A disconcerting number of high status people upended their worldviews because other people did not affirm that status in the way they thought appropriate. And social media accelerated this because for high status people it is often the experience of people telling you that you are wrong.
For example, look at this poor bastard, desperate for some sort of artificial affirmation of his status. bsky.app/profile/donm...
If only more people seriously adopted the Marxist (Groucho) position of: “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”
😂
@pfrazee.com can you help a blue check needy dude out?😂
I respect the way you have been disrespected but you refuse to change your worldview over it
🤣😂 🤣😂 🤣😂 🤣😂 🤣😂 🤣😂 🤣😂
Right? if I wasn't important then why am I sitting on literally thousands of dollars in Kohls cash
well played give this poor bastard his damn check mark, bluesky!!!
I think the question is why the affronted powerful actor then turns to the right wing: new-found comfort with reactionary tropes? acceptance of social dominance? theories of hierarchical ordering of merit?
um @pfrazee.com fix this before don decides to alter the fabric of reality
Just a wild hunch, but it feels like misogyny/metoo reaction
This stretches my particular branch of social sci expertise, but one group tells people (cis het white $ men) that any infraction they commit is obviously not their fault (blame the victim). The other side doesn't accept victim blaming. Certainly cosier to have someone tell you you're never wrong.
In Mamet’s case there’s no way a guy that obsessed with masculinity and sex wasn’t going to take a right wing turn at some point.
Yes, he was always on the border, but some of his (early) work was so sharp and so smart you could sort of let that stuff slide-now it’s just nonsense.
I've really loved Mamet's plays and screenwriting, but so many of them have revolved around dog-eat-dog ethical choices that I'm surprised to hear wasn't always in the right-wing. I think "Searching for Bobby Fisher" might be the only work of his where the characters show basic decency.
I'm an idiot. It's been pointed out to me that Mamet had no connection to "Searching for Bobby Fisher". Apologies.
Joe Mantegna is throwing you
Because he’s been a jerk for at least 45 years?
Age, in terms of generational presumed knowledge. As in, Mamets old enough that any new conservatism is going to be pinned on his memory of old, so its a dual 1. He wont believe trump could be a "new" bad thing besides R in general + 2. He is SO familiar w libs culturally, he cant think politically
Actually kinda hates tattoos, blue hair and/or brown people?
Sure seems like some of it is just closet racism/ignorance. “Mamet has described the NFL anthem protests as ‘absolutely fucking despicable.’”
Powerful?
"enemy of my enemy is my friend" type thing? but also the fash wing heavily recruits people that are being "cancelled." Look at what's happening with jeans girl. I bet anything offers have been made for her to appear at White House or on other right wing propaganda media sites. It's grooming
I just read today she’s had an insane amount of offers. Of course, they will use her for their messaging.
Chris Cuomo. Even, to an extent, Tucker Carlson. They need to do numbers. They'll go where they can do something closer to their former numbers
I would not be surprised if Trump offered the jeans girl a job. Maybe the she’ll be next person in charge of the Federal Reserve?
It's a play on words they were going for to get attention. It's "genes girl" And they will do anything for money. Welcome to capitalism.
You should play arm chair psychologist over his Alec Baldwin character in State and Main and his embrace of Trump and the recent Epstein revelations. It's amazing the degree to which he nails that mindset, to a T. "He's got a hobby" and it's the same as Epstein's and Trump's.
TLDW is that the main character is an aging full of himself lout who has a thing for pretty underage interns/assistants and the crew spends half the movie trying to prevent him from raping a child (but presented from a more zaney/hijinks framing).
Do you really want to be a part of the zeitgeist again Mr. Mamet? Are you sure? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_a...
For Mamet in particular, he's just one of those people who went crazy because of 9/11. He got racist, and then MORE conservative when people started calling him racist.
simple, the same rule for any con artist: they tell the mark what they want to hear (this isn't excusing anyone who looks to them for comfort. they chose it.)
I think it’s because they’re easy and they’re cheap. Just tell them what they want to hear and they’ll go along with just about anything.
Having been affronted by Blue Sky, tell us what your thoughts are about flipping sides.
I looked into this phenomenon, and have reached what I believe to be the correct conclusion. He (Mamet) got old. You wake up 1 day & you are old, & you are willing to reverse all signs of progress to reinvent the world you lost so you are okay again.
The "world he lost" had a 90+% marginal income tax on the rich.
The primary division between conservatives and liberal thought is the belief in natural hierarchy or natural equality. Conservatives tell them that some people are just better than others. They have essentially no moral qualifications besides upholding that structure.
Common cause: much of the right's movement appears to be grievance based.
The right wing is inherently easier to please. The playbook is easier to follow, and the audience is more pliant/gullible. This explains the current pipeline of various disgraced/washed-up public figures pivoting to the right. Also why right wing radio and podcasts will always have a leg up
why does anybody do anything public save for attention? I guess there is some financial incentive for a small few, but with attention comes adulation or scorn and at least as of late, you get a whole heck of a of attention playing the aggrieved. and if you feed on scorn, you got yourself a bingo.
Because the grift, as has long been with get-healthy/rich-quick salesman, is to affirm to the recipient they were always a clever-boy who was special all along and will get more dopamine pats on the head if they give money and support to their new group.
"hmmm the people who i now hate are also hated by these folks over here, who will clap at things that get me booed over there"
Mamet has written some great plays. It's no small undertaking to write a play. We do the work because we can't ignore the drumbeat in our heads. To hand over how the creation lives in the world to a fragile ego that didn't get stroked the right way betrays the creative act.
Needing feedback and support for your creativity is one thing but turning to destructive ego politics because your work got rejected is some thin skinned bullshit that should end your career.
It’s a complicated set of factors for sure. But the whole Hollywood and Music biz leaning Dem seems to be a through line of grievance for literally decades, long before social media. Billionaires who can’t get glamorous people to hang out with them seems to percolate infinitum. Why ?
Would be interesting to trace back to the red scare/McCarthy-era as well - the vehemence with which writers, directors, artists, and actors were gone after - a chance to punish those with cultural capital
One element is that they get the unquestioning adulation they once got, or always sought, from mainstream press. For all their enthusiasm for debate, there'll never be a moment in the rw bubble when Taibbi et al will be questioned on their beliefs - let alone any dire allegations.
Yes.
it's easier to be the king of the assholes.
I think it’s probably because he perceives the rejecters as being on the left, which has been historically true of cultural elites.
Soon enough you'll be extolling the virtues of MAGA. Just a matter of time.
It's funny that Mamet became the very people he despised and belittled when he was a younger writer/playwright.
This is fascinating. For someone with his skills, you'd think he'd have a thicker skin?
Very revealing indeed.
Mamet's an insufferable asshole and has been for decades.
Yeah this is fun tape, but a dog-bites-man news event.
Clarence Thomas
So conservatism is where tired old narcissistic patriarchal ways of looking at the world go to die....
Always has been, actually
Where they go to live on
🎯
David Mamet wears a beret
I don't think they're really upending their world views. I think they were always assholes deep down, but they considered the vulgarity of the right beneath them, and so their egos led them to mask as left-leaning.
That worked fine as long as white men were still being centered, but their resentment grew every time a woman or minority was allowed to speak. The "betrayal" of being called on their racism and misogyny is all it takes for them to throw the mask away and let their hate flag fly.
If the anti-woke snowflake isn't triggered by women or people of color in power, then they're triggered by having their fragile egos bruised. #ItHasHappenedHere
it's wild because there's no way this is even 5% of the true story, but it's also so incoherent and stupid that it's hard to believe he made it up to make himself look good
Agreed very much. But I think that might also apply to people in general. The nursing of grudges feels like a pretty storied and if not universal at least very widespread trait.
My God how can anyone listen to these voices for more than a few seconds?
In some cases, though, it's just that people are shitbags but need some excuse to let their true selves become known. I have always thought this was Trump's biggest appeal: giving the worst people license to be their true selves unashamedly. "This planet is a paradise, a paradise for assholes"-KMFDM
Bro became a conservative because he was offended by getting a -form letter-?
I met Mamet once when I was working in a restaurant in Burlington, VT. He, William H. Macy, and several others came in for Dim Sum Brunch. Mr. Macy was really nice to everyone. Mamet was a straight up jerk who clearly thought he was more important than anyone.
Note how David Mamet says in one breath how he loves Donald Trump because he is NOT a politician, and several breaths later when answering a question about whether he is a conman, says "No, he's a politician." What a crockpot (brain set on 8 hour stew).
As Robert Greene points out, they're insecure (as heck), too. youtu.be/G8iA6TiCofU?...
bsky.app/profile/i-am... Okay, exhibit #1733.
Conservatives ARE pretty spiteful, so this checks out. He was probably already like this.
He’s a guy who had lots of people telling him he’s a genius since back in the 1980s. It eventually melted his brain.
I'm sorry--does he say that Terry Gross has a show called 'All Things Considered'?
Straight line from this to record numbers of people acting like an ass on an airplane because their state had a month-long lockdown
He clearly did not just say “ha, that’s funny.”
It sounds a lot like a narcissistic injury and then needing to be shored up somewhere else.
They weren't "friends" enough for him to bother knowing the name of her long-running radio show ... 🤔
Please allow me the opportunity to tell you that you are not wrong. You are correct.
Not very articulate for a writer.
Snowflakes
he got a npr fundraising form letter (like most people) and not a handwritten personalized letter he felt he deserved because he's been interviewed more than once? did I get that right?
.. I guess he should have checked the "big baby" checkbox when signing the release before those interviews...
Pretty disappointing that Mamet could not even handle Terry Gross. Dude, just get a grip. You're not entitled to universal approval from women.
Ok sure, but I need to know more about the timing of this Terry Gross snub.
Please tell me at the end Mamet storms off into a closet and thats why he yells
I've heard him described as very smart. This brief clip does not support that claim. RED BELT and SPARTAN are great flicks.
That's what happened to Guilfoyle when Gavin kicked her to the curb.
Guilfoyle left CA and Newsom to pursue a broadcast career in 2004. Her move to FOX in 2006 coincided with their divorce. Ambition is what turned her, not Gavin.
Just wait until he slips up and puts something out there that gets the right angry......he ain't seen hate like right-wing hate.
Sorta makes you think their convictions weren’t all that strong to begin with.
Americans have let their reactions to social media criticism tank the nation.
This is true, but I think it's also quite possible that Mamet has always been a bit of a dick.
That cadence he makes his actors use in a bunch of his stuff would indicate such.
Probably in the same proportion of police that demand respect without giving any.
He was a closet conservative all along. He's just making excuses. Fragile ego.
It's hard to believe this. I left the democrat party, but didn't change my views. I'm still liberal. I'm Independent now and don't vote straight party line, but I feel like I just don't align with how far left the party has gone. I think you're right though.
Cocoa I believe both parties have extremes and they always have. I'm in my 80's and I have seen the movement in both parties. I also believe the extremists are fewer than people believe. I went Independant years ago but about 20 years ago I couldn't find a single Republican I could support.
I feel the same way really. I'm harder on democrats because I am so disappointed with where the party landed recently. In your experience, have you seen such swings in the political balance over the years?
Fragile
They felt humiliated and rather than look inward decided they wanted to become humiliaters www.liberalcurrents.com/the-politi/
no doubt about that, but in Mamet's case, I think it was 9/11 and becoming a neo-con about Israel, and he's being thoroughly disingenuous.
what a weak and pathetic little man
I can see the conservatism sneaking out of his early work. There was some confusion there because, let's face it, most of that audience for plays is liberal. So maybe that covered things for a while. But the dude was always going to be pro-fascist.
Yes, it was always evident in his sexism and breast beating males humiliating more sensitive males. Admired his skills but never a fan of what they created.
Oleanna
Poor baby boo hoo wah
This is basic bitch narcissism.
There are three truths in live theater: 1. Don’t say Macbeth. 2. Cats is terrible. 3. Fuck David Mamet with a rack of rusty rebar.
As they say: If you abandon your principles at the first moment of opposition, you never had any principles, just opinions. I would add: If you abandon your principles at the first moment somebody doesn't kiss your ass because of your genius, you never had any genius, you're just an asshole.
Its called narcissism.
When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.
Dennis Miller back in the day. Also, all the people denouncing social media as, “not real life.”
In my head canon, David Mamet died shortly after making Heist or possibly Spartan.
Dershowitz joined the Nazi bandwagon because he wasn’t invited to parties.
I would say that no one likes getting punched in the face. And it's human nature to look very critically at people who punch you in the face. And it is difficult for many people to maintain a broader system of values when that system feels associated with people who punch you in the face.
2/ I think doing so is one of the most important things about the kind of information and ideational world we now live in. Obviously, one should be open to reassessing systems of values, but I mean being grounded in a system of values that isn't easily shifted by who happens to be being nice or ...
3/ mean to you.
But is "Thanks, but no thanks," which is the experience he's essentially describing tantamount to being punched in the face?
Having had both experiences, being punched in the face definitely felt different from (worse than) "Thanks, but no thanks." Rational and non-overly precious people don't upend their ethos after the latter, they just tend to keep it moving from there.
Punched in the face is a metaphor. Online mobs of all sorts are often vicious and nasty and the asymmetric experience of it is intense and disconcerting. If you’re a public person it is what it is. It’s part of being a public person. But it’s a bit more than people disagreeing with you.
I understand metaphor. However, what he's describing here in this clip doesn't really rise to the metaphor (or your explanation of it). To me it sounds more like equal parts diminished interest in him/his work and the resulting disappointment...not an actual betrayal which would fit the metaphor.
Exactly! He is a small man that has very thin skin and is constantly looking for attention and when his preferred audience looks elsewhere he became incensed and vindictive and fled to ultra conservatism! Poor little dude no one wanted to attend his pity party’s!
Bingo.
Jesus, it's not like he got Swatted or had to hide (like, say, the Gamergate gal). He got a form letter rejection from a former customer. And people disagreed with his politics. Hardly a digital mob. Good lord, should half of all high-profile female journalists be full-on Ted Kaczynskis by now?
❤️❤️❤️ - if they did, maybe people would learn some lessons around here.
There is a difficult human thing that we are built for small groups. I can’t imagine what it is like having millions of people having thoughts about you, and I don’t think anything in life makes it easier to imagine. Gotta acknowledge this beyond my bailiwick.
I don’t think people do well with it. I’m often surprised when people do.
The woman at the center of Gamergate, and more recently Christine Blasey-Ford, have both spoken at length about what it's like to have to leave home and seek physical security under a 24x7 firehose of hate messaging and rape/death threats against themselves and family members. They didn't go fashy.
A metaphor for how it felt to him as an easily offended man who felt himself entitled to a level of deference, (even from the great Terry Gross?) most of us would never expect, not a metaphor for what actually happened.
What he talked about here was not an online mob. It's disappointment and a disproportionate reaction to realizing his place in the world is not what he thought it was. Has he experienced online mobs? Without a doubt. This is not that.
Precious is exactly the word I thought when reading that comment and listening to this interview. It is the same word I think of every time somebody tells that old lie that they were forced into affiliations with horrible people because liberals were mean to them.
Quite frankly, if all it takes to completely reshape your worldview is having your ego lightly bruised, than you never really believed that thing in the 1st place. That's what the real truth is, folks who pull that line out always believed shitty things, they just needed an excuse to say them aloud
How tf is being politely turned down for an interview like being punched in the face? It isn't, Josh, and quite frankly using language like this just reinforces the lie that Mamet and other "I was a liberal until ppl were mean & radicalized me into fascism" aholes are telling. They aren't victims
This is all true & speaks to the absolute patheticness of some of the richest tech bro/finance types. At the same time it also speaks to the absolute commitment the far left has to losing - they did everything they could to drive these powerful people out of the left while the right welcomed them.
Sorry but suggesting that the tech sector needs to be regulated at least a bit, is not equivalent to running them out of the Democratic Party. If that’s what upset these rich “boys” well I’m just so sorry for their hurt feelings.
Fuck off. The far left attacks I was referencing were personal, not about what needs to be regulated. Either you're entirely disconnected from reality or you knew that and were arguing in bad faith for no reason at all.
If you think "not being on Fresh Air this time" is the same as "being punched in the face," then yeah maybe
If you are confusing not being treated with undeserved reference with being punched in the face, I think you are the problem. There’s a quote about “respect” meaning being treated as an equal or an authority that illustrates that point quite clearly.
Narcissistic injury is so destructive because narcissists are so fragile.
mostly males, i bet
Social media has accelerated anything and everything, right or left.
Mamet's answer doesn't make any sense to me. "Huh that's funny"? What does this even mean
Hilarious that he even gets the name of Gross' show wrong. Small detail, but typical of the solipsism of these meltdowns. Just so insulted not to be endlessly feted by all and sundry, whether he remembers their names or not.
Such shallowness. Such ego. Such arrogance. They were not really present with others to begin with. Bye bye.
Ever heard of him- but he looks MAGA
A surprising proportion of writers are insufferable twats.
Ego can be a deadly multi sided weapon .
Give me a break.
There seems to be a chunk of high status people who log on to the internet, search for themselves, discover their haters, and break down. They suddenly get all the nasty stuff people are too polite to say to their face and it’s both kinda fun to watch and deeply scarring in a bad way.
I keep thinking about this incredibly bleak & horribly astute analysis, including the thesis "...people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens." www.theguardian.com/environment/...
How is someone so egotistical? These people who seem powerful are weak. SMH
Something tells me that being "Radicalized" was not something that happened after the snubbing. Expressing some really bad ideas is usually what gets one snubbed.
Also her show—probably the most renowned in all of talk radio!—is called Fresh Air, not All Things Considered. Who’s slighting whom here?!
What a weak little man. As a woman, doctor, immigrant, and business owner I can't imagine such fragility in a grown adult person. It is comically vain.
Entitled White Man
Babies get fussy
Fragile flower. And he was born in Chicago?? Maybe grew up in north shore…
mamet doesn't sound well. Has he always sounded like that?
Not sure re chronology but I remember his wife Rebecca Pidgeon in an interview said he drove around listening to Limbaugh & slowly went from skeptical to agreeing. So kind of chicken or egg, i.e. if non RW places stopped booking him bc he got brainwashed & was spewing extremist Limbaugh propaganda.
You nailed it. He was already on his way to right wing lunacy. Fresh Air should've been up front and just told him to eff off. His stuff was always pushing the patriarchal narrative and never appealed to me.
Typical inadequate white narcissist man cannot handle his own bullshit and is just adrift with no rudder. Ppffft.
So he’s a whiny bitch who flipped because he’s a whiny bitch is the peak mansplaining excuse for these guys.
How embarrassing for them. The insecurity is so obvious. Sad that they turn to cruelty when they don’t get the approval of people they admire, rather than trying to understand what’s missing and what they can do to feel more confident and proud of themselves without constant external flattery.
Well David, *takes long drag on cigarette* maybe your book wasn't worth talking about on Fresh Air?
In his conservative, reactionary ire, Mamet is veering rather too close to RFKs vocal range and I do not want to hear another fashy peep from him.
If you abandon your values because someone makes you angry, do you really hold those values?
FWIW, I find this guy tiresome, overwrought and overrated.
Petty selfish reasons are often the core. And then they accept the rest ouf a of need to belong.
Mamet has been a misanthrope and misogynist much longer than he’s been self-identified as a “conservative.” I think detesting humanity in general (and specific) corrodes the spirit sooner rather than later and contributes to a reactionary embrace.
(Look at Edmond [1982] and Oleanna [1992] for particularly potent examples of the above, yet I think the same belief system pervades his body of work, including the more popular plays and films.)
I’ve even seen this at the local level. They don’t even finish their term before switching parties because something didn’t go their way.
If you could not see in Mamet's plays, etc., at least the seeds of a rightward turn, you weren't reading well. I think Mamet was confusing cause and effect here. He's always been about naked power.
it read as critiquing of power. no one thought he was actually identifying with Mitch and Murray rather than Levene
It read as critique at the time. In retrospect, less so.
Those wielding power *always* seem to come out on top of anyone earnest in his plays. Levene is portrayed more sympathetically in the film, but on stage, he's really just another scammer. "Searching for Bobby Fisher" might be his one piece where people behave decently and it works out.
Yes, there's power and weakness. Reminiscent of the president.
What is the connection between Mamet and " Searching for Bobby Fisher?" His name is not in the credits and the Wikipedia page for the film does not mention him at all.
Damn! I could have sworn he'd written the screenplay, but you are correct. There's no connection between Mamet and "Searching for Bobby Fischer". I may have gotten confused because of Joe Mantegna who was in a couple of Mamet productions. My bad.
It's apparently a common misconception, god knows why. I mean, yes, there's Mantegna, but the subject matter is not his usual, as you noted. Apparently he's currently working on a screenplay of The Diary of Anne Frank, which I am leery of. You need to have both a light touch and a dark side.
He's not known for his light touch. He's not known for his writing of women's roles, to put it mildly.
Wow, that's pretty pathetic - changing your political position because someone or something didn't seem to like you anymore. Besides "conservative" doesn't actually mean anything other than "I'm selfish" or worse.
This Winnie the Pooh brained man writes Pulitzer Prize winning plays?
Whatever …
These newly minted conservatives always wanted to be conservative but were too cowardly to shift themselves. So, they find an excuse. It’s even better if they can blame a woman for their ‘radicalization.’
Surprised at how inarticulate he is.
Is Mamet so thin-skinned (a trait shared with right-wing deplorables) that he abandons any principled stance to align with reactionary asswipes? Fuck him and his pseudo-intellectual nostalgic pretentions.
@samfragoso.bsky.social An absolute Masterclass in an adversarial interview He kept respectfully inviting Mamet to elaborate on his work & his political evolution Mamet kept getting more agitated, seemingly by Fragoso’s calm persistence & with a grand toga over shoulder throw he stormed off the set
I mean, if he was really sending a letter to his “friend”Terry Gross maybe he would’ve sent it to her address? But yeah, this is pretty pathetic considering the stakes.
He's big mad because he didn't get the slot on Teri Gross that he thought he was entitled to. He was/is big in the lit world. His privilege was not respected. It's childish. It's Dershowitz-like
a good comparison
This just proves how sad and small these people actually are. They would rather use their wealth to destroy any chance at real happiness that people have in order to make the world as miserable as they are because people don't acknowledge their self imposed "genius". Truly pathetic.
Someones man-pussy is hurting real bad. Fuck this whiny baby.
Pssssst-I have never liked Mamet’s work and his toxic conservative maleness oozes in every play- and no, I don’t think that was supposed to be irony
This, plus the fact that high status people have a high social exposition social network. Whenever they say or do something wrong, they get reminded (or insulted) by hundreds or thousands of people. This, I guess, might be another factor of radicalization of the famous on social networks.
I have always thought they want their feet kissed and when criticized or not worshipped, they freak out. Its like they think they are 100% golden and when not reflected back, bitterness turns what was good into bile. They are astonishingly brittle.
📌
my own personal hot take has long been that David Mamet has always sucked
I think he was probably always fascist material but presented as a liberal just to get along in the industry.
Tiny little babies. Thin-skinned freaks.
Look what she made him do!
To generalize this down further, it's all (most) conservatives have as their reasoning: grievances. Someone somewhere slighted them once and made them feel less than superior and that was all it was ever going to take.
i think a lot of the meritocracy lie includes being respected once you "make it" and when the respect isn't enough some people just lose their minds instead of reevaluating that maybe their assumptions about how the world is supposed to work are wrong
It's funny how "letting one's innate cruelty out" has become "getting radicalized into conservatism" and especially IS ALWAYS ANOTHER PERSON'S FAULT. Right-wingers know they're morally wrong so they must constantly look for excuses for their own behavior.
At the point when their money could buy them almost anything in the world, they began to want for that which money can't buy.
You can hear him fumble around after being exposed: “umm a you see a scientist…Eureka or something.” I’m assuming it cut off before he tried to show him a YouTube video to make his point or start discussing Oberlin students.
Somewhat relatedly, I think Errol Morris's Mr. Death does a great job showing how someone's vanity can lead them down extremely dark paths.
It’s a pity when the opinions of others determine one’s own self-worth, no? And I would loathe approval from the MAGA crowd in any case.
Huh?
Bunch of snowflakes!
trump ran for president cause Obama scored a big laugh off him at the WH press dinner thing.
Trump attempted to run for president twice before the 2016 election, but I agree that Obama‘s joke at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner made him all the more determined to run in 2016.
Get serious. Mamet was always reactionary.
very JK coded
assholes going to asshole bsky.app/profile/redl...
Herod, who ordered a genocide because Maggi asked him for help locating “the Son of God”, comes to mind.
The social media aspect is incredibly important because the first point isn’t unusual historically but the speed and level of echo chamber/ easily accessed worshiping losers is unprecedented. Things were bad after the printing press with this stuff so I can’t imagine how boiled brains are now
A lot of Trumps rage comes from him never being accepted among the A-list celebrities and the cool New York wealthy jetset he imagined himself to be part of. He had to surround himself with hasbeens and other conmen, creeps, and failsons, and that has gnawed at him for 50 years.
I’ve heard that Palm Springs society snubs him, too.
Palm Beach
Oops. Palm Beach
Palm Springs might shun him as well if he ever turns up there!
lol, could you imagine Trump in Palm Springs
southpark showed us
In the correct timeline? Where he is just a mid level real estate developer who loves Cats the Musical? Yes.
I've said for years that everything about Trump's psychology boils down to a Queens guy who wishes he was from Manhattan
Trump moved to Greenwich in the late eighties, hoping the old money crowd would favor him. It didn’t work out. They don’t like him any more than then, but now they vote for him.
A lot of Trumps rage comes from his abusive parents. The elite rejected him because he's an ass, cheat and crook.
📌
he’s full of shit - he has always been a rabid Zionist & racist
Cue the meme of the dude shaving a swastika into his head with 'you made me do this".
I would pay good money to have Terry Gross smite my enemies with a cold, crisp snubbing. Ultimate left-wing hit: the Terry Gross side eye.
What a fucking wimp
So thin-skinned.
Am I the only one to say, "Terry Gross's show is not All Things Considered. It's Fresh Air"?
And apparently he was on there 3 times and doesn't remember it. Someone checked the archives and dude is pissed off about what? not being on there 4 times?
Oooh oooh, me next! David Mamet, you're wrong. Of and, Davey, please F all the off.
Really used to respect the hell out of that guy. I thought he was SO SMART.
...high status men... bsky.app/profile/blue...
Yeah, just not high status only. Tons of teens.
When I worked at Borders (2006-2011), the Christian section was filled with books by former Hollywood "elites" whose careers had gone belly up, and were now writing hardcover books ($24.95 SRP) breathlessly dishing to their new right wing fans just how awful that Hollyweird place really was.
So many bruised egos have self-radicalised. Social media has been the great leveller for this, supposed elites who were used to having their arses kissed were not ready for getting called a dumb fuck by plebs in their comments or having their shitty opinions openly mocked.
I heard a fascinating interview with Rush Limbaugh that revealed the same; he was a shock jock, basically unthinking, said something misogynistic on the air, was immediately criticized by feminists, got his feelings hurt, and turned it into his whole career. Fragile men.
Sometimes for more or less the first time ever.
Hilarious
His "explanation" of the scientist not saying, "Eureka," psychiatrist saying, "that's funny" is incoherent -- the sort of "rationale" his hapless characters in Glengarry Glen Ross would come up with that just doesn't make any sense. Is he saying that he BECAME one of the lost souls he wrote about?
Mamet is full of shit. He’s always been a misogynist, conservative prick. Leave Terry out of it!
Yeah, I have seen this coming since Oleanna though
It's like they are being infected with a sleep-mind-virus. Threatened egos move towards sleep and content egos move towards woke
Shame, it's not like he doesn't understand the grift. He's like a psychic that knows he isn't psychic, but keeps at it anyway.
Entitlement is a helluva drug.
talented but not what you’d call bright…. And the eating disorder really got to him
A celebrated writer I know who went full maga because another celebrity named Clooney dumped him. Ackman not getting elected to the Harvard board. Rufo not getting in to Harvard. And $50 says a Trump offspring didn’t get into Columbia.
I don't know how you could read Mamet (decades of work to read) and believe these are new views.
Exactly. His main themes in his work are dominance, submission, hierarchy, patriarchy, masculinity, misogyny, and narcissism. The mistake was thinking he was critiquing those themes. Because an artist of the 70s and 80s couldn't be a fascist, right?
Absolutely!
Yup!!!
don't know what you are talking about
The snowflakes are weak. The f*cking snowflakes are weak? YOU'RE WEAK
Snowflakes ❄️
No excuse for David Mamet to wear a Canadian tuxedo to an interview.
Could it be that the world will now discover that David Mamet has always been astonishingly overrated? Eureka!
John Fetterman Bill Maher Glen Greenwald Matt Talibi
Elon Musk
I now Greenwald has MANY issues - but his number one gripe is Rachel Maddow stopped having him on her show. He refers to that slight constantly, even over a decade later -
Bill Maher was always an uncaring asshole. He just found it more fun to dig at religious people before.
Musk, of course
Fetterman had a stroke so literal brain damage and Maher always read to me as a right winger even 20 years ago. The other two are excellent examples.
Nate Silver
Rupert Murdoch was the prototype for this lol
Yglesias has been self-aware enough not to fully dive into this, but you can tell he feels the pull
Dennis Miller…
Tapper is on his way.
Already there
Jake Tapper is 100% going to turn himself into a reactionary based on the negative response to his trash book
Tapper has always been trash.
anyone like Tapper, making the money he does, living in the very, very nice neighborhood in DC that he lives in, has too much to risk of course, journalists should be well-paid, but making that kind of money, in a world of savage layoffs, means you've lost your independence
I think this is true of everyone in the US who's getting paid decently but is pinned down by *any* kind of significant liability (e.g., child care costs, mortgage, loans, medical). Why pick a fight with your boss when there are so many homeless already?
Tapper makes a fraction of what Maher does.
Sorry, I don't see your point :)
And some random lefty picked on his kid.
You left out J.K. Rowling
He was never as good as he was made out to be. And had always had a streak of simple mindedness running through his work.
Status threat plus cognitive decline is a potent combo and we're all suffering the consequences
In academia it's known as "Emeritus disease"
boomers, especially, have been the center of the universe their entire lives and are now facing obsolescence
Like a certain cohort of Jewish Boomers, 9/11 turned him hard right. The bien pensant exiled him after that, not the other way around.
Anyone who's read Mamet's work could see where he'd end up...especially the play Oleanna.
Saw that off-Broadway in it’s original run with my best friend from our days at an women’s college. We definitely had thoughts about him and what he was trying to say there.
More Vogel Much less mamet
In other words, David Mamet is a dumb shit, has always been a dumb shit, and will always be a dumb shit until he drops dead.
i guess i always assumed he was a right wing shithead just based on his writing.
Or it could be that David Mamet is just a cranky old....well...crank.
Maybe he shouldn't have been such a union busting POS, but no, it's Biden and the Democrats fault. 🙄
I came of age on pre-nazifying internet forums and message boards and when hoards of ppl told me I was wrong about something, then stopped talking to me if I responded with anger, I would ask myself I was doing something wrong or even approached with a faulty idea.
Don't discount that he went to Hollywood thinking he was the next orson wells and he turned out to be the next orson bean.
He was always conservative - he became nuts after 9/11. I realized he was conservative in the 90s when I saw The Edge. The script is one that Ayn Rand would blush at. His friends ostracized him for going nuts.
Huh!
Ugh I just watched the Spanish Prisoner yesterday
The sausage party invites are a thing.
Egotists starved for attention ? Media with an agenda ?
What a thin skin, weak minded, low self esteem, narcissistic individual who flip flops as the temperature changes! Loser!
📌
because they are wrong. Getting famous by being shitty for shitty people...
This part is the best and wonderfully told by Val Kilmer. bsky.app/profile/davi...
This made my day.
Baby men, all of ‘em
I can only imagine the depraved depths of authoritarian fascist fervor Mamet would have instantly descended into had he happened to hear what I thought of his dialogue writing in the mid-00's
I don't see this as a high-status demand in this particular case. Mamet was not from a privileged economic background, and has always been an a_hole. Like many first-gen middle-class people, he wanted to become an elite. So, he strove and finally found his people and embraced everything they did.
David, American conservatism's #1 guy now has two concentration camps and will soon have more. Fuck off and write your little plays for yourself.
Oh, poor baby. Let me understand this: if someone doesn't affirm me in my own egotistical way, I am upended?
Yes. Also? He's always been a gigantic asshole.
This is why I can't with celebrities of any kind anymore.
My belief is that high status people who live in a bubble are the most likely to be shocked into vengeful lurches to authoritarianism. Everybody around them was agreeing with them, and suddenly "I'm WRONG? Who are these fucking pipsqueaks? HOW DARE THEY!"
Perceived high status- the difference between how you feel you should be evaluated (eternally relevant) bs the zeitgeist. “I was canceled” = “I lost relevance and my inflated ego cannot take it.”
I don’t know who he is, but he seems to have problems.
I don't think it's surprising that a writer best known for using curse words on Broadway is now irrelevant and looking for a reason that isn't "I said everything I had to say and no one cares about my actors saying fuck anymore." It's just sad when they decide the reason is "the woke mob."
What a vain man. I am embarrassed to have enjoyed any of his work.
Mamet has BEEN basura. Always.
Also, you gotta believe there’s some backstory here with Terry Gross that he is leaving out like he puked on her couch or kicked her dog which legitimately put him on a do not contact list
Not to mention that he only got the name of the show wrong.
Let’s focus on what really matters here: when I was a theatre major in college, people looked down on me for not knowing who Mamet was and therefore not knowing he was a god. Well, who’s laughing now, huh? WHO’S LAUGHING NOW?
My lifelong disinterest in Mamet is finally okay! It's a stellar time for Mamet unenthusiasts everywhere, they can finally stop pretending to laugh and recognize those 3 lines from Glengarry Glen Ross.
Maybe this is what happened to Hitler? He thought he had a Jewish friend. One day, he saw the friend down the street. Hitler shouts hello & the guy ignores him. Next minute, Hitler's invading Poland because of the slight. Irony was he hadn't seen his friend he had mistook a stranger for his friend.
Mamet may write snappy dialogue, but he has always been a misogynist and full of himself. It's all over his writing. No surprise here on this BS excuse for going MAGA. Complete lack of personal responsibility.
1/6 They didn't get pushed into conservatism - they returned to it Have they never faced criticism or social censure within their known environment? Have they never had to come to grips w the fact the team they r part of by family, citizenship or identity is flawed or worse - done bad things?
3/6 I read somewhere that the people who end up most content / happy and stable in life are those who have gone through a crisis period early in their lives and learned they could live through devastation and developed a coping mechanism to get them through that emotional/ physical hardship.
4/6 Its harder to have never faced a life altering issue or circumstance until you are an adult and then suddenly have to work through a crisis of any kind.
5/6 Of course then you have the people like Trump,Steven Miller or mass shooters who develop a survival tactic in response that just perverts their souls into requiring the harm to others in order to feel any sense of temporary satisfaction
6/6 I've known people like that in my own life and aside from anger at the harm perpetrated, its just mostly heartbreaking that they got so twisted around that they are lost
or refusing to sell you a pierogi
One interview changed this man’s viewpoint into a right winger?? That is absurd
Might these be the “snowflakes” I’ve heard so much about? ❄️
Now they get told "not only are you wrong, you're an odious shitheel to boot"
Politics gets a lot clearer when we accept that "right wing" means petty and shallow. It's just hard at first to accept there's enough of that to float an entire political party.
Also known as the belief in I don’t care because it doesn’t affect me. Nancy Reagan, Bush daughters, AIDS crisis, etc.
Also, whatever the current panic is. Currently watching usually progressive folks lose their minds over gender affirmation (pronouns, name changes, clothing, hairstyles) and gender affirming care (psychological support and medical therapies) for kids.
