The Benjamins

One encouraged to talk at great length will, eventually, reveal himself inconsistent, foolish, or mistaken. This is the operation of both the celebrity interview and a criminal interrogation.

The criminal suspect is, of course, aware of the absolute necessity of dissimulation. This very imperative, eventually, leads him to self-indictment. He devotes all of his energies to concealment and misdirection, but the skilled interrogator encourages him to continue, as the suspect’s extended defense will eventually elaborate into inconsistencies, and contradictions. His energy, and, so, his ability to improvise, is progressively compromised by the imperative of concealment. The smart money is on the side of the interrogator.

This is also the case with the celebrity interviewee. 

The off-the-cuff repartee on the old, late night talk show panels was largely scripted. The guests were there to flog a project, a cause, or a career; they showed up with their agenda (generally simple self-promotion) and the host’s gag writers punched it up, and it was presented as “chat.”

Today’s daytime panel shows have replaced the gossip over the back fence of a simpler time. Women hanging up their washing once enjoyed the camaraderie and the permitted light viciousness of gossip. Who does not?

This, however, took place in the backyard, and was not broadcast to the world. Today’s universal audience imposes on its entertainers miming backyard gossip, the need for stringent control: one wrong word, unacceptable sentiment, or, indeed reticence at endorsement of a prevailing opinion, could lead to outrage, dismissal, and blacklisting. The need for control imposes upon the chattering celebrities a unanimity, relieved only by the occasional confected disagreement on minor points of doctrine.

But self-control is onerous, and even Rumplestiltskin had to eventually proclaim his duplicity to the world. This was not actually a shout of triumph, but a release from the burden of self-control. As are the various unfortunate ebullitions of antisemitism among the current gossipers en titre. These eruptions are like those of the cornered criminal – out of excuses he will curse the judicial system, or the world that made him.

Celebrities maddened by the need for pretense lash out. 

Indicting the Jews is the equivalent of kicking the cat, screaming at the secretary, or, in effect, wife-beating: it is identifying the cause of an unavoidable discomfort as one less powerful than oneself.

Here the Jew-hater reveals himself through his inconsistency. For he cannot simultaneously assert that Jews Rule the World, and demonstrate he finds us an acceptably passive object for attack.

A zissen Pesach.

David Mamet is an award-winning author and playwright.