JEFF JACOBY'S "The other David Mamet" (Op-ed, March 23) took me by surprise. Mamet was a young celeb among recent Goddard College alumni when I attended the school - a pretty radical leftist place, then and now - in the early 1970s. When Reagan was elected, we were all ready to flee the country, except we didn't know where to go. (Good thing we didn't pick Tibet.) I confess that I'm a little shocked to hear that Mamet, too, began to smell the roses, so to speak. I'm even more shocked to find myself in the conservative camp today. I guess for many of us the true legacy of the '60s is remorse.
DAVID SEARS
Brooklyn, N.Y.
JEFF JACOBY quotes, without attribution, my grandfather's fictional Mr. Dooley ("Politics ain't beanbag") while trying to poke fun at the Democrats ("Drive-by defamation," Op-ed, March 26).I don't blame him for the omission. Finley Peter Dunne's take on the same old internecine squabbles was actually funny: "Th' dimmycratic party ain't on speakin' terms with itsilf."
Mr. Dooley would make mincemeat of Jacoby's flag-waving and the war-whooping that passes for reasoned commentary in some quarters. I can't do it justice, but I will say that Jacoby does well to criticize the "drive-by defamations" of the current campaign. His own are so carefully planted and lovingly tended.
BENNETT HAMMOND
Brookline
