Friday, March 21, 2008
get it together people
I guess its been a hectic week or so, what with Ashley Dupre's tits and The Saint's symbolic lynchifixion and consequent ascendance to sit at the right hand of the Unity Pony. But how did we miss this?
An essay by David Mamet, perhaps one of our most acclaimed mediocrities, the Daniel Liebeskind of drama, with the title Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'.
Seriously. We just completely dropped the ball here. Not one post about this? Not even a comment?
Granted, having only just finished reading it I must admit I am struck dumb. I have neither jest nor polemic, bloviation nor flatulation, to offer in the face of this monumentally stupid piece of juvenalia. So I'm not exempting myself from criticism here, but if we're going to let turds like this float by unremarked upon I think its tolerably clear that our brand will suffer.
It's not every day that an award-winning artist announces to the world that while he may not be liberal, he remains brain-dead. Do you really want your children to look at you and ask, "Where were you, Daddy, when Mamet wrote the dumbest fucking thing ever penned with an opposable thumb?" What will you tell them? How will you live with yourself?
posted by Scats : 3/21/2008 09:13:00 PM
I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind.
As a child of the '60s, I accepted as an article of faith that government is corrupt, that business is exploitative, and that people are generally good at heart.
These cherished precepts had, over the years, become ingrained as increasingly impracticable prejudices. Why do I say impracticable? Because although I still held these beliefs, I no longer applied them in my life. How do I know? My wife informed me. We were riding along and listening to NPR. I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: Shut the fuck up. "?" she prompted. And her terse, elegant summation, as always, awakened me to a deeper truth: I had been listening to NPR and reading various organs of national opinion for years, wonder and rage contending for pride of place. Further: I found I had been—rather charmingly, I thought—referring to myself for years as "a brain-dead liberal," and to NPR as "National Palestinian Radio."
An essay by David Mamet, perhaps one of our most acclaimed mediocrities, the Daniel Liebeskind of drama, with the title Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal'.
Seriously. We just completely dropped the ball here. Not one post about this? Not even a comment?
Granted, having only just finished reading it I must admit I am struck dumb. I have neither jest nor polemic, bloviation nor flatulation, to offer in the face of this monumentally stupid piece of juvenalia. So I'm not exempting myself from criticism here, but if we're going to let turds like this float by unremarked upon I think its tolerably clear that our brand will suffer.
It's not every day that an award-winning artist announces to the world that while he may not be liberal, he remains brain-dead. Do you really want your children to look at you and ask, "Where were you, Daddy, when Mamet wrote the dumbest fucking thing ever penned with an opposable thumb?" What will you tell them? How will you live with yourself?
posted by Scats : 3/21/2008 09:13:00 PM
