Karen: So you read Liza's paper I guess.
General Miller: I am a voracious reader. I'm the Gore Vidal of the Pentagon.
Karen: Gore's gay.
General Miller: No he's not.
Karen: I beg to differ but...
General Miller: He's gay? Cos I've been saying that Gore Vidal line a lot.
Karen: He is gay.
General Miller: Guess I'd better stop saying that then.
Gore Vidal is iconic for the effete, elitist, chablis-and-brie crowd at the Times. A poofy eunuch whose mouth (and pen) constantly wrote checks his muscle couldn’t back up, he had all the virtues the Left embraces: he was pretentious, he was generous with other peoples’ money, he hated this country, he produced nothing concrete, and he looked like a ghoul.
So he comes back to the US to die. We should ship his wasted corpse back to Italy to rot.
His essays on film and books were particularly wonderful. And funny as hell! My generation of theatre and tv people loved to see him on Johnny Carson where he held court with such wit and disdain.
I never agreed with any of his political opinions about modern-day America. But he did warn that the breakup of the Soviet Union would cause the Muslim world to rise up. He said this shortly after the wall came down. I thought he was nuts but I guess not.
Buckley's famous put-down of him in 1968 was in reaction to Vidal calling Buckley a "crypto-fascist."