I can’t think of another writer who has given me more pleasure than David Mamet, but he talks some really crazy s**t — pardon my French — in the new issue of Men’s Journal.
Celebrities have long been tailoring their personalities to whichever magazine is profiling them — sharing recipes in Ladies Home Journal and sex tips in Playboy — but Mamet’s macho pose in Jann Wenner’s hyper-masculine monthly is a bit much.
After praising the virtues of owning black turtleneck sweaters and dissing the collected works of Thomas Wolfe and F. Scott Fitzgerald — “Who cares?” says the playwright and film director — Mamet is asked “What’s your biggest 
regret?”
Here’s his answer:
“Not serving in the Vietnam War. It was the ’60s. I thought I shouldn’t go and wasn’t smart enough to realize that it was too easy an excuse because a lot of people were going in my place. It’s a young man’s responsibility to defend his country.”
Give me a break!
Our country was being “defended” in Vietnam?
Says who?
Even the architects of that disastrous attempt to keep the “Red Chinese” from taking over Asia admit it was a huge mistake (i.e. a certain Secretary of Defense named Robert S. McNamara) and had nothing to do with keeping us safe here in the U.S.
A big zero! One of the greatest American mistakes of the past 100 years – although Iraq and Afghanistan may prove to be even bigger quagmires.
So how many stars would you give the Vietnam War?