David Mamet Explains His Shift to the Right

NY Times ^ | May 27, 2011 | ANDREW GOLDMAN

[syriacus]

Thanks for posting this interesting interview.

[hellbender]

When Churchill made that statement, “liberal” did not mean Marxist, as it does today.

[Rummyfan]

Because when the government starts deciding what’s absurd, you’re on the road to serfdom.

Have ordered Mamet's book from Amazon. Can't wait to read it!

[VRW Conspirator]

Mamet is done. Hopefully he will find a spot in the camps with the rest of us.

Camps? That is soooooo 20th century! They will be referred as Re-Patriotizing Day Spa's. Sheeez. Get with it. And, I will see you at a "meet and greet" at one of those Spa's underneath the Diversity Pavillion.

[lentulusgracchus]

On the other hand, the tragic sense of life which came through in his plays was always conservative: the left thinks man is perfectible.....

Bingo. You just nuked the entire Left.

[headsonpikes]

“Camps? That is soooooo 20th century!’

Exactly! For the 21st century just one word - biodiesel.

[aruanan]

On the other hand, the tragic sense of life which came through in his plays was always conservative: the left thinks man is perfectible.....

And the weirdest thing is what they consider to be perfection: the throwing off of all tradition and history and their substitution with whatever the left happens to think at the time as being the sine qua non of perfection.

[TheRightGuy]

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).

I went to high school with Mamet ... nothng is as it seems ... everything is an "act" ... he was a fraud then and now.

[VRW Conspirator]

Exactly! For the 21st century just one word - biodiesel.

Oh for crying out loud! Soylent(sp) Green! Emphasis on the "green". This is surreal. Your freaking me, headsonpikes.

[W. W. SMITH]

(I don’t know. If you look at Paul Johnson’s or Thomas Sowell’s description of the term, it would be a guy who’s not aware that he doesn’t know anything.)

The more condescending and snarky the intellectuals attitude, the closer to null his accumulation of knowledge.

I have often referred to PHDs as narrow minded egotistical idiots. Do you think this might be why my college GPA suffered?

[W. W. SMITH]

I was a conservative at 12, now......

if I where absolute dictator there would be no progressives in any position of power or authority in this nation.

[lentulusgracchus]

GGGR would have been equally effective if he’d checked the vulgarity at the door.

Disagree. I sold retail inside in the 70's. That's what frustration with life sounds like, when guys are being slowly sharped and shortchanged into an early grave by their cheapskate, chiseling employers. Salesmen talk like that among themselves. Absolutely. Mamet didn't turn up the thermostat but a trifling couple of degrees.

[lentulusgracchus]

[You, quoting the NYT quoting Mamet] It’s appalling what the government has done to the great African-American community in the last 50 years.

The "black films" of the 1940's depicted an intact "colored" society in the "colored" part of town. It was segregated (in the North moreso, but pretty much everywhere), and Jim Crow was around in the South, but blacks had intact families served by a black middle-class business community, black lawyers and detectives and policemen, and a vigorous black religious and newspapering establishment.

The black part of town was functional.

[W. W. SMITH]

A manure pile of progressive spewage.

Gore tried to steal the election in Florida. bush did not.

Kennedy stole his in Chicago and Texas.

Bush did not out a CIA agent. That was by a minor progressive functionary and the agent was only a low level annalist. Cheney's chief of staff was wrongfully convicted.

Kennedy did leave hundreds to die at the Bay of Pigs. Where they all or even mostly CIA agents? Unlikely!

Bush did not lie about his military service.

Was bush in bed with the Saudis or Kennedy with the Mafia? That would make a good book plot. BUT.....

[headsonpikes]

I think Soylent Green is a difficult product to sell because of the negative cannibalism vibe.

Biodiesel, not so much...

[Yardstick]

On the other hand, the tragic sense of life which came through in his plays was always conservative: the left thinks man is perfectible, that if we just put the correct programs in place everyone will be happy forever. The conservative, or anyone with a tragic sense of life, knows this to be rubbish.

Yep, and the irony is that once you see life in the tragic sense and that people aren't perfectible, you can be happy and truly love people. Liberals don't get this, of course, because they are deaf to irony.

[Yardstick]

I’d like to see the whole thing. One of his answers seems to miss the point and I strongly suspect it’s a result of the editing.

[Yardstick]

I went to high school with Mamet ... nothng is as it seems ... everything is an "act" ... he was a fraud then and now.

You think he's faking it?

[TheRightGuy]

You think he's faking it?

he's always "on" ... no telling his real feelings

[Impy]

Glengarry Glen Ross, good movie.