MAILER BLASTS BACK AT COMIC

NY Post: Page Six ^ | Richard Johnson

[Pharmboy]

May 9, 2003 -- DON'T invite Dennis Miller and Norman Mailer to the same party.

Miller trashed Mailer in a May 5 op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal for the novelist's arguments against President Bush's liberation of Iraq. And now Mailer has responded with a "Dear Dennis" letter, published in the Journal yesterday.

[Pharmboy]

Surprised the Jew-hating Vidal would be in the same room with Mailer; I guess their combined hatred for the US trumps the other stuff.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

I am surprised homosexual Mailer isn't an editor at antiwar.com. Birds of a feather, and all that...

[Catspaw]

Miller retorted in the Journal that Mailer, like designer Mary Quant, was "kinda hot for a few minutes in the '60s . . .

ow ow ow ow OW! That's gotta hurt :-))

[Asclepius]

Mailer may have drawn some comfort yesterday from two fellow World War II veterans - Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal.

The death of American letters, these three.

[Pharmboy]

Vidal is gay; I don't think Mailer is.

[KeyWest]

Miller was funny. Mailer is vitriolic. Classic liberal response.

[miss marmelstein]

Um, do you really think Mailer is gay?? As someone who once saw him doing the Frug with a fashion model at an Upper Eastside party, I can assure you he's a jerk but not gay.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Birds of a feather.....Hmmm.....sounds like your speaking from personal experience. It takes one to know one eh?

[AgThorn]

good piece giving a lot of Miller quotes, but where is anything of a retort from Mailer? Face it, it's an unfair fight!! ;-)

[doug from upland]

I think that Dennis will be further eviscerating the scum in public. This could be fun to watch. Dennis has to watch out that Mailer doesn't stab him, as he did to one of his wives, or help get another murderer out of prison so he can murder again. Mailer is totally morally bankrupt.

[mabelkitty]

And that means he isn't homosexual?

I would guess he's mysogynist to the bones.

He stabbed one wife in the breast, for G-d's sake. Talk about symbolic.

[skeeter]

Mailer may have drawn some comfort yesterday from two fellow World War II veterans - Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal.

Lest I become overly sentimental for the WWII generation.

You can add Studs Turkel & Walt Cronkite to this list.

[keithtoo]

Just about everyone in their 80's is a WWII veteran. That doesn't get you any mileage with me.

Mailer, Vidal et al are a bunch of self-absorbed, elitist, America-hating Euro-weenie-wannabe parasites.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Yes, you're correct. Birds of a feather in my life as well. I tend to hang around with Pro-American, Pro-Bush supporters who have their hearts set on liberating an oppressed people, and seeing an end to terrorist attacks on American soil.

Know any people like this?

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Rock Hudson. Sean Connery...

Don't worry, these people go by outward appearances.

[dead]

Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal.

Whole lotta cranky in that room.

[John Lenin]

Mailer is projecting his own insecurities on the rest of us. It must suck to be him.

[Billthedrill]

Good Lord - Vonnegut, Mailer and Vidal? Geriatric ex-trendoids whose talent is decades past its "sell-by" date. Love to have the Metamucil concession at that party.

Vonnegut, at least, has not fallen prey to the grotesque attempts on the part of the other two to project a macho image more appropriate to men fifty years younger and fifty IQ points lower. But all three seem blissfully unaware that the verities they have spent careers propounding as received truths are no longer the basis for a world-changing philosophy; that they have borne fruit and that fruit is rotten. Romantic youth overturning the ossified social structures of their elders ended up in the killing fields of Pol Pot and the literary and artistic holocaust of the Cultural Revolution. Anti-fascism enthusiasms ended up supporting despots. Anti-imperialistic passions ended up supporting communistic empires. Anti-militaristic slogans ended up in the massacre of Tiananmen Square and the brutal blitzkrieg that led to the final takeover of South Vietnam by the North. Brick by brick, piece by piece, each of the high-sounding nostrums promulgated by these three has been exposed for the sham that it is.

The stridency we now hear from these fading icons is that of failure and irrelevance, and that is precisely what Miller pointed out with respect to Mailer. They have retained their ideals untarnished by the horrors that the unrestricted applications of those ideals caused in the real world. It is sad that they think this to be laudable.

[John123]

Is this the same Norman Mailer that helped a convicted murderer in prison write a novel and eventually gain his release? This guy is a suspected psychopath who killed a NY waiter shortly after parole with a knife because he was asked to leave.

[billorites]

"He stabbed one wife in the breast, for G-d's sake. Talk about symbolic. "

I suppose I'd have to see the breast.

[RedBloodedAmerican]

Maybe Mailer is only havng a bad hair day. Apparently some members of FR support this pacifist.

[Austin Willard Wright]

Pro-British? Tory!

[Buckwheats]

Denial ain't a river in Egypt.

[sheik yerbouty]

Mailer is merely a garrulous lunatic.

[cynicom]

Vidal is a communist like his cousin Al Gore.

[Pharmboy]

Way to go, Bill!

I hereby nominate your mini-rant for Quote of the Week.

[Buckwheats]

"Full of trivial conversation"....lol.

[TX Bluebonnet]

The fun started with Mailer's recent op-ed piece in the London Times, "Why Are We in Iraq," in which he asserted that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a way to massage the white male ego.

First the liberals were complaining that the blacks are over-represented in the Armed Forces and we were sending them off to die. Now that we've won with an impressive military display, all of a sudden the military is predominantly white.

I saw all races in all branches and at all levels and was impressed by how well they worked together. One story in particular told of how the native Iraqis were confused by the Melting Pot of ethnicity of the American soldiers, yet they all called themselves Americans - no hyphens needed.

[Pharmboy]

...who stabbed his wife and freed a prisoner who subsequently stabbed a waiter to death (Jack Henry Abbott). Mailer is definitely capable of doing bad stuff...as a matter of fact, he thrives on it, the sicko.

[an amused spectator]

Mailer may have drawn some comfort yesterday from two fellow World War II veterans - Kurt Vonnegut and Gore Vidal.

Talk about literary irrelevance! I haven't read a Vonnegut novel in years, and I only really think about Slaughterhouse Five when I'm pensive about the nature of Western war.

I refuse to read Vidal, and Mailer has been passe for decades.

Whereas Dennis Miller is something like a modern oral version of some of Clemens' better stuff.

[Pharmboy]

Even though I can't stand the old queen, Burr was entertaining.

[an amused spectator]

The death of American letters, these three.

They ain't gonna make into the Classics, that's for sure.

[Hildy]

Mailer, Vonnegut and Gore...Irrelevance x 3

[kabar]

Just about everyone in their 80's is a WWII veteran. That doesn't get you any mileage with me.

Mailer has written a few dozen distinguished books, and has won two Pulitzer Prizes and the National Book Award. Mailer also served in an actual war, as one recent web biography describes: "Mailer was inducted into the Army in March 1944, less than a year after graduating with honors from Harvard with a B.S. in Engineering. His experience in the Army as a surveyor in the field artillery, an intelligence clerk in the cavalry and a rifleman with a reconnaissance platoon in the Philippine mountains, gave him the idea for a novel about World War II."

Gore Vidal grew accustomed at an early age to a life among political and social notables. He was born at the military academy in West Point, New York, where his father was an instructor. He was raised near Washington, DC, in the house of his grandfather, Thomas P. Gore, a populist Democrat senator from Oklahoma. Vidal learned about political life from him and when he was a teenager he adopted the first name of Gore. Vidal also spent time on the Virginia estate of his stepfather, Hugh. D. Auchincloss. After graduating from Philips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he served on an army supply ship in the Aleutian Islands, near Alaska.

[Hildy]

"Love to have the metamucil concession at that party!" Email that to Miller..that's great!

[an amused spectator]

Two quotes from Mailer, four quotes from Miller.

Perhaps Johnson had difficulty finding any more interesting zingers from Mailer's cow spew.

I know I'm not going to waste my time on it. ;-)

[Steve_Seattle]

"Geriatric ex-trendoids whose talent is decades past its "sell-by" date."

Now that's a good line - wish I'd thought of it.

[an amused spectator]

I'll second the motion. ;-)

[Consort]

It's almost sad to see these aging Democrats lose their dignity. Almost, but not quite.

[Steve_Seattle]

From the Dixie Chicks to Mailer to Madonna, what I find offensive about these people is the way they present themselves to Europeans as not being like all those "other" Americans, all the dumb, ignorant, racist Americans who voted for Bush. That is why I see no "courage" in any of these celebrities' comments - they are simply pandering to a foreign audience that they know will applaud them - what's so f***ing courageous about that?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Still like Vonnegut.

[Goodlife]

Such a pity... I was a great admirer of Vonnegut in my liberal teenage years. However, the more I read his books, the more I began to view them as simply novel-length rants-- with Breakfast of Champions being exhibit A.

A few of his books, like Player Piano, Cat's Cradle and Galapagos raise interesting philosophical points, although something like Player Piano is certainly an obsolete philosophical point in the wake of the tech revolution in this country (there aren't fewer jobs with automation... there's more).

All in all, when a liberal writer like this makes 'predictions' he gets it wrong from the start. All the hellish 'utopias' predicted by liberal writers in the 60's come with a centralized 'overseer' running it. Writing about this, you'd think they'd be against a centralized state, especially when viewing how all their predictions for the 'bad' future come true on the causative end, but bear fruit on the effects end simply because the wide scope of American experience and ingenuity can make a buck off anything.

[Steve_Seattle]

More and more, I see the liberal/conservative rift as a conflict between the romantic and the classical temperaments. The romantic idealizes nature, the individual, emotion, spontaneity, and extravagence, whereas the classical temperament favors reason, moderation, proportion, and the rule of law. But ironically, when the romantic temperament gains political power, it uses a legalistic iron fist to impose its way and to crush individuality.

[SarahW]

Natalie Maines did the same thing - made a cheap shot in England to please her audience, to get applause, to make sure she would stand apart and be free of association from Bush or "those other Americans", so she could get audience approval.

[Cicero]

I wouldn't say that Mailer has written "a few dozen distinguished books." I'd say he's written two or three good books, including "The Naked and the Dead" and "Armies of the Night"; a few dozen forgetable, second- and third-rate books, and one of the worst novels of the 20th century: "Ancient Egypt."

[miss marmelstein]

I've read most of his books (including his picture book on Marilyn Monroe which is really beautiful-looking)and I say he has a very heterosexual point of view. He's not unlike Hemingway who is also predictably called gay on the basis of nothing except that, like Mailer, he enjoyed punching other men at parties. Not all men who hurt women are gay; that's a cliche.

I can't believe I'm defending old Normie!

[an amused spectator]

Even though I can't stand the old queen, Burr was entertaining.

I've seen it, but it never piqued my interest.

[marktwain]

Excellent Rant!! Congrats, you nailed it.

[lilylangtree]

Mailer and Vidal are examples of the New York elite that Algore ascribes and the clintoons suck up to? Yuck!

[TheWillardHotel]

Thanks for posting those comments, you exceed simple
invective.

I just finished a book by Jacques Barzun, named "From
Dawn To Decadence". Your comments reminded me of some
his his observations of the last century.