Speed Read: Mamet Attacks

“I am a new-minted Conservative,” declares David Mamet, great American author and playwright, in his new book, The Secret Knowledge.

Whack through Mamet’s frequent quotations of Friedrich Hayek and you’ll find all the shock jocks’ canards: “Carbon emissions do not in any way affect the temperature of the planet”; we “won in Vietnam”; an Islamic center in downtown Manhattan is “a cultural obscenity.” These are not points that Mamet sets out to prove. Instead, he accepts them at face value, packs them into his shotgun, and blasts away at liberalism’s sitting ducks, like Jane Fonda.

It turns out that Mamet, who is renowned for his dialogue above all else, has little to add to the political conversation. He recently told The Weekly Standard that he does not read political magazines and blogs, and his main interface with modern conservatism is talk radio. “I drive around and listen to the talk-show guys,” he said. “[Glenn] Beck, [Dennis] Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Medved.”

The book’s June 2 publication is leaving the right giddy and, perversely, hoping the Glengarry Glen Ross author loses esteem among his fans. The lower Mamet’s reputation sinks, the easier it will be to hate the “liberal elites” who betrayed him. Over at Fox News, they’re already running a “David Mamet Attack Countdown Clock.”