David Mamet storms out of interview over 'inquisition' on his conservative views

USA Today

3 days ago

Playwright and author David Mamet stormed out of an interview after a conversation around his rightward political shift turned contentious.
Mamet, the Tony and Pulitzer-winning mind behind plays like "Glengarry Glen Ross" and "Speed-the-Plow," appeared on the "Talk Easy" podcast Sunday, Aug. 3, to discuss his expansive canon of work and his recent embrace of President Donald Trump.
When host Sam Fragoso pressed Mamet on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, led by supporters of the president, the playwright offered an empathetic view, saying: "I think that Donald Trump said to those people, 'Go protest peacefully and patriotically,' and some of them were doing that. Some of them were rioting."
When Fragoso countered that such a view was more "generous" than Mamet's approach to protestors demonstrating against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 or the war in Gaza, Mamet grew agitated.
"Why do you have me here today?" he said. "It seems to me that what we're talking about here is a little bit more toward an inquisition rather than a dialogue."
Fragoso, seemingly trying to temper the conversation, said he was "genuinely curious" about Mamet's viewpoints. Still, the writer took specific offense to the reference to anti-war protests on college campuses.
"Twenty months prior to my birth, they were throwing Jewish kids into the ovens. So American Jews of the midcentury, our main tactic of accommodation was to keep our heads down and work harder and try to be liked," he said, referencing the Holocaust.
"You know what, I'm not going to debate the Columbia riots with you. Ask me something else," Mamet said. Despite his request to reorient the conversation, the two had seemingly hit a point of no return, with Mamet circling back to what he saw as the antisemitism running rampant throughout the protests.
Protests against the war in Gaza, which spread across college campuses but found a locus at New York's Columbia University, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitic tropes and encouraging violence against Jews. Proponents of the protests argued they were merely centered on a critique of the state of Israel and U.S. support of it, not the Jewish people writ large.
Sam Fragoso, David Mamet spar over a punching joke
The two then veered into a back-and-forth about a quip from Mamet that Fragoso looked like he had never been punched in the face. While both men maintained even tones of voice, the acrimony between them was clear with Mamet calling Fragoso "squishy" (a reference to the host's feelings-forward approach) and Fragoso seeming disappointed with the turn the conversation had taken.
"I'm a Jew," Mamet said. "The River to the Sea means kill all the Jews. Support the antifada means kill all the Jews." Those phrases, used among student protestors to voice support for a liberated Palestinian people, were viewed by some in the Jewish community as manifestations of hate.
"For you to say, on the other hand, there may be some people out there that were involved in peaceful protest is (a) loathesome piece of antisemitism," Mamet said. "You don't know what … you're talking about. Thank you for talking to me."
He then got up, leaving Fragoso alone at the interview table looking a bit exasperated and confused, before he turned to the camera and said: "And that was David Mamet."
Their exchange reflects a larger fault line in the American and Jewish populace, as the war in Gaza stretches into its second year, and warnings of widespread famine in the area grow louder. While some agree with early views of student protestors that Israel is carrying out a campaign of cruelty and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, others insist Hamas, the militant group in control of the region, which attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the war, is solely responsible for the suffering.