Medary.com

For a while, a few years ago, my wife and I went to some performances from an "edgy" off-off-off-off-Broadway theatrical company in Kansas City. Yeah, it was run by a gay guy. Yeah, the plays were fairly funny. But after seeing a few of the productions, I was getting bored by all of the gay jokes.

Now I find that I shared that artistic judgment with playwright David Mamet. The setting is Mamet is teaching a class--I imagine on play writing (the quote is via the Wall Street Journal):

"Are gay people people too?" I (Mamet) asked the student, and he said that of course they were. "Are they aware of that fact?" I asked him. And he responded similarly. "Then why," I asked, "as they are aware of the fact, would they find its repetition on stage entertaining?"

"Ah, but," he said, "the straight people should see it."

"Ah, but," I said, "the straight people don't care. They may reward themselves for the ability to be bored by a play with a Good Message, but they, just like the gay people, come to the theater to be entertained. Your enlightenment is insufficient to capture the audience's attention for two hours."

I really don't have any particular problem with gay people, or homosexuality myself (by which fact you can infer that I'm not actually a conservative--I'm a classical liberal, really: in today's parlance, a libertarian.) I would really prefer however not to be beaten about the head and shoulders with gayness (or any other Message) for two hours straight, thank you very much. That's my fundamental problem with Democrats, "progressives," and others of the collectivist ilk. They insist that everyone else care about Their Pet Issue with the same burning fervor that they do. But the real world ain't built that way. "The straight people don't care."