Talking Over Food: Two Dinners

My Dinner with Andre

My Dinner with Andre was a movie released in 1981 to critical accolades. It’s considered the most boring movie of all time by some and the most enlightening of the 80’s by others. I saw this movie while I was in my sophomore year at VCU. I considered it the latter and still do today.

Granted, the movie is about nothing more than two men talking two hours at a restaurant about plastic people, hallucinations, fantastical trips, theater shows, the nature of life, comfort, dreams versus reality, and how their world views are significantly different in large part because one went traveling while the other didn’t. It is profoundly intriguing to listen to how their conversation progresses. (Spoiler Alert) This conversation leads Wally, the protagonist in the movie, the one who didn’t travel, to become a changed man. On his way home from his dinner with Andre, Wally notices everything around him, like his experiences at different locations on the city streets, his wife with whom he has a great story to tell, himself, and his life.

That’s what talking to others with an open mind can do. Free talking produces free thinking. It can change you. It can change the person you’re talking to. It can relieve depression. It can upend anxiety. It can make you feel connected to the energy that exists all around us. It can make each of our worlds easier to navigate, and it can improve our relationships to one another. Isn’t that what most people want?

We live in an age where friends, neighbors, and family are isolated from each other. People are leaving religion in increasing numbers but spending less time with friends, while loneliness has become the dominant culture of our day. Talking, as in two-way communications, can get us out of this funk. Talking connects us.

Talking & Interconnectivity

Interconnectivity is an elusive word in the early 21^st century.

Once, long ago, human beings were fused with each other within their respective tribes. Sure we fought, but we also cooperated to make things happen for the greater good. Then one day, the capitalists happened. They won an election and made us into an oligarchy, which is now a time and place in history wherein most Americans are discovering too late the epic danger we are in.

Right now, more than love, we need interconnectivity. With so much dragging ordinary Americans down to the ground these days, including the move of our entire country towards an isolationist existence on this planet, a sense of connection between each other, especially between strangers, must be considered, then renewed.

Each of us must make talking to strangers normal in our lives. Yes, strangers can be scary but the overwhelming majority of folks we consider strangers are actually nice, American people.

There really are not “millions” of horrible foreign terrorists in our country, as some ignorant MAGA administration has repeatedly claimed. For the most part, the enemy of Americans is not the lowly and mostly poor immigrant, a stranger most of us do not talk to. Our enemies, if you want to talk about human beings, are the wealthy. Albeit too late, MAGAs are waking up to this fact. For those who don’t, they will likely fall again into some other extremism, some new conspiracy theory, some new worship of another Golden Calf. They will stay MAGA.

Liberals, free thinkers, college grads, the self-taught, and the like have never had any need to talk to MAGAs. MAGAs simply do not know how to have a two-way conversation. They’re toxic, one-sided, short-sighted, and close-minded, therefore the lack of any need to talk to them. Until they wake up, they will be forever lost in talking to themselves, while the rest of us delve in knowing our fellow beings better.

Do you mean to talk but not to about one-third of Americans who happen to be MAGA? Yes, and I’ll tell you why coming up.

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Talking about talkin … if you’d like to see what I’m talking about when it comes to two-way dialog, checkout the movie, My Dinner with Andre. It’s available on YouTube for free. For those who may want to understand this movie before delving into it, below is a literary analysis.

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My Dinner with Adolph

The New York Times published a piece called My Dinner with Adolph about a one-way conversation between an extremist conman and a “centrist” comedian. If you listen to what the comedian had to say about this talk, you will notice a pattern that social psychologists would call a one-way conversation. For example, when referring to a Ronald Reagan painting, the conman talked of Reagan’s hair. The comedian talked about how that POTUS brought down communism, and that is where the “conversation” on this topic ended. Apparently they covered a slew of topics over their two hours together, talking past each other every time.

Known for his painful honesty, Larry David’s piece, My Dinner with Adolph, is not a story at all but a critique of a former solid-liberal, who’s all in these days on inclusion when it comes to Right-wingers and their complaints about the Left. Larry’s piece is all about comedian Bill Maher and his dinner with Felon 47 at the White House.

This is the same Bill Maher that Felon 47 sued for five-million-dollars over a joke the comedian told on air in 2013. From his pretty funny joke, Bill proclaimed that Felon 47 was born of a human mom and an orangutan dad. Everyone laughed but not the humorless Mr. Felon. Just like he does with everyone on this planet who isn’t praising him, he pouted and retaliated in response to Bill’s joke. Thus, the suit.

Bill seems to have forgotten that incident with the conman or ignores it to his peril. Bill did what Maya Angelou told us all not to do. She said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Bill instead left this meeting to report on his Real Time show that, among other things, the conman is very different in private then he is in public.

You don’t say, Bill.

I, Darhlene, was married to a conman for six years. I have a very good idea of what they do … all of them. They have multiple personalities, Bill. That is why he presented himself as two different people, Bill. Conmen are psychopaths. That’s what they do.

Then, Bill launched into getting the autograph of America’s first dictator while he told his audience to “Fuck Off” if he said anything nice about him, which he followed up by doing. He indicated that the conman “laughs” and was eagerly surprised at that, apparently unaware that dictators, being human beings, are capable of laughter too.

Bill also said that “he is much more self-aware than he lets on in public.” Really, Bill? Is that what you want us to believe?

No, Bill. He is only aware that he wants something from you. He’s a conman, Bill. That’s what conmen do.

Bill Maher despised Larry David’s piece. What Larry did in it was simple enough. He used Bill’s words in his op-ed to tell Bill that he was praising a dictator. Bill didn’t get this fine point.

Maher actually said he found the dictator relatable. Really, Bill?

Pope Francis was relatable. But a dictator? Bill! They’re psychopaths, Bill; they’re relatable until they get what they want, Bill. Don’t you get this point, Bill. He’s a conman, Bill. That’s what conmen do.

Bill responded by firing back at Larry’s piece, saying it was “an insult to Jews” who were murdered under Adolph. I’d like an example of that, that is, how were Jews insulted by My Dinner with Adolph? I, a heritage Jew, found David’s piece to be on point, and at least as hilarious as Bill’s orangutan joke.

The Main Course

The issue of interconnectivity, while it means connection between each other and to the world around us, it does not mean to go out and associate with toxic people. That includes conmen. We cannot allow them, the haters from the MAGA-sphere, to have us normalize them in our society.

That is what your conman wanted, Bill. Your acceptance and, like the public fool you are becoming, you gave it to him.

If you listen to Bill Maher’s attempts to enlighten Felon 47 on a few issues, you will notice that the MAGA leader does not engage with the criticisms that Bill throws at him. He instead brushes them off.

Bill called him more “connected” than many others he’s interviewed. That’s because Bill thought he was having a conversation with a US president. He wasn’t. He was having a conversation with a conman. The only connection existent in these kind of people is their connection to what they want for themselves.

Not one of us should accept that as normal. Not one of us should give in to anybody having dinners with any Adolph. We cannot allow ourselves to kiss their asses. We cannot allow ourselves to bend the knee.

He is a conman, Bill Maher. Plain and simple. Maybe one day you’ll get this point.