my conversation with an angry white male/ wife stabbing apologist

So here is the conversation with the Norman Mailer fan I mentioned earlier. To set it up, it was party in a bar following a screening of several short social issue documentary films. He was a middle aged white man, a friend of one of the filmmakers, who was wearing a black shirt under a blazer, black jeans, and stood really close to me with his arms crossed or gesticulating pretentiously. He was interrogating me in a very hostile, combative, and condescending way. At one point he said to me "OK, now we're getting somewhere. Now this could still possible be an authentic conversation." And the rest, as they say, is history-- history which I have recorded below, in the hopes that we can learn from it and make sure it never happens again.

Me: What do you mean an authentic conversation

Schmuck: I am trying to have an authentic conversation with you, trying to talk about something real to treat you as a person in the space in front of me. I'm looking for some authenticity.

Me: Did you do Landmark? [I asked because I've had the displeasure of talking to other LandMarkees who constantly talk about authenticity and being authentic.]

Schmuck: No. But I did do one of their trainings [shouldn't the answer have been "yes, i did one of the trainings."]

Me: OK

Schmuck: Do you know who Norman Mailer is?

Me: Yes

Schmuck: Well I worked a lot with Norman. And neither of us has patience for inauthenticity,"

Me: He also stabbed his wife.

Schmuck: You didn't know his wife. I did.

Me:Oh, [sympathetic nodding], was she stab-worthy?

Schmuck: She was provocative. Have you read any Norman Mailer?

Me: Yes.

Schmuck: So you'll know he is the greatest writer, the greatest truth seeker. He pursued the truth at all costs. And if the fact that he stabbed his wife is the only thing that sticks out to you, that is a shame. He made art. There has been a cultural spiraling, people in your generation don't really have a lot of authenticity. You know in the 1960's, the intelligentsia made real movies for the cinema. Looking around [he meant the bar which was filled with some independent filmmakers and their friends] I hear a lot of idol chatter, I don't see any real art. I just see people trying to make films for the mass market, for the mainstream.

Me: These people are mass market mainstream filmmakers? These people who make documentaries about mandatory sentencing, being born with HIV, the abuse of Native Americans?

Schmuck: Well... Norman Mailer wrote about the truth, he wrote about war. This generation doesn't know what that is. This generation can't relate to not knowing where your next meal is coming from.

Me: Well, this generation also has to deal with things that your generation didn't. Tonight we saw things that people didn't have to deal with before [a film about a woman whose mother died of AIDS and who was born HIV+]. People didn't have to deal with HIV and AIDS before that, people weren't born HIV+.

Schmuck: Well, that's an interesting point. You make an interesting point. Do you know why it's interesting?

Me: No. [enlighten me, PLEASE :)]

Schmuck: Because you are talking about communities who suffer self inflicted wounds. These people harm themselves through their culture, through the drug culture. I don't want to say it's their fault, but --

Me: But it is their fault. because they are hurting themselves, right? For example, the young woman who contracted HIV from her mother? People who are born HIV + are people who made bad choices when they were zygotes. They spent time in the wrong areas of the womb, they hung out with really dangerous viruses. They made really bad prenatal decisions and now they have to live with the consequences.They have only themselves to blame. I'm going to the bathroom.