Brain dead liberals

 The reaction from the liberal-left to David Mamet’s confession that he is no longer a “brain-dead liberal” has been strangely muted — and often hilariously ludicrous. The most priceless piece of bien pensant thinking comes, naturally, from Michael Billington, the Guardian’s tedious, right-on theatre critic.
 
“I am depressed to read that David Mamet has swung to the right,” says the poor dear. “What worries me is the effect on his talent of locking himself into a rigid ideological position.”
 
Let’s just unravel the massive self-regarding hypocrisy behind that statement. As long as Mamet was writing plays from Billington’s liberal-left perspective, he was a beacon of free-thinking insight and judgement. Now that he’s thrown off his liberal-left ideological blinkers, he’s “locking himself into a rigid ideological position”.
 
With that sort of logic you wonder why Billington has survived for three decades as a theatre critic — but then you remember it is The Guardian he writes for.