I came across David Mamet's "political" book, "The Secret Knowledge," on a friend's coffee table. I picked it up and read the first 50 pages, then I skipped around a bit, kind of skimmed the highlights. What a load of rubbish. I really hate this book. I consider Mamet to be one of America's great playwrights, primarily based on two brilliantly realized plays - "Glengary Glen Ross," and "American Buffalo," but as a political mind, he really comes across as an imbecile.
I mean, he parrots Glen Beck and other talk radio nut jobs. Mamet is afraid of environmentalists, feminists, multiculturalists. He believes that Obama really is a great stealth "socialist." I hate the book because it is lazy, badly-reasoned, dumbed-down. Kind of disappointing coming from someone I used to admire. I went to Google and asked, "what happened to David Mamet?"
I came across the late great Christopher Hitchens "take down" of the book in the NY Times Book Review. "This is a straw book." - C. Hitchens.
Yes. A terribly dumb and boring book. Mamet tells us that reading Friedrick Von Hayek's "On the Road to Serfdom," opened his eyes. You wonder if someone threw the book at Mamet's head, you know, it knocked him out, and when he woke up, he realized that Glen Beck wasn't a perniciously crazy right-wing clown, but a enlightened genius! Hah! Total rubbish!