For example, look at this poor bastard, desperate for some sort of artificial affirmation of his status. bsky.app/profile/donm...

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?

"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

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

John Fetterman Bill Maher Glen Greenwald Matt Talibi

Tapper is on his way.

Already there

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.

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.

Status threat plus cognitive decline is a potent combo and we're all suffering the consequences

In academia it's known as "Emeritus disease"

So conservatism is where tired old narcissistic patriarchal ways of looking at the world go to die....

Where they go to live on

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.

For those wondering, he appeared 3 times on Fresh Air, once each in 1995, 1996 and 1997 according to the archive. A grudge over thinking you were slighted almost thirty years ago. freshairarchive.org/guests/david...

Yeah, blame it all on Terry Gross. Sure, Jan.

...high status men... bsky.app/profile/blue...

Yeah, just not high status only. Tons of teens.

Babies get fussy

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...

Straight line from this to record numbers of people acting like an ass on an airplane because their state had a month-long lockdown

When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.

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.

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

What a vain man. I am embarrassed to have enjoyed any of his work.

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.

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.

<cough> Oleanna

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.

Get serious. Mamet was always reactionary.

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.

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?

This is fascinating. For someone with his skills, you'd think he'd have a thicker skin?

h/t:

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?

FWIW, I find this guy tiresome, overwrought and overrated.

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.

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.

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

my own personal hot take has long been that David Mamet has always sucked

Such shallowness. Such ego. Such arrogance. They were not really present with others to begin with. Bye bye.

Fragile fucking toddlers.

I think most of Mamet's issue was that Rebecca PIdgeon broke out of confinement and took some roles outside the Mametsphere and he couldn't handle it.

Now they get told "not only are you wrong, you're an odious shitheel to boot"

Anyone who's read Mamet's work could see where he'd end up...especially the play Oleanna.

If you abandon your values because someone makes you angry, do you really hold those values?

Its not called turning to conservatism it is called an asshole reveal

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.

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.

Entitlement is a helluva drug.

i guess i always assumed he was a right wing shithead just based on his writing.

Ego can be a deadly multi sided weapon .

It's funny that Mamet became the very people he despised and belittled when he was a younger writer/playwright.

Americans have let their reactions to social media criticism tank the nation.

Well David, *takes long drag on cigarette* maybe your book wasn't worth talking about on Fresh Air?

So he’s a whiny bitch who flipped because he’s a whiny bitch is the peak mansplaining excuse for these guys.

This part is the best and wonderfully told by Val Kilmer. bsky.app/profile/davi...

Or it could be that David Mamet is just a cranky old....well...crank.

Please tell me at the end Mamet storms off into a closet and thats why he yells

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.

Petty selfish reasons are often the core. And then they accept the rest ouf a of need to belong.

he’s full of shit - he has always been a rabid Zionist & racist

Poor baby boo hoo wah

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?!

Ok sure, but I need to know more about the timing of this Terry Gross snub.

Snowflakes. JFC, do the work and stop blaming everyone else (read: women).

Entitled White Man

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 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.

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.

In my head canon, David Mamet died shortly after making Heist or possibly Spartan.

trump ran for president cause Obama scored a big laugh off him at the WH press dinner thing.

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.

David Mamet wears a beret

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.

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.

No excuse for David Mamet to wear a Canadian tuxedo to an interview.

I've heard him described as very smart. This brief clip does not support that claim. RED BELT and SPARTAN are great flicks.

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.

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.

The sausage party invites are a thing.

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

Hilarious

because they are wrong. Getting famous by being shitty for shitty people...

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.

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.

Dennis Miller back in the day. Also, all the people denouncing social media as, “not real life.”