Tuesday, December 04, 2012

Yes, he's definitely lost it

I'm not surprised that Mamet's latest play THE ANARCHIST was crap and panned by almost all critics - and you should see the readers comments on the NYTimes review. Even John Lahr, who worships all macho manly playwrights, panned it in the New Yorker.

As I've said a couple of times here already, Mamet is losing it. His ranting paranoia has only gotten worse since he first came out of the closet as a conservative in the Village Voice almost five years ago.

Some of the critics made references to Mamet's politics, but only the Chicago Tribune explicitly connects the subject of The Anarchist to nutty conspiracy theories about the Obamas. Which seems entirely plausible to me - I am still convinced that Mamet's inspiration for RACE was the right-wing claim that the college thesis of Michelle Obama - a successful black female lawyer - was all about "get whitey." Could it really be a coincidence that the big reveal about the successful black female lawyer character in RACE is that she wrote a college thesis that was all about "get whitey"? Although it seems like nobody except me and a right-wing blogger picked up on it.

But Mamet could write virtually anything now and get it produced because he is a canonized Great Man of the Arts and nobody is going to tell him no, ever. He's going to keep on writing and it's going to keep getting produced no matter how embarrassingly incoherent and paranoid it gets until Rebecca Pidgeon has to have him carted off to a long-term healthcare facility. And he may still get produced even then.

Which I do feel bad about, him losing it like that. I wouldn't wish dementia on my worst enemy.

Maybe it's just because I'm a liberal but I can't help thinking that Mamet's deranged right-wing hatred of our president and First Lady is a displacement - Mamet has a slowly but steadily growing sensation that something's not right in the world, there are insidious things lurking in the shadows, plotting to steal everything from him. Instead of realizing that the sensation is caused by his failing mind, he believes - aided and abetted by Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck - that the covetous merciless darkness is Barack and Michelle Obama.