Charlie Rose

SkyLarkJ  07/11/2010 06:54 PM Report

Spontaneity is the spice of life, and art does try to imitate life, lol well David Mamet makes you think and get's you to the end field with less intereference. This gentleman tells it like it is, no bull, but my goodness he's so brilliant!!

robdverity  07/09/2010 11:14 PM Report

". . . the retributive cycle so hard to unwind." seems to capture much of the world's intractable problems. You know how to turn a phrase. Your clarification as being directed at Mamet's persona and not Israel is acknowledged but my bigotry turns a Jewish declaration to a Zionist one - because it's mostly fair in my parochial assessment. And even tho the Zionists have it all rationalized, their scorecard of "such intolerance, such violence, such vengeance" is anathema. And too lop-sided to be forgiven.

So it makes me a little rabid. And much bigoted. But I feel the same about our two-wars involvement. More real terrorist plotting in Yemen, Somalia et al than Af-Pak. And I'm so proud I could wet myself over Patreus's replacement, the one that gets-off on shooting people.

We (and Israel) are cultures of arrogant CSs. We deserve each other. Technology is transferable. We wont always be in the position of being able to shoot people because it's fun - with impunity.

Trulyfool  07/09/2010 06:40 PM Report

Just to clarify. My earlier comments didn't touch upon Israel at all. Mamet avoided the topic, and my earlier comments were directed at a kind of disappointment I felt in his overall public stance as artist, as man, as 'public persona'.

Even though, as a Jew, I am in no way as devout as Mamet, I clearly identify with Jewish ethos (which in large measure is shared by its -- too often contending -- sister religions, the various branches of Christianity).

I argue here, as I might have earlier, for more 'ecumenism', more outreach, more 'smoothing-over' of differences, rather than what I see as Mamet's fortified identification with Judaism. One can love great moral teaching, great behavioral models, without immersing oneself ever more deeply in a single tradition.

He didn't want to lead the discussion into the political pathways some commentators here may wish to do. Frankly, what he little he did say is substantially true, if only partially so.

The problem, the human problem, isn't at all with Jews or Israel, but with intolerance, the violence that encourages, and the retributive cycle so hard to unwind. Any nation, anywhere, can find in its history or its current behavior such intolerance, such violence, such vengeance.

robdverity  07/09/2010 05:50 PM Report

Trulyfool - Hope you (and REMant) are part of academe. Great reads - even if not fully grasped.

My dismay of the venality that seems to have gripped our system was temporarily assuaged with your quip re our Founding Fathers that, "They wanted to assure 'people of character' get into power and don't abuse it. Not assume there are no people of character, so rotate them out quickly."

But, alas, it didn't last. Any new breed replacing the thrown-out-bums will have aspired there for avarice over statesmanship. Venality prevails long term. So rotating them out quickly may be the only solution available (until single - 8 yr? - staggered terms; or Fed. campaign allotments; etc are enacted). Quickly removed so they don't learn the ropes completely.

Back to Jewishness. A non-starter until Israel happened. Like you and Mamet, I don't think I like them. Their rationalizations to dehumanize is an arrogance much like our own: CAUSE THEY CAN. Perhaps economics is Jehovah's way of mitigating it all long term. It's an ill wind . . . .

GQtaste  07/09/2010 04:38 AM Report

But this guy is one hell of a writer nevertheless. If he never wrote another play after Glen Gerry.

GQtaste  07/09/2010 04:36 AM Report

It's simple for the chosen ones: we the USA, treat the holey land like the fifty-first state and never, ever let them down or don't have the backs forever.

Don't mind how you affect our presence w/ the rest of the world. Always be their ____. You know what. We kowtow to them and they get us into more trouble than we actually do ourselves. Now why is that? The power they hold over us and the fact that we let them do it I'll never understand. And it will be to our detriment at some point sadly.

Trulyfool  07/09/2010 02:52 AM Report

Mamet gets me nervous in a way only a Jew would understand, but being a non-Jew you can only appreciate what I mean, not understand it, though a Black would understand that only a Jew could understand a Jew since only a Black can understand a Black, but not a Jew in that way nor any white man for that matter. Understanding has to be utterly comprehensive if it rates as understanding at all. Got that?

If Chris Rock says any 75 year old man hates whites, it's gotta be true; therefore Mamet's understanding of the issue of understanding which partly underlies his play Race (along with the general theatrical principle that drama must have a lie at its thematic basis, repression at the heart of any anagnorisis and catharsis) provides the explosive truth in it.

Mamet's a great writer. Best American playwright, arguably. For a time, he was a kind of 'hero' to me. But then. But then. What might have been an understanding (as in 'loose comprehension') of how hard guys think and act, how men are supposed to be men when they are being men, that sense of his, while not a mannerism, started to show who the man himself might actually be.

I think I don't like him. Despite his intelligence and his art. All the stuff about shooting rifles and impaling bears and getting a broken nose playing high school football and thieving salesmen and corrupt clergy, academicians, police and cracked feminists and especially the – to me, since I understand – the foundational identity in devout Judaism -- all of that adds up to a character truly, madly, deeply defensive about the very thing he always asserts. Yes, he's a man. But I think he had to spend a whole lot of time convincing himself that he's safe there.

The Founding Fathers, skeptical as they collectively were about how humans govern, hyper-cautious as the Constitution is about who actually holds power, didn’t reduce their fears into a formula of ‘throw the bums out’ every two years. Part of their conservatism was a partial reliance on the good character of community leaders. Without some ‘good guys’, it doesn’t matter what governmental structures you have in place. They surely believed they themselves were ‘good guys’. They wanted to assure 'people of character' get into power and don't abuse it. Not assume there are no people of character, so rotate them out quickly.

Where he’s situated is not where I find myself at all. My identity, continually forming as it always has been even when I’ve thought it solid, does not find comfort in Jewishness, not the kind of deep allegiance he clearly has. And he would see me, no doubt, as a confused weakling therefor, someone – rejecting, would be his take – ethnic identity and engaging in ‘self-hatred’.

He, in his turn, could be charged with blindness: not recognizing how heavily he’s shored-up his defenses against the rest. If I, a Jew named Trulyfool, am trying to find the decency among those outside and may be naïve in so doing, Jew David has already written them off as an impossibly inauthentic option since his ‘strong’ identity was a birthright cosmically endorsed.

Did this hit a nerve? Mine, for sure.

Trulyfool, Diddler on the Hoof

REMant  07/08/2010 09:04 PM Report

What about half-Jews? Are they entitled to say something? If their parents came from NYC? Quite frankly every time I've brought up race to a black person, they've been embarrassed and told me to forget it, esp the young. Maybe a change of scenery is called for. As for plays, I was immersed in them for 5-6 years of my life, and still appreciate those that are technically well done, but I long since came to the conclusion that the medium is an insufficient message. Does anyone pay anymore attention to Aristotle's Poetics than to Plato's dialogues these days? Perhaps for the same reason?

ChasePage  07/08/2010 07:38 PM Report

I'm wondering if anyone else thought this guy acted like a total ass during this interview?

robdverity  07/08/2010 05:32 PM Report

Glad I'm not crossing swords with Mr. Mamet tete-a-tete. He exudes acuity. Nonetheless he lurched at getting his Jewishness on the record, then later coyingly demurred re his politics. Does not compute. [Besides it's a logical assumption that most Jews are jingoistic, hell-bent-for-leather, take-out-Iran, Republicans (98%?). And Af-Pak? Stay the course, of course.]

His bigotry merely served to make me conscious of my own. The assertion seemed intrusively gratuitous and served no real purpose that I could see. Unless it was his coopting the US and Israel in his "two great democracies" platitude. Such dual adulation makes one wonder where the 'ultimate' patriotism and loyalty would fall if all Jews were confronted with a hard and real choice between the US and Israel. It already exists. The US grants Israel about $3.0 billion per year. Their debt per GDP is well below ours. Our national debt level is a serious burden. But how many US Jews would want that grant discontinued as a fiscal sanity gesture for their US allegiance. You betcha: ZERO!

Like his work. To hell with his religion. (Where they all belong.)