I never discussed last week's David Mamet article where he said he was no longer a "brain-dead liberal." Mostly I didn't write about it for the reasons Scott cited: it wasn't all that interesting. Perhaps it's a generational thing, but I'm not especially provoked by dark intimations that JFK was not the True Liberal Hero he was cracked up to be. And sure, the idea that Thomas Sowell is "our greatest contemporary philosopher" is worth a snicker or two. And what Roy said.
There just isn't much else to the piece. Mamet isn't the first playwright to have offbeat political instincts; O'Casey, Brecht, Shaw... Anyhow, Mamet's article is typical of a certain sort of genre in that half of it is about how he very very deeply detests directors and critics, THOSE FUCKERS, and the rest of it is about how, oh yeah, he also wants to Stick It to the The Man. Mamet's article is full of cliches, sure; but the whole article is itself a cliche. And most of us are cool with that, though to assess by the description of his latest play as he gives it in the article, it sounds terrible. It sounds like it was ripped from the headlines and hastily reassembled, like you would put together a ransom note.
So overall I thought, meh, I could skip this one.
But then Jonah Goldberg decided to get involved, and he makes a very serious, thoughtful point, which I thought I had to share with you:
Mamet has committed the sin of free-thinking in a world that defines it as "ideological rigidity" while dubbing conformity "diversity." Already, critics are saying his work is slipping. Soon, they will say his work was never that great to begin with (that's what they’ve been doing to Dennis Miller for his heresy).
Ah, Jonah Goldberg. I don't know how to love him.