David Mamet's Long Journey
I’m not saying David Mamet is right...
…but being right is not the point. The point is aligning your beliefs with how you feel, think, and behave.
In 2008, Mamet broke ranks with the leftist tradition into which he was born and in which he participated for most of his adult life and planted his flag on the hill of conservatism. He felt it was a political tradition that better reflected his actual life.
A lot of us live with hypocrisy. We’re “spiritual” but not religious. We believe in carbon reduction, but drive cars, fly around the globe, use plastic containers, and spend inordinate amounts of time on our phones and on platforms like this one, burning energy and producing heat on massive server farms.
The trouble with all of this is duplicity1. We want it both ways: to appear good and virtuous without giving anything up. At a certain point, the hypocrisy becomes too much for some of us. We are accused of going over to the dark side, but for many left-liberal defectors, we just want to get out from under the contradictions that are crushing us.
In 2008, the Village Voice published this article by Mamet: “Why I am no longer a ‘brain-dead liberal.’” It was a pretty big deal, though I only learned of it a few days ago.
Yes, most days these days it feels like I was born yesterday.
I don’t know from David Mamet. I’ve heard of him of course. I saw Glengarry Glen Ross back in the day (1992), but did not know that he wrote it. He is a prolific writer of plays and scripts and has directed films. He’s also done cartoons (booya!), sample above, and poems even2. He is one very confident, smart and hard-working all-American. You can read up on him on Wikipedia.
I enjoy reading plays, so I will try one of Mamet’s. I read Arthur Miller’s play, The Crucible, recently. It’s about the Salem witch trials of 1692-93 and provides some insight into 21st C cancel culture.
Maybe I’ll try Mamet’s November, written also in 2008, about buffoonery in the White House. Maybe Oleanna (1992), about which it is said that couples would come out of the theatre screaming at each other. Maybe American Buffalo (1975), revived on Broadway in 2022, which is about perpetually complaining men.
A few days ago, I randomly saw a link in a Google search result page saying Mamet’s movie, Henry Johnson, his first in 17 years, starts streaming on May 9, 2025. Where? Independently is where because lefty Hollywood would not touch Mamet with a 10-foot pole since his “conversion.” Order the Henry Johnson movie from Mamet’s website. From the reviews, it sounds like Henry Johnson is going to be a slog, but I will watch it and report back.
Beliefs and Behaviours
It is difficult to reconcile Mamet’s political turn with his writing, which has widely been regarded as critical of cruel capitalist individualism. He explains himself somewhat in an interview in 2008 that followed the publication of his book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.
Mamet interviewed by the Wall St. Journal’s Peter Robinson.
During the interview, Robinson recounts an old joke about Hollywood: “If you’re a Republican in Hollywood, you get to be President.” The point is that there are few conservatives in Hollywood. It was said that there have only ever been three: Charlton Heston, Jimmy Stewart and Ronald Reagan. All were prominent Republicans. Heston was President of the National Rifle Association for many years, Stewart played a naive, good-hearted, outsider politician in the Frank Capra film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Reagan, as we know, actually became President.
Jimmy Stewart, yes, him of the other heartwarming Frank Capra films You Can’t Take It With You and It’s A Wonderful Life, was a Republican and a staunch conservative. [reference] And, even more unbelievable, so was Frank Capra! Here’s a reasonable explanation of what appears to be highly contradictory beliefs and behaviours.
Reaching for Reason
There is quite a bit of writing about Mamet online if you look for it, like this Substack piece by Michael Maiello of
, who says the roots of Mamet’s conservatism lie in contrarianism. As I contrarian myself, inclined to play devil’s advocate, sometimes just for the hell of it, I get that, but I also think there’s more to contrarianism than being a bother or enjoying the sound of your own voice.Christopher Hitchens wrote Letters to a Young Contrarian to encourage those who, like him, feel inclined by nature to pursue debate with intellect and humour, yet was criticized for indulging in the romance of marginality. [ref]
The same could be said for Mamet, who is highly successful yet has adopted, and clearly relishes, a role swimming against the current, as if outcast from some mainstream. But absurdity does not go unnoticed, and, for the record, some will feel compelled to call it out.
I recently came across a post here on Substack about a book called Mania, by Lionel Shriver, well-reviewed here by Ian Price of
. It’s a case in point and an interesting one because Shriver identifies as a liberal, not a conservative. I’m not sure I’ll get to reading it but I am glad it’s there just as I am that Mamet’s there, reaching for reason.deceitful, double-dealing: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/duplicity
including one called The Joke Code: https://bombmagazine.org/articles/1990/04/01/four-poems-mamet-2/