Mamet’s quite worried sigh of relief

Published January 9, 2026 3:40am ET



You’ve seen this movie before: a Jewish intellectual who brings not peace, but a sword. This time, however, the sword is swung with abandon. “A Jew who votes for the Democrats,” David Mamet writes in The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment, “is a damned fool.” “O.J. Simpson,” he thunders, “killed two people as incontrovertibly as Jack Ruby shot [Lee Harvey] Oswald.” Speaking of the latter: “I’ve been in the editing room for 45 years, and I assure you, the [Zapruder] film is faked.” Mamet’s willingness to let the bodies hit the floor rivals that of Roman Emperor Commodus. He dismisses the critical flower of American poetry as “Largely drivel — Walt Whitman and Robert Frost’s work would not be out of place on greeting cards.” In their place, Mamet prefers the work of Muddy Waters and Bob Dylan.

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