HATING WHITEY

This collection of screeds by self-styled conservative columnist David Horowitz (The Politics of Bad Faith, 1998; Radical Son, 1997; etc.) lampoons what he views as the destructive orthodoxies blindly embraced by liberal apologists. Nearly all of these pieces first appeared as essays in Salon magazine, which Horowitz characterizes as —a left-of-center publication with sufficient editorial independence to include a dissident writer like myself.— The self-characterization is telling because these essays, which purport to be social commentary, reveal an author who likes nothing more than bucking the views of the majority. In one piece, Horowitz chronicles his youthful dalliance with the Black Panthers and his subsequent disillusionment as he came to realize that the party leadership consisted not of idealists but of murderous thugs. In more recent years, he has entered a less lethal arena of combat: the halls of left-wing academia, where, as a guest speaker, he fights the conservative battle against the entrenched forces of the radicalized, but comfortably tenured, elite. Despite the intrusiveness of his ego, Horowitz writes engagingly about contentious issues, particularly the politics of race. Specifically, he objects to the way in which blacks are given carte blanche to indulge in reverse racism, a tendency that Horowitz traces in part to affirmative action and the contemporary mania to stake out the role of the victim. In a highly polemical style, Horowitz argues that Americans, particularly black Americans, have lost sight of the color-blind society envisioned by Dr. King. Horowitz is at his best when he uses the more glaringly fallacious arguments advanced by his ideological foes to expose their inherent hypocrisy. He is at his worst when he engages in personal attacks, such as his gratuitous characterization of cultural theorist bell hooks as —a relatively young woman of limited intelligence and modest talent.— Although occasionally blurred by egotism, invective, and repetition, these essays will both aggravate and amuse.