comment #1

Pinko Punko says ...

Site looks good, Jeff. Loads faster too.

comment #2

berg says ...

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

from the Mamet piece ...

Keith O needs an eyebrow trim. Mamet also recommends running a small town newspaper to truly understand folk. Think local go nuts

comment #3

Rich S. says ...

Regardless of your political leanings, Mamet does include one of the best summaries of the political system established by our Constitution I've ever read:

"The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long."

Winston Churchill once said that if you are young and you are not liberal, you have no heart; if you are old and you are not conservative, you have no brain. Mamet's piece sounds like he believes he's taken this advice to heart.

comment #4

admiralmpj says ...

I guess the shock for me, having some familiarity with Mr. Mamet's work was...when the hell was he ever a liberal??

comment #5

George Prager says ...

He loved Big Brother!

As a satirical piece, it's fair. At least he didn't include that shopworn anecdote about the post9/11 dinner party where someone called Bush a fascist. That's been done to death. My favorite line: "I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher)"

I think playwrights should continue to embrace childish politics. Look at Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, Tony Kushner, etc. It hasn't hurt their art in the least; so I am encouraged by Mamet's decision to remain brain dead.

comment #6

Me says ...

Whatever. When was the last time Mamet wrote a play or directed a film that anyone cared about?

comment #7

actionman says ...

I fucking love David fucking Mamet

Oh, and Me: Spartan, Wag the Dog, State & Main, Heist, Edmond, episodes of The Shield, etc........

comment #8

Edward says ...

I'm proud to be "a brain dead liberal."

comment #9

bluefugue says ...

>if you are old and you are not conservative, you have no brain.

I think I might amend Churchill's dictum to: "if you are old and not conservative, you have no money."

People ultimately tend to follow their interests. If the system is working for them and they have accumulated property -- which is the case for many people who were once idealistic, poor students -- you probably becomes more interested in preserving the status quo. If on the other hand you get older and the system still isn't working for you, there's no downside in agitating to change it.

I am not quite old, but not particularly young either. I am not conservative yet. I am, in fact, more liberal than I was five-to-ten years ago, and that is in part because the shoe is pinching more and more where I live, and it cannot be sustained, and I dream however fruitlessly of a country that behaves like a civilization rather than like an unapologetic jungle of creatures crawling over one another for the next dime.

comment #10

christian says ...

Maybe this is the result of watching too much Ultimate Fighting -- and taking it seriously.

comment #11

MathewM says ...

I agree with Bluefugue. I was more conservative five years ago than I am now. Reason being is that life experiences have altered my political views. I actually trust the government less but I distrust large corporations even more. I read "a brain dead liberal" as being a refusal to change views based on some doctrine you prescribed yourself in the past that no longer may hold true to yourself. It goes both ways of course.

comment #12

frankbooth says ...

I've always said that Mamet was too touchy-feely and in tune with his feminist side.

Now he's finally ready to write the remake of Red Dawn.

comment #13

frankbooth says ...

FEMININE. Dammit. Well, I guess it still makes sense, kinda.

comment #14

tophertilson says ...

His latest play, NOVEMBER (about a politician no less), is a travesty. Maybe he was stripped of his talent when he handed in his liberal card.

comment #15

Me says ...

Actionman, I used to love Mamet, but for me State & Maine was the last interesting thing he wrote, which was about eight years ago. Spartan was okay, but other than that, his output in the 00s has been pretty sad.

comment #16

Gordie Lachance says ...

The most depressing thing of late, to me, is that people like Mamet and Larry David, guys I thought were slightly more on the ball than average, are themselves nothing more than wide-eyed rubes stumbling down the midway with a corn dog in each hand.

The question now isn't whether America can be fixed, but if anyone should even bother.

comment #17

MilkMan says ...

In other words:

My name is David Mamet and I am a very rich man. I can no longer pretend that I am working class, or for the working class, or believe that the system inherently works to grind the working class into human pulp. I have a house in Vermont, a house in Manhattan, and a house in Los Angeles. It is time for me to quit the charade. I am playing a part for which I cannot muster any type of realistic intentions in order to make the words sound true. I live in rareified air and I must act accordingly. From my point of view, everything works just fine. I believe in the dream because I am living it. The title of my next play is God Bless America.

comment #18

mutinyco says ...

Well, what he's basically arguing is the same thing that Kubrick was saying 35 years ago -- that the fundamental core of liberalism, that people are good and that society is to fault, is a fraudulent concept. Kubrick argued that man is not a noble savage but an ignoble savage, and that since society is created by man, by nature, society's faults are an extension of man's. And you can see this play out repeatedly in his films.

It's a question of real world pragmatism versus intellectual idealism. Whereas liberalism is an ideal based on hope and change, conservatism is an allegiance to doctrine and often influenced by worst case scenarios.

It would seem to me that the intelligent, pragmatic, real world position is somewhere in the middle: while hope and change might be an admirable direction to work towards, we must not disregard the evil of the world and be prepared to confront it.

comment #19

robbiefantastic says ...

i was just on the website for the "the list" checking out the trailer and in PG rating box is states that the film has "incidental smoking" in it......is this really necessary???

comment #20

George Prager says ...

Well, if you lose Gordie La Chance's respect, you must be doing something right.

comment #21

Arizona Joe says ...

What we don't need is brain dead liberals.

We need thinking liberals who can analyze data and facts and come up with a system that strikes a balance between the free market and fainess, and finding regulations which lead to steady growth instead of boom and bust cycles.

A guy purportedly as smart as Mamet is reduced to binary thinking where you are either a brain dead liberal or a libertarian conservative with no shading inbetween.

The Mamet piece had several dubious observations. There is little analogy between Iraq and Vietnam, which took place in the shadow of the Soviet Union and China.

Network television had hegemony. The Internet is almost the complete opposite. Jeff Wells can be his very own Bill Paley.

I did not find the Mamet essay well considered, nor all that rational. It was glandular, self-serving, macho, and really not worth reading.

I wonder if Mamet ever had a talent for blocking and tackling. Perhaps he has compensated.

comment #22

George Prager says ...

I was waiting for AJoe to weight in.

Best line:

"I did not find the Mamet essay well considered, nor all that rational. It was glandular, self-serving, macho, and really not worth reading."

Hahahaha

comment #23

erniesouchak says ...

Mamet is a rabid Zionist crusader.

comment #24

K. Bowen says ...

I've worked at small newspapers. I know exactly what he means. And he's right.

comment #25

bill weber says ...

What Mamet means is he doesn't want to hear even a whisper about Israeli apartheid.

comment #26

D.Z. says ...

"The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government,"

Wait, slave-owners who attended town hall meetings=experienced?

mutiny: "that the fundamental core of liberalism, that people are good and that society is to fault, is a fraudulent concept."

Yeah, government has no place to intervene in countries which whip and stone women for getting raped.

Arizona: "We need thinking liberals who can analyze data and facts and come up with a system that strikes a balance between the free market and fainess,"

Is it because you ran out of thinking conservatives who could do the same thing?

comment #27

Jay T. says ...

Hey, do you think anyone has ever told Mamet to his face that his dialogue is the weirdest fucking thing ever? I mean, I like a lot of his films, but the dialogue is just so off (in a bad way), although he works in so many great, clever little lines that he can get away with it.

What's my point? Mamet never seemed quite in touch to begin with...

comment #28

oakling says ...

In touch with his feminine side? (certainly not his feminist side!) I went to Mills College, a women's liberal arts college in CA, some ten years ago, and they could not get permission from him to put on a play of his because all the parts would be played by women and he refused to allow that. He was persona non grata in the theater department at least for a while...

comment #29

George Prager says ...

Is there a greater badge of honor for a playwright than being persona non grata in the MIlls College theater department?

comment #30

Titus Pullo says ...

Why would someone who doesn't believe in government as capable of solving social problems be a conservative? I mean in the real world. I understand what conservatives believe conservativism SHOULD be, but on a basic metaphysical level, a thing is what it is, not what it should be, or what it's blueprint is.

Conservativism is what it is now. Strict adherence to the national mythology, deep belief in authority, lack of respect for separation of church and state, belief in the primacy of the Bible over the Constitution, a belief that individual privacy is not a constitutional right and a belief that, I suppose because God is on our side, we cannot ever lose wars, despite fact.