David Mamet - The Secret Knowledge

Marilyn Monroe, then, though her work brought and brings delight to literally hundreds of millions of people, although she created for herself one of the most revered icons in show business, had an impossibly successful career, though she did this through persistence, talent, hard work, and guts, must be dismissed by the wiser, nonworking Left, which finds her neither a serious actress nor comedienne. She did not, sadly, fulfill the vision which Gloria Steinem had for her, because she was not an intellectual—she was an actual worker.

In a more equal world, a top-down world, a world of equality (as envisioned and enforced by the Left) Ms. Monroe might have been taken in hand (by whom?) early on, and cured of her unreal escapist self (her talent), and still be alive playing Mother Courage in some Resident Theatre somewhere.

Can this be Feminism? A dismissal of the greatest comedienne in the history of the screen because her work did not meet the high standards of Gloria Steinem?

Is it possible that the wise Ms. Steinem mistakes the performances of Marilyn with the person? She does conflate, and seems to connect causally, Marilyn’s screen persona with her use of sleeping pills, suggesting that she killed herself (an open point) because she was “denied the full range of possibility” and, so, was forced to disappoint Gloria Steinem.

Would Ms. Steinem be happier if Marilyn had lived to play Medea and Queen Elizabeth? Is she ignorant of the working life span of an actress? Did she never laugh or smile at one of Marilyn’s performances? Of course she did, but now she wants to throw it in reverse and, having derived enjoyment from her work, derive further enjoyment from her superior sad understanding of Marilyn’s essential “slavery.” Marilyn, though vastly wealthy, though widely accomplished, though revered worldwide (and to this day) was somehow a “slave to men.” Why? Because she was a woman, and acting, thus, was somehow not “an expression of her real self.” 64

What balderdash. Shame on you, Ms. Steinem, for promoting hypocrisy. For, anyone who might be foolish enough to nod along with your sanctimony, will, along with you, the next time they watch one of Marilyn’s films, laugh and smile; you, then, are promoting a dual-consciousness, an indictment of that which one enjoys, of a legitimate pleasure brought about through the work and the talent of an actual human being, who, in your sad lament, you belittle and patronize. Were or are you smarter or more talented than Marilyn Monroe? Make me laugh.

And where was the Left, and where the Feminists, during President Clinton’s savaging of Juanita Broaddrick, Gennifer Flowers, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal, and Monica Lewinsky? These women, who suffered, if anyone has ever suffered, “workplace harassment,” were dismissed from consideration by the Left, who mentioned their struggles not at all ; and Monica Lewinsky, a Nice Jewish Girl from Brentwood, working as an intern in the office of the most powerful man on the planet, was treated to the silence of the feminists as she was accused, by her employer, the President of the United States, while he was committing perjury, of being unbalanced and, perhaps, of having had a “bad childhood.” How, by the Left, can this be excused? It cannot. But it may be partially explained—Flowers, Jones et al., were dismissed by the Left not merely because they accused the Left’s avatar, but because of their class . They were, to the Left, “trailer trash,” and so, de-facto, undeserving of a hearing yet alone a defense. The Feminists of the Left were voluble in their indictment of Justice Thomas, in Anita Hill’s, at best, “he said, she said” controversy; using racist language and innuendo against him unheard in this country in decades. They supported Tawana Brawley’s improbable claims of rape up to, and, indeed, past the point at which they had been proved fraudulent and her testimony found perjured. But what of the death of Mary Jo Kopechne by drowning? What feminist spoke up for the dead victim? Or against the man who drove her to her death? He remained an icon of the Left for the rest of his life. Are those feminists, then, spokespersons for the Rights of Women? Demonstrably not. They are not even spokeswomen for the rights of Liberal women—Ms. Kopechne was working for a Democrat, as was Ms. Lewinsky. They are advocates only of the positions of the Left—at whatever cost to women. If Feminism does not consist in the actual defense of actual women, what in the world are those people talking about?

Matrimony and monogamy have forever been linked with property and inheritance, the nuclear family, in the West, having been decided upon through trial and error as the most effective unit for preservation of both.

In the sixties, the Commune emerged as a riposte to the nuclear family. This was an autonomic re-creation of not only preindustrial, but pre-agrarian life; it was the Return to Nature, but the Commune, like the colleges from which the idea reemerged, only functioned if Daddy was paying the bills, for the rejection of property can work only in subvention or in slavery. It is an illusion that we all can share, that there is naturally occurring wealth, and that the constituency with which we all will share it is expansible. It is only in a summer camp (College or the hippie commune) that the enlightened live on the American Plan—room and board included prepaid—and one is free to frolic all day in the unspoiled woods.

Liberalism is a parlor game, where one, for a small stipend, is allowed to think he is aiding starving children in X or exploited workers in Y, when he is merely, in the capitalist tradition, paying a premium, tacked onto his goods, or subtracted from his income, for the illusion that he is behaving laudably (cf. bottled water).

So the Socialists want to do away with the notion of Property, and, so inclined, they want to do away with marriage. The Right sees an erosion of marriage (evidenced by sex education, cohabitation, homosexuality, single motherhood, abortion), and understands it as a moral affront. But it is additionally, and, perhaps, more basically, an attack on property. If the very poor and the very rich can breed without a stable home into which to introduce their children, then what of inheritance? The poor do so, as their children will perhaps be taken care of by the state, or by their grandparents; the rich, as they consider the child an affordable luxury, whose sustenance will not significantly affect the parent’s fortune. What of the middle class, upon whose fortunes the future of our country rests?

Monogamy and property came about as human beings developed away from the life of the cave and the savannahs; the question of their usefulness seems to signal a desire to return to that pre-agrarian state: all will own everything, children will be raised by a “village,” no human being need make the commitment of marriage, they may simply follow the dictates of their hearts. 65These dictates, however, everyone of a certain age knows, are sometimes misleading. And they are, at certain points in life, not only damned near irresistible, but are many times in opposition: the desire to breed promiscuously, and the desire to fall in love, for example. Here the organism is endeavoring to adjudicate not only its societal but its genetic course, for, as the desire for unfettered procreation, strengthened as the societally imposed condition of marriage is weakened, the chemical urge is ratified, and human beings may self-select for greater sexual athleticism (mass nonfamilial breeding), rather than for “falling in love” (monogamy), which, we see, is already coming to be thought effete.