Posted on 05/29/2011 9:10:26 PM PDT by neverdem
While reading your new book, “The Secret Knowledge,” I thought, My God, in crucifying liberals, this guy is going to infuriate a huge chunk of the people who pay money to see plays. Are you concerned that you’re alienating your public?
I’ve been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When “American Buffalo” came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, “How dare he use that kind of language!” Of course I’m alienating the public! That’s what they pay me for.
Years ago, you described “American Buffalo” as being about “how we excuse all sorts of great and small betrayals and ethical compromises called business.” In this book, you defend enormous payouts to C.E.O.’s working for failing corporations. You seem to have changed radically.
I have. Here’s the question: Is it absurd for a company to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to a C.E.O. if the company is failing? The answer is that it may or may not be absurd, but it’s none of our goddamned business. Because as Milton Friedman said, the question is not what are the decisions but who makes the decisions. Because when the government starts deciding what’s absurd, you’re on the road to serfdom.
Don’t you have to denounce your early, anticapitalistic work then?
Of course not. At that time in my life I didn’t have a penny, and I was glad to be working at entry-level jobs. Having lived for quite a while longer, I see life from a different perspective. What am I going to do, go on denouncing capitalism all my life?
I gather you’re not subsisting on a diet of Rachel Maddow and The New York Review of Books. What do you read on a daily basis?
I went to a consultant a few years back...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Reality got to him.
“If your not a liberal at twenty you have no heart, if your not a conservative at forty you have no brain.” -Sir Winston Churchhill
|
Hollywood liberals—his former crowd—once embraced Communism “because they hadn’t invented Pilates yet.”
“Listen, here’s the thing about an English degree — if you sat somebody down and asked them to make a list of the writers they admire over the last hundred years, see how many of them got a degree in English.”
Awesome.
Will have to plunk down the dinero for this book.
The NY Times couldn't stand the whole truth.
Regards,
TS
Very interesting. Thanks for posting.
we “won in Vietnam”
We were winning when I left.
bookmark
Great read. David Mamet is far too bright to remain a dirtclod lib fark for ever. No way. So glad to see him using his brain power. (dude is smart...and talented).
Along these lines, there is a very interesting read at the link below about the earlier life of a yellow journalist, and the later life despondency of, William Randolph Hearst:
http://www.evesmag.com/hearst.htm
He was a HUGE supporter of the Soviet Bolsheviks, surprise! Even insisting on anonymously writing editorials that were prominently placed in his newspapers throughout the country.
(Btw, if you didn’t know, the movie “Citizen Kane” was based on Hearst -great movie!)
In addition, William Randolph Hearst was a big early supporter of Hitler. Holocaust survivors sued his estate to recover artwork stolen by the Nazi’s Holocaust, the Hearst family and the left has worked very hard to “paint“ Hearst as being an unwitting buyer and have gone so far as to suggest he bought the art to save it...
“Holocaust Heirs Awarded Two Paintings from Hearst Castle Collection”
Art Knowledge News
SAN SIMEON, Calif. – Two paintings from the 1500s that hung in Hearst Castle for decades are being returned to the family of Holocaust victims who were forced to sell them by the Nazis, State authorities said. A two-year investigation by the State determined that three paintings in the castle originally belonged to antique dealers Rosa and Jakob Oppenheimer. The Oppenheimers and other Jewish business owners were forced to sell their property in the 1930s. The Oppenheimers fled to France but later died in the Holocaust.
The heirs to their estate allowed California to retain ownership of one painting that will remain at the castle, the state Department of Parks and Recreations said Monday in a statement. The others were to be handed over to family representatives.
William Randolph Hearst, the wealthy publisher who built the castle and stocked it with art from around the world, didn’t know the ownership history when he acquired the paintings in 1935, the parks department said.
The 16th century paintings include a portrait of a man with a book and a necklace of shells around his shoulders that may be the work of Venetian artist Giovanni Cariani, according to the parks department.
Great interview and refreshing insight. It is never too late to come to your senses.
Can you repost this or get the mods to clarify questions/answers?
Mamet has always been a wordsmith, although his vulgarity detracted from his characters. GGGR would have been equally effective if he’d checked the vulgarity at the door.
From the interview here’s another money quote:
“Shelby Steele and I were on a panel, and some white woman asked, “What can we do for the African-American community?” There was a long pause, and he said, in the saddest voice I’ve ever heard, “Leave us alone.” It’s appalling what the government has done to the great African-American community in the last 50 years.”
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