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Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film, ''Once Upon a Time in America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay ({{harvnb|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}). For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|p=xv}} While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar''{{sfn|Caesar|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.
Forging a criminal enterprise, and/or performing criminal masculinity, is a traditional means of assimilation for immigrant populations in America, which for the second wave of European immigrants begins with the Irish in the 1850s and is then passed on to Italian and Jewish immigrants two generations later.{{efn|A classic example appears in Sergio Leone’s Jewish gangster film, ''Once Upon a Time in America''—which stars the perpetually ethnicity-crossing Robert De Niro and for which Mailer flew to Rome 1976 in to work on the screenplay ({{harvnb|Mewshaw|2002|p=14}}). For a recent example, see Stern’s ''The Frozen Rabbi'', a comic whirlwind tour through the history of American Jewry that follows one family from the Russian Pale to Memphis, Tennessee, with a stop in New York, where one family member, Ruby “Kid” Karp, becomes a notorious gangster.}} While criminality provided immigrant gangsters with increased notoriety and power, immigrant groups who became police officers saw a similar rise in status—and much like criminals, in part because it was hoped that they could infiltrate the criminal scenes of their brethren, it was the Irish who were cops first, followed by Italians and Jews.{{sfn|Fried|1993|p=xv}} While this history suggests discrete ethnic groups who cross paths but not cultures, cinematic representations of the outlaw capitalism of mobsters often star Jewish immigrants in the role of Italian immigrants and thus demonstrate ethnic crossings similar to those in Mailer’s films. The results register in the voice; in ''Little Caesar''{{sfn|Caesar|1931}} Edward G. Robinson, né Emanuel Goldenberg, stars as the adenoidal Cesar Enrico Bandello, and in ''Scarface'',{{sfn|Hawks|1932}} Paul Muni, né Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, stars as Antonio Camonte whose Italian accent has a near Yiddish lilt.


In a 1965 letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s{{efn|Buckley is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent. See {{harvtxt|Buckley|2005}}.}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.{{sfn|Tanenhaus|2005|}} When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:
In a 1965 letter to William F. Buckley, a man whose mid-century faux British accent made his voice almost as strange and remarkable as Mailer’s{{efn|{{harvtxt|Buckley|2005}} is also both WASPy and a former CIA agent.}} Mailer hands the crown of “most hated man in American life” over to Buckley. The letter responds to Buckley’s recent speech before the Holy Name Society, an annual gathering of Catholic police officers, in which Buckley criticized the news media for overemphasizing police brutality during the recent civil rights marches in Selma, Alabama.{{sfn|Tanenhaus|2005|}} When the ''Herald Tribune'' and civil rights activists caught wind of these remarks, and the rumors that the assembled police officers laughed and applauded upon hearing them, a media frenzy ensued which elicited a letter from Mailer, weighing in on Buckley’s speech by clarifying his own relationship to the boys in blue:


<blockquote>I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main- {{pg|191|192}} tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal.{{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>
<blockquote>I’m not the cop-hater I’m reputed to be, and in fact police fascinate me. But this is because I think their natures are very complex, not simple at all, and what I would object to ...is that you made a one-for-one correspondence between the need to maintain law and order and the nature of the men who would main- {{pg|191|192}} tain it. The policeman has I think an extraordinarily tortured psyche. He is perhaps more tortured than the criminal.{{sfn|Mailer|2008|p=8}}</blockquote>
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