished by the ''nonjudgmental'' love generation. If Eszterhas had had the guts to face this fact, he could have written a book more like ''F.I.S.T.'' instead of ''Sliver.'' Christopher Hitchens How did the flower children fall for the clintons, 2 such self-evident thugs and opportunists?
The book begins with a puzzle: How did the flower children fall for such a self-evident thug and opportunist? And it offers a possible hypothetical answer, which is that ''the Night Creature'' -- Nixon -- and his heirs and assigns could not ever possibly be allowed to be right about anything.
Basic Instinct
Hitchens on "American Rhapsody"
The New York Times, July 30, 2000
HITCHENS ON THE CLINTONS
(FOOL ME ONCE, SHAME ON YOU! FOOL ME TWICE, SHAME ON ME!)
Mia T et al., 7.11.05