"[W]hen you see those transcripts, it’s like out of an Oliver Stone movie. It’s like somebody wrote this guy into the plot of a movie…"—Dan Barrett, quoted by Bob Seidenberg, The Evanston Review.
"I have never even seen or heard anything like this. I don’t even know if a Hollywood movie producer could come up with this script."—Tom Cross, quoted by Ben Calhoun, City Room, Chicago Public Radio, December 10, 2008.
"Putting aside the peculiar dialect of desperation that made the governor sound like a John Malkovich character in a David Mamet play, the complaint showed a man trolling the depths of darkness."— Timothy Egan, The New York Times.
"If David Mamet didn’t write the profane, wiretapped dialogue for the Illinois governor’s attempt to sell Obama’s Senate seat, he should have." — Choire Sicha, Salon.
"[H]is alleged attempts to fill president-elect Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat in exchange for favours could have been lifted wholesale from a mafia B movie…"— Edward Luce, The Financial Times.
