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Playwright and screenwriter David Mamet has a confession to make: he doesn’t like NPR. He also has discovered that government solutions tend to make matters worse than better. Mamet has also discovered that America isn’t the root of all evil in the world. In fact, rather than see corporations and capitalism as evils, he now understands that life is a marketplace, and that the United States understands that better than any other nation.Uh-oh. Mamet has become — gasp! — a conservative! Or, at the least, he has dumped “brain-dead” liberalism: Do I speak as a member of the “privileged class”?...

.....I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed. But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president...

WHY the shock when a smart guy decides to think about issues and changes his politics? It is not just in Islam where apostasy is a capital offence. Judging from the reaction to David Mamet's self-proclaimed conversion from liberal to conservative politics, apostasy is also a mortal sin in the arts world. Declaring that he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal", the famed American playwright performed the ultimate act of treason. After turning his back on a lifetime of progressive beliefs, Mamet was flayed for staining his artistic credentials. Just one question: why does an artist - whether a playwright,...

David Mamet is the accomplished playwright, screenwriter, novelist, author, essayist, and filmmaker. In 1984 Mamet was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Glengarry Glen Ross, his utterly harrowing update of Death of a Salesman. The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries Andrew Ferguson's moving cover story on Mamet's turn to conservatism. It is an intensely interesting and thought-provoking piece. As Ferguson recalls, the Village Voice published Mamet's quirky "goodbye to all that" essay "Why I am no longer a brain-dead liberal" in 2008. Mamet described himself in the essay as a decades-long liberal. He recounted a moment of illumination listening...

"I Have Enough Money" In David Mamet’s recent book, “The Secret Knowledge”, he quotes President Obama as saying, “The individual at some point must be able to say: ‘I have enough money. [Therefore, I no longer need to work, toil, or sweat; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to earn and pay taxes; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to plant or harvest; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to build or produce; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to use my skills, my...

In David Mamet’s recent book, “The Secret Knowledge”, he quotes President Obama as saying, “The individual at some point must be able to say: ‘I have enough money. [Therefore, I no longer need to work, toil, or sweat; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to earn and pay taxes; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to plant or harvest; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to build or produce; after all, I have enough money. I no longer need to use my skills, my cleverness, or my muscles;...

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" . . . And I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace. . . . Aha," you will say, and you are right. I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of...

The American playwright David Mamet wrote a piece for the Village Voice last week titled, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'" Mr. Mamet, whose characters famously use the f-word as a rhythmic device (I think of it now as the "Mamet-word"), didn't himself mince words on his transition. He was riding with his wife one day, listening to National Public Radio: "I felt my facial muscles tightening, and the words beginning to form in my mind: 'Shut the [Mamet-word] up.'" Been known to happen. Toward the end of the essay, he names names: "I began reading not only...

We had always assumed that the playwright David Mamet was, as he described himself recently, “a brain-dead liberal.” But, lo! it is the season of Easter, miracles are abroad, and Mamet, in the pages of The Village Voice no less, revealed himself to have undergone a political metanoia. Mamet’s account of his achievement of what a friend of ours calls “political maturity” is noteworthy. It is a chrysalis-to-butterfly evolution we’ve witnessed often in intelligent people of good will and sound instincts. “I took the liberal view for many decades,” Mamet admits, “but I believe I have changed my mind.”...

The presidential contest is not simply an election about who rules America; it is also an election about which set of principles defines American politics. For the past two and a half decades, conservatism has set the agenda. Is the left making a comeback? I don't think so. Notice that Democrats avoid terms like "the left" and even "liberalism" like the plague, while Republicans routinely associate themselves with the "right" and the "conservative" label. Also the left is now defined by shrieking demagogues like Michael Moore, while intelligent people are keeping their distance or moving out of this menagerie. In...

John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice. Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot. Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to go, Mailer called it a piece of garbage. When he did get around to seeing it, he realized his mistake. He was no longer a Voice columnist, however, so he bought a page in the...

What does he think of Barack Obama? "The question is can he run on his record in 2012 and the answer is no, because it's abysmal. He took a trillion dollars and where it went, nobody knows. He dismantled health care, he weakened America around the world, he sold out the state of Israel. All he's got to run on is being a Democrat So who would he prefer as president? He replies that he is "not current" with the Republican contenders until I mention Sarah Palin. "I am crazy about her," he answers immediately. "Would she make a good...

The Feminist Betrayal of Norma JeaneAdapted from The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture A student, lawyer, teacher, artist, mother, grandmother, defender of animals, rancher, homemaker, sportswoman, rescuer of children — all these are futures we can imagine for Norma Jeane. If acting had become an expression of that real self, not an escape from it, one can also imagine the whole woman who was both Norma Jeane and Marilyn becoming a serious actress and wise comedienne, who would still be working in her sixties, with more productive years to come. But Norma Jeane remained the frightened child...

Conservatives have a new celebrity spokesman-writer-thinker-philosopher. David Mamet, Pulitzer prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, movie director and sometime essayist, has come out of the closet. No longer, he declares, is he a "brain-dead liberal." Now he's a wide-awake conservative. Some time after arriving in Hollywood, of all places, and at age 60, he engaged in a conversation with his Republican rabbi (where did he find one?), who gave him the books of conservative writers, such as Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Milton Friedman and Paul Johnson. He had a dramatic political conversion. Mamet re-evaluated his own heroes, starting with the playwright Bertolt...

At the risk of biting the hand that feeds him, acclaimed playwright David Mamet has written a new book likely to enflame the liberal audience that has embraced him since his rise to fame with 1984's "Glengarry Glen Ross." On the cover of "The Secret Knowledge On the Dismantling of American Culture," Mamet proclaims: "The struggle of the Left to rationalize its positions is an intolerable Sisyphean burden. I speak as a reformed Liberal." Mamet, 63, who grew up the son of liberal Jewish immigrants in Chicago, came to his conversion late in life -- he says he spoke to...

David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' An election-season essay A A A Comments (200) By David Mamet Tuesday, Mar 11 2008 John Maynard Keynes was twitted with changing his mind. He replied, "When the facts change, I change my opinion. What do you do, sir?" My favorite example of a change of mind was Norman Mailer at The Village Voice. Norman took on the role of drama critic, weighing in on the New York premiere of Waiting for Godot. Twentieth century's greatest play. Without bothering to...

The author may be making up for lost time with his new book, The Secret Knowledge, but to conservative readers itÂ’s a pleasure to be in the company of a man who can state their agenda in such plainspoken, and endlessly biting, terms. Famed playwright and screenwriter David Mamet came out of the ideological closet three years ago as a newly minted conservative.The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture lets Mamet smash the liberal groupthink he blindly called his own for too long. The book, a scattershot series of essays unified by MametÂ’s striking prose, doesnÂ’t read like...

David Mamet's provocative new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, explores in greater length and considerably greater depth the themes he announced in his 2008 op-ed for the Village Voice, "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'"  It comes complete with a bibliography of 117 books listing virtually every work relating to his topic. The bibliography -- and Mamet's explication of the issues involved in his turn to conservatism -- is particularly impressive since Mamet says he "never knowingly talked with nor read the works of a Conservative before moving to Los Angeles, some eight...

The Pulitzer-winning playwright explains his turn to the political right People of the statist left—and to some extent the statist right—will find much to decry in David Mamet’s new book, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, a token of his late-life conversion to conservative political views. In fact, the sound of heads exploding is already being heard throughout the Liberal Village. Libertarians, on the other hand, may find the book to be an unexceptional checklist of familiar positions—curious, perhaps, in its shout-outs to Glenn Beck and Jon Voight, but admirable in its championing of Friedrich Hayek. Personally,...

[Q] While reading your new book, “The Secret Knowledge,” I thought, My God, in crucifying liberals, this guy is going to infuriate a huge chunk of the people who pay money to see plays. Are you concerned that you’re alienating your public? [A] I’ve been alienating my public since I was 20 years old. When “American Buffalo” came out on Broadway, people would storm out and say, “How dare he use that kind of language!” Of course I’m alienating the public! That’s what they pay me for. [Q] Years ago, you described “American Buffalo” as being about “how we excuse...