I really don't see what the conflict is. This is sort of like stubbing your toe and blaming the fact that you had toast for breakfast.

Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, and, to a larger degree, LBJ and Nixon, were all responsible for the nightmare in Vietnam. Whereas, Iraq is all Bush. I do not recall JFK fabricating the Gulf of Tonkinm or ordering the bombing of Cambodia. In the case of a Bush comparison, I do not recall JFK, at any time, officially sanctioning torture or indefinite detention. And I cannot see Bush handling himself with the courage and poise of JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Mamet's comments are hardly surprising, given that he is the same guy who brought us the cheery fascism of "The Untouchables".

Hmm...I read the article, and I would have a hard time labeling Mamet as a "neo-conservative".

And "Oleanna" isn't either/or. The ending ("Oh my God..." "Yes, that's right") seems to want to at least partially subvert what has come before -- I don't think it quite succeeds at doing that, but I believe the intent is there. Further muddying the waters is an interview Mamet gave about once where he said that the character John, at the end of the play, realizes that "he is the cause of the plague in Thebes" (I'm paraphrasing a bit). Which, when you think about it, doesn't really clear up all that much.

And Jim, I have to ask, if you had agreed with Mamet's points in this article, would you still have taken that shot about his beret?

JE: Bill, the beret joke predates this by many years. But, yes, you make my point: I wouldn't have thought of Mamet's work in strictly political terms, anyway. (I was being sarcastic about "Oleanna" -- which is about the manipulation of PC politics for personal ends.) I would never label him a "neo-con" (I thought this post was about the futility of such labels) -- just pointing out that the idealism he attributes to "liberalism" also motivates the neo-cons.

Thank God he ditched the beret.

But seriously, folks (though I find it hard to take Mamet's diatribe seriously), does he really see the United States as simply "a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals?" Doesn't he understand that there are social constructs higher than the individual, that as a confection of individuals single-mindedly pursuing those "rather wonderful and privileged circumstances" we've had rather drastic negative results on other cultures?

As you say, Jim, this was doubtless written as provocation. I have a hard time believing that the author of "Glengarry Glen Ross" is really that dumb.

So is he now a braindead independent or a braindead neocon?

No offense to Mamet, I've always loved his work, but if comparing Bush to Kennedy is what got him to this point then an intellectual titan he ain't. I can think of things to admire or detest in most presidents. I can think of Democratic Presidents that were great and ones that were lousy. Obviously the same goes for Republicans. And this is the first I've heard that believing everyone to be good at heart is what makes you a liberal. I always foolishly thought liberals and conservatives were defined according to their social and economic policies concerning civil rights, civil liberties, tax reform, welfare reform, intervention abroad, corporate regulation, military spending, social security reform, privacy issues and on and on. Silly me.

And of course this only defines the designation itself - not the individual, who like me, may fall on one side with some issues and on the other side with others.

I hate it when an artist I like and admire reveals himself to be... uh... ahem... less than intelligent in most areas outside of their specific talent. But it's not the first time so I'll get over it. It's just surprising to hear such simplistic "analysis" from someone who has written so many complex and complicated plays and screenplays. And even when you read his entire piece is doesn't get any more analytical.

Maybe this means he's going to start hanging with the Hitch (Chris that is). I bet he could get a good play (or at least character) from hanging with that drink-soaked former Trotskyist popinjay.

And I would be remiss if I didn't conclude by saying Mamet can be a braindead whatever all he wants as long as it's not a Whig. I can't stand those Whigs... aaarrrggghhh - I'm getting angry just thinking about them.

Coming out as a proud ex-liberal in Hollywood. What balls.

Always liked David Mamet, now I like him even more, I think throwing out everything you believe is pretty essential, at least once in a while.

You hit the nail on the head, Jim. Almost nothing I have seen or read of Mamet's (almost everything he's done) has ever given me the impression that his was a worldview comparable to hippies. He's always had right-wing tendencies, mixed in with armchair machismo, and a somewhat contradictory rebelliosness. This doesn't come across as an epiphany at all.

(I still love his general mastery of the English language, and think his On Directing Film one of the better primers into the craft.)

By the way, I love the address to this entry: "david_mamet_says_hes_not_a_bra.html"

Thanks god that's clear at least...

One thing Mamet doesn't address here is the idealistic philosophy of neo-conservatism

If he were writing about why he's a neo-con, then, yeah, he should address that. However, in an essay about why he no longer identifies as liberal, why would this be germane to his argument?

On a related note, where do David Mamet, Elton John, and Paul Schrader get their frames? It's quite the look.

but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered
----------
But Mamet doesn't give any examples as to how he *doesn't* think Bush is a monster. Kennedy/Bush comparisons are very common, and Mamet's tit for tat paragraph avoids any comment as to what he thinks about each President's actions, right or wrong. When he says "Kennedy got us into Vietnam/Bush got us into Iraq", that could have been written by Michael Moore, criticizing the hawkish past of the Democratic party. Or it could have been said by Joe Lieberman and Richard Perle making a favorable comparison between the interventionalist policies of one President with another and justifying the latter with the former. Without clarification we can't be sure what Mamet means. Otherwise doesn't it sound like he's just roll calling easy truisms about both presidents, that "government is corrupt" and "everything is wrong"?

Mike De Luca:

"But Mamet's comments are hardly surprising, given that he is the same guy who brought us the cheery fascism of 'The Untouchables'."

Care to explain that one?

Re: My neo-con paragraph. I was trying to illustrate why I question Mamet's premise, which is that liberals thing people are "good at heart" while conservatives don't. My point is that the philosophy of neoconservatism (the Project for the New American Century crowd) is based on the very "people are good" idealism that Mamet attributes to liberalism. I'm not interested in labeling Mamet (I never thought of his work in those terms) -- my point is that the labels aren't as neat as they may seem. I'm also trying to separate the "brain-dead" from the political orientations -- not to say that anyone who uses such a label is "brain-dead" but to suggest that, in the terms Mamet describes, the problem has less to do with political philosophy than with human stupidity, corruption and ineptitude. There's a difference between "brain-dead liberal" (as in "all liberals are brain-dead") and "brain-dead liberal" (a subset of liberals who are brain-dead). I think Mamet's piece is more about the "brain-dead" than the political labels.

What I still want to know from Mamet is "what happened in 1973?" Are we ever going to find out?

JE: For me, 1973 is just a blur between Nixon's re-election and resignation. But I saw "The Long Goodbye" that year!

Ah, The Long Goodbye - I have complete cinephiliac love for that movie.

But that still doesn't explain the Huskies.

Jonathan: In regard to your second paragraph: "I always foolishly thought liberals and conservatives were defined according to their social and economic policies concerning civil rights, etc..."

- Haven't you considered that people's opinions on all of those issues you listed might be based, in part, on a person's opinion on the nature of people, or the nature of the individual? It seems fairly obvious to me that that's the case. In fact, your worldview wouldn't be very well thought-out if you didn't start with some kind of viewpoint about human nature itself.

Obviously Mamet was simplifying the matter - it's just an opinion piece, and isn't intended as an in-depth examination of each issue he brings up.

When he brought up the Bush/JFK comparison, he wasn't saying, "Well, now I've realized that Bush is a great president after all." He was simply bringing up how the labels that we use (liberal/conservative) dictate our opinions in rather shallow ways.

He talked about how he reviled Bush and held JFK in great regard, yet when he separated himself from the "liberal" label he realized that JFK, too, did things that Mamet (and many others) find reprehensible as well. He never said that meant Bush was greater than JFK; he was simply drawing simple comparisons to make a broader point.

As a fairly conservative man who is also a film geek, I would suggest to those taking offense to Mamet's article that you should be happy that 99% of all screenwriters, directors, and actors are left of center. If I let the personal politics of the people involved in moviemaking bother me, I'd have to find a different job.

This article didn't exactly make it seem like Mamet was going to start stumping for the GOP. Rather he was suggesting that he has realized that it is foolish to zealously envelop oneself in one political position, dismising any debate or discussion to the contrary.

It's the sort of thing countless people on both sides do, and thus I'm happy to see anyone question their views, whether or not I agree with them.

Well it's about damn time I got singled out in this comment section. It's always Harry Lime ruffling feathers and I was starting to get jealous.

Chris - In regards to your statement, Haven't you considered that people's opinions on all of those issues you listed might be based, in part, on a person's opinion on the nature of people, or the nature of the individual? It seems fairly obvious to me that that's the case. In fact, your worldview wouldn't be very well thought-out if you didn't start with some kind of viewpoint about human nature itself. I don't really have any argument with that. That is what I felt I was trying to say. That liberals and conservatives are defined by not only a myriad of ideas and idealogies but that within each one of those ideas and idealogies feelings and beliefs can go either way.

I realize Mamet's is a simplified opinion piece but I would argue that in the few words each of us have used here in our comments (me, you and everyone else) we have more deeply cut to the heart of the matter than Mamet did.

I know he wasn't saying Bush was a great president but his use of a JFK comparison was set up as if that indeed brought him to his newfound conclusions. And that I felt was overly simplistic. I would never think to adopt a new political outlook because I suddenly realized both LBJ and Nixon were sleazy. Where would that get me?

I guess in the end I was a bit surprised more than anything else. After years of exposure to the JFKs, LBJs, Nixons, Bushs, et al, he's just now figuring out that both parties have had corrupt leaders? And again, he was using such a slender definition of "liberal" (one who thinks people are good at heart) that it practically begged for a counterpunch - which knowing Mamet from his work he probably intended.

Chris: If that is what he meant, then Mamet may be a little behind on the evolution of JFK's reputation; many liberals do criticize him over some of the things he mentioned. So the comparison and point doesn't come across as novel as Mamet apparently intended. To further complicate it, many neoconservative editorial writers like to draw comparisons between Bush and JFK, not at JFK's expense, but to point out the similarities they like, thus implying that if you liked JFK you should support Bush's policies too. The "Well, now I've realized that Bush is a great president after all" reaction that you mentioned. But I'm not sure if Mamet had that in mind.

On the whole, I think Mamet's Bush/Kennedy comparison is more rhetorically clever than it is insightful. The widespread reverence for JFK is too often mistaken for something fundamental to liberal values, and Mamet is not wrong to pick at it a bit. But come on, JFK was president for just under three years. By this time in Bush's presidency, he had been party to a fraudulent election, suspended a sweeping number of civil liberties, and initiated the invasions of two sovereign nations, and persistently, deliberately, and unequivocally deceived the American public at the cost of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. JFK, great president though he wasn't (and may or may not have been if he hadn't been murdered), didn't get nearly so much done in three years.

Are liberals fundamentally more inclined to believe that all people are essentially good at heart? Well, if they did, they would probably trust corporations not to be be too destructive in the interest of profit, trust people to respect each other's human rights in the absence of legal protections, assume that military occupations will be benign and peaceful, and expect that open, accountable governments are unnecessary since only the nicest of things transpire behind closed doors. As Jim was getting at, the neocon agenda absolutely depends on those assumptions being correct, and Mamet (as he says repeatedly in the full essay) begs to differ.

In regards to the military and government, though claiming to acknowledge its faults, he says :

"So, taking the tragic view, the question was not "Is everything perfect?" but "How could it be better, at what cost, and according to whose definition?" Put into which form, things appeared to me to be unfolding pretty well."

Wow. Sounds like a pretty privileged assumption, right? In the next sentence, Mamet cleverly answers that question himself, with a tribute to class mobility that pointedly dismisses its detractors as "Marxist." Even Ann Coulter can be more subtle than that.

This after implying that the existence of a Constitution - which liberals have universally criticized the "monster" Bush for desecrating - is at odds with a so-called liberal worldview. It's a sneaky trick that only a very good writer can pull off: use a seemingly cogent and personal essay to propagate one glaring fallacy while claiming to debunk another.

In the end, Mamet doesn't say what one becomes when one stops being a "brain-dead liberal," which is key to his intentions here - he only wants us to believe that he was ever either, so that we relate to him and perhaps accuse ourselves of the same.

Brilliant, intricate deceptions shaped like logic - Mamet's favorite subject. But this time, the joke's on the audience.

Bill: I do find "The Untouchables" to be an example of cheery fascism. Watching Elliot Ness end his heroic exploits by chucking an unarmed man off a roof, is the kind of "Dirty Harry"-type behavior that I could see causing Dave Toschi to scoff and shake his head. "So much for due process."

Michael A. De Luca said:

Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, and, to a larger degree, LBJ and Nixon, were all responsible for the nightmare in Vietnam

How exactly Truman?

Mike - All right, but how is that fascism? Nitti mocks Ness and his dead friend, AND laughs that he, Nitti, killed said friend. So Ness snaps. You can say he shouldn't have done that, but I really don't see where fascism enters into it.

Plus -- and I admit I don't know the details -- Mamet turned to directing specifically based on his experience making that movie. He had no control over it, and had to make changes he didn't want to make. So maybe De Palma's the "fascist".

"Plus -- and I admit I don't know the details -- Mamet turned to directing specifically based on his experience making that movie. He had no control over it, and had to make changes he didn't want to make."

I realize this is a bit off-topic, but does anyone know any of the details on this?

Okay, I remembered things slightly wrong. Here's the relevant exerpt from the essay ("Film is a Collaborative Business", found in Mamet's collection "Some Freaks") that I was thinking of:

"Inevitably, however, De Palma, Linson and I disagreed about several aspects of the film and, as usually happens, we got to the point where someone said to me: 'Look, we disagree, and (in effect) you are the employee, so do YOU want to make the script chages which we require, or would you like us to do them, and do them badly?'

"On films in the past, this mixture of flattery and aggressiveness usually brought me around, like other screenwriters, with a sigh to make the requested changes. On 'Untouchables', however, in the final and minor instances where I disagreed with the director and producer, I said fine, YOU fuck it up. Spare me."

In the interest of keeping this post semi-short, he goes on to say that one of the reasons he did this was because he was making his own movie, "House of Games". So he'd already turned to directing.

My main point, though, is that De Palma had more to do with that script than most people think, so the scene Mike refers to might not even be Mamet's. And it's definitely not fascist, whoever the author was.

Ali:

It is a minor point, but it was Truman who rebuffed overtures of friendship found in letters sent to him by Ho Chi Minh, who, as it turns out, was a huge admirer of Thomas Jefferson. Daniel Ellsberg discusses this at greater length in Peter Davis' "Hearts and Minds".

Bill: While we have differing takes on the scene in question, I thank you for bringing up the issue of authorship, always bit of a dicey matter. The case of the writing credit on "The Deer Hunter" comes to mind.

Ali, I don't want to answer for Mike but since we haven't heard from him yet, I'll just throw in a comment that it can certainly be argued that Truman's actions in Korea set the precedent for Vietnam vis a vis domino theories, and such. There are plenty of differences, too, of course.

Mike and Dane - I see what you are getting at, but I can't subscrive to it. There must be a cut off point in responsibility, and I think that point comes after Truman with regards to the Vietnam War.

Then again I subscribe to the Gaddis school when it comes to Cold War history - rather than the neo-Marxists of the post-Reagan era.

I subscribe to Scientific American and The Skeptic Inquirer.

Many would call Jimmy Carter an optimist, though his infamous "general malaise" speech from 1979 suggested that the inertia of the American body politic was responsible for the then current and continued economic stagflation. Conversely, Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America" platform suggested that people could triumph over institutions; namely the federal government, in rebuilding the American economy. It’s hard to argue, therefore, that one leader’s sense of optimism or pessimism is driven top-down by his political ideology. Moreover, the underlying fundamentals present a rather cloudy perspective about which ideology is, in fact, the more optimistic.

Consider the economy. Liberals tend to view New Deal-style economics, protectionism and unionism as empowering forces for the American worker, who capitalist institutions would otherwise exploit and discard. Conservatives, on the other hand, hold to the idiom that even the most disadvantaged citizen can raise his- or herself into prosperity, if only the adverse incentives of government would yield way. Each of these viewpoints is optimistic about individuals. They differ only in their institutional sentiments. Where liberals believe in the potential of government as an agent of good, and wish to correct for the market failures and ill-incentives of capitalism, conservatives take umbrage with the perceived inefficiencies of statism, and hold dear the idea of unhindered free markets.

Foreign policy presents a rather different perspective. No one could accuse our current conservative leaders of exuberant optimism about the state of world affairs. Bush, in particular, allows his Manichean theology to act as a filter for his approach to foreign engagement. Dividing the world, as such, into a good vs. evil paradigm implies a perceived equality in the ability for each inclination to penetrate the hearts and minds of men. Moreover, in this worldview, the state plays an active role. When Bush spoke of “wonder-working power in the will of the American people”, he was not speaking of individual Americans, per se, but about the collective benevolence of the governed as projected through the government. In contrast, malevolent dictatorships, like those we overthrew in Iraq and Afghanistan, project their will downward onto individual evil, which is chiefly perceived amongst the purveyors of so-called Islamo-fascism. Current liberal thinking is more in line with George F. Kennan, aka the father of containment, and the modern ethical realists. When Barack Obama speaks of engaging our enemies in dialogue, he is, at once, projecting both cynicism and hope. He is cynical that benevolence can be fully achieved without appealing to the malevolent. And yet, he is hopeful that multi-lateralism can work as a force for good by summoning first the self-interest, and then the better nature, of foreign leaders.

Finally, on social policy, conservatives are decidedly more pessimistic. The notion that the state should play an active role in curtailing abortions and gay marriages is a direct appeal to the fallen world philosophy of conservative evangelicals. This perspective holds that, because man defaults to sin in the absence of God, certain social prohibitions are required by the Government; lest we should all descend a “slippery slope” of licentiousness and hasten the end of days. Of course, the determined range of prohibition-worthy ills might be considered arbitrary and temporal, but that’s a different discussion entirely.

Mamet's half baked blather relies on closing his eyes and concentrating on his own bank account.

Oh yeah, there's several obvious lies he now tells himself as well.

Hollywood's Newest Neo-Con: David Mamet Chugs the Kool-Aid

JD, I hadn't heard the Bush line about "wonder-working power in the will of the American people". For what it's worth, the line was likely inspired by a Protestant hymn: "There is power, power, wonder-working power in the precious blood of the lamb."

Jim,

"Trust the art, not the artist...." That's good advice. I wonder if you adhere to that advice when the artist in question holds the same political views as you do.

Considering the politics of people in the entertainment industry, Mamet's article was sincere and courageous. Your response, on the other hand, was predictable and tired.

JE: Tom, I think you misunderstand. I'm not a brain-dead liberal, either. I agree with Mamet that humans are basically not good (although I'd say that's more of a philosophical POV than a political one). My point is that Mamet's article didn't illuminate anything he hadn't already said more powerfully in his work over the last 30 years or so. Is that courageous? Maybe. But, if so, I don't know who he thought he was fooling all these years. The only think I doubt is that Mamet was ever a "brain-dead liberal" to begin with.

I don't much understand Mamet's problem. Truthfully, it is all literally in his (brain-dead or not) head.

As a life long Liberal, I never believed "people are basically good at heart." What I do do is take people as they are, no more, no less. And that is true liberalism.

No one is done a favor by allowing evil SOB's to have their way. That isn't conservativism or liberalism, it's pure Pragmatism.

I thought Mamet was smarter.