White Picket Fence
National Review,
by
David Mamet
Original Article
Posted By: zoidberg,
3/15/2022 11:20:25 AM
The Hollywood version of our Christian America was created by Jews. A quick-start guide to the phenomenon is Superman. He, like Batman and the Marvel superheroes, was the creation of Jews banned from the Christian publishing world. (Snip) His birth world, Krypton, had been destroyed (read: the Holocaust). He came to America with superpowers “far beyond those of mortal men” (an intellect honed by constant study, if you will), and he was committed to doing good in his adopted country. But he could be valued only if he clothed his identity.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Californian 3/15/2022 11:54:12 AM (No. 1100651)
We are all products of our experiences but this pushes the direct link a little too far.
For example, super man first issue was 1938. Although Jews were being beaten, robbed and killed in Germany at that time, it wasn't yet a genocidal holocaust.
Sometimes a story is just a story. Everyone wants to fly; Superman gave us that.
22 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
SpentPenny 3/15/2022 12:22:25 PM (No. 1100677)
What dumb tripe is this? The writer seems to hate all of us.
12 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
harleynyc 3/15/2022 12:24:26 PM (No. 1100680)
Sufferin' saddle soap! What a load of sheep dip.
10 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Connor 3/15/2022 12:34:50 PM (No. 1100692)
Usually I like his writing but he is way off on this story
4 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
Readaholic 3/15/2022 12:34:57 PM (No. 1100693)
My parents were nothing like Ward and June and I did feel that lack.
10 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Jesuslover54 3/15/2022 12:35:05 PM (No. 1100694)
What, you people can't handle a little cultural insight from a perceptive yid?
6 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
bad-hair 3/15/2022 12:37:18 PM (No. 1100698)
Apparently Superman is now bisexual which I'm sure, at least to some extent, pleases the apparently homosexual author. PS Why is there no H in LGBTQWERTY and such ? They forgot the Homosexuals ?
3 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
marbles 3/15/2022 12:44:16 PM (No. 1100704)
What the heck was that about ? And why the dump on Jews? Why the anger?
5 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
formerNYer 3/15/2022 1:17:46 PM (No. 1100731)
Geez there's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back, what a bunch of crap!
6 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
Laotzu 3/15/2022 1:44:51 PM (No. 1100767)
The article is one long non-sequitur.
He acknowledges that Boomers treated America like the worst State in the world because it wasn't perfect, and then tries to contrast that with today's generation who treats America like the worst State in the world because it wasn't perfect.
The truth is, the white picket fence world did, to a large part, exist in America for a very long time. Some here interpret it as a projection of perfect family life. It wasn't. But it was a much more perfect social life, because it was freedom from fear of The Other. it was freedom from fear of random physical harm by strangers. There were exceptions -- you have always been guaranteed the opportunity to be the victim of property crime in Democrat, metropolitan areas. That has endured for 100 years. I grew up in poverty in an Eastern rust-belt capital. We never locked our doors. Nobody was ever the subject of crime. (There were people on my street who survived on armed robbery of gas stations.) Even the elderly were safe.
Then the Democrats started the holier-than-thou myth, where all pretend that Republicans were responsible for slavery, the Klan, and segregation. And they taught us to hate ourselves and each other.
#ThanksObama
11 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
Newtsche 3/15/2022 1:49:32 PM (No. 1100771)
..if you will? What is that if not a disingenuous jumping off point to reach half baked conclusions?
OK yeah, warts, but so much else not considered in this over generalization.
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
montwoodcliff 3/15/2022 2:14:56 PM (No. 1100788)
David Mamet must have had an unhappy childhood. Baby-boomers had everything. All advertising was aimed at them because their parents had the money to give them. Quite frankly, they were a spoiled generation. I think Mamet is suffering from Jewish guilt.
1 person likes this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
Echohawk 3/15/2022 2:48:23 PM (No. 1100809)
The first Superman comic book was published in June 1938. Two Jewish kids from Cleveland wanted to create a hero to fight the Nazis. Their comic book predates the Holocaust by four years. I too, grew up in a neighborhood where no one locked their doors, and everyone knew everyone else. Here's a joke about the author: A man was walking by a hobo and the hobo asked him for money. The man said, "'Neither a borrower nor a lender be.' That's from Shakespeare." The hobo said, "F*** you, that's from David Mamet."
3 people like this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
NessunDorma 3/15/2022 3:02:44 PM (No. 1100820)
David Mamet apparently had a much different experience, but during my childhood years, the picket fence was indeed a reality. Those 50's sitcoms were reflections of society (to an extent idealized reflections, of course), not fanciful visions of a life that did not exist. And Clark Kent/Superman had an origin and a backstory long before the Holocaust became a metaphor for anything.
1 person likes this.
Reply 15 - Posted by:
davew 3/15/2022 3:07:49 PM (No. 1100826)
I always thought that Superman was the commercialized version of Nietzche's "Ubermensch" that embodied the aspirations of the Nazi "super race". He was considered the "superior man" that justified the existence of the human race. Mamet's ethnic take on this seems a bit far-fetched, but I still agree with his observation of the equivalence of the "picket fence" and the "source of all evil" American mythologies that were created by Hollywood to sell tickets. The difference is that one was just saccharine pap while the other was pure poison that cynically taught a generation to hate and resent themselves and their cultural inheritance.
Perhaps the next generation will have the intelligence and curiosity to perceive the unique aspects of the American culture that make it an enduring beacon of freedom in the world and the only new thing in history.
0 people like this.
Reply 16 - Posted by:
lakerman1 3/15/2022 4:12:47 PM (No. 1100889)
I often enjoyed the faculty lounge, and coffee break, when English professors were there, offering their weird, often conflicting interpretations of the works of various authors.
This article took me back to those days.
Then I thought of my late best friend, Hubert, who completed his coursework for a doctorate in English, but couldn't come up with a dissertation.
Hubert was taking a doctoral level course in English, focused solely on the works of Norman Mailer, back in 1969. He was explaining to me what Mailer really meant in some of his novels, and I asked this question.
What if Mailer walked into your classroom, listened, and then said, "You people are all wrong! That's not what I meant in that novel!"
What would be the class response to Mailer be?.
Hubert said, "His interpretation of his own work doesn't matter. We would ignore him."
6 people like this.
Reply 17 - Posted by:
FormerDem 3/15/2022 4:30:38 PM (No. 1100911)
is there any important work of literature which is NOT a story of exile? Pilgrim's Progress, Winter's Tale, the Tempest, Bernanos, Nabokov, the poetry of Hopkins and of TS Eliot, the Confessions of St. Augustine, the alienation in the Russian novels I would count too, and Amy Tan who I love though she may not be Shakespeare.
1 person likes this.
Reply 18 - Posted by:
Rumblehog 3/15/2022 5:11:34 PM (No. 1100958)
Superman could have been a celibate, or he was sterile from living in earth's atmosphere, who knows?
The movies didn't make America, America made the movies. Midwestern America was very much like Andy Hardy and Mr. Smith in all its innocence and precociousness.
1 person likes this.
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