Vidal is adamant that he is, that the American right effectively staged a coup d’etat after 9/11, that there is a constitutional crisis in which the republic has been replaced by an empire, and that there is a case for impeaching Bush. ”Once you’re imperial you have an emperor and once you have that you’re finished,” he says, recalling his recent reading of Aristotle’s Politics. ”And that has been our condition, taken advantage of by a bunch of sleazy gas and oil hustlers.”
If there is one thing that incenses Vidal about his fellow Americans it is ignorance. Bush, he says, ”knows nothing and he doesn’t want to know anything. He has no curiosity. Have you watched him speak? That little-boy face, mouth ajar, dazed eyes. The rumour round Washington is that he’s gone back to drinking. Well, thank God, he might make a little more sense. A group of us each vowed we would send him a bottle of whisky, but I think it’s heroin probably that he would need.”
Even better, here's the Old Queen on Alberto Gonzales:
”A few weeks ago, the administration got rid of Magna Carta and habeas corpus... That is Mr [Alberto] Gonzales, our Attorney-General, who thinks he’s Attorney-General of Mexico. Where he belongs. No, that is not a racist remark. But it’s on the edge.”
Gads. Isn’t he dead yet?
I wouldn’t have lunch with Gore Vidal unless I had my back to the restaurant wall the whole time.
I’ll read it all later but I must say artichoke soup sounds yummy!
Ie. true disagreement on any topic. He cannot accept that core values might differ between any two people, and "wrong conclusions" must only be due to others supposed ignorance.
What a worthless human being. A sort of pale 20th century version of Oscar Wilde.
What a chump.
An old liberal queen rages on.
No thanks.
Well, he shares something with Rush Limbaugh... being able to say “I told you so” brings great joy.
His TV appearances with WFB were wonderful...dueling smart guys.
As I recall, he once called Buckley a “crypto-fascist” who then offered to punch him in the nose.
Hillary’s the brightest.”
That's a new name for it?
But if you live long enough you become an institution, a monument from a past era.
Nostalgia's the thing, and it scarcely matters if you were right or terribly wrong.
Indeed, for writers and other marginal figures, being wrong or disreputably can make you more memorable than you would be if you'd made the right decisions and minded your own business.
The same thing's happened to Mailer, though he hasn't played it up as much as Vidal has.
It happened to Ginsberg, too, before he died, and it's Truman Capote's bad luck that he didn't live long enough to see reputation revive.
These Bush-Derangement-Syndrome, Leftist-Netroot types have been around for decades. Lord knows I have a close relative who is one. Thing is, in the last 4 years or so—especially since the 2006 thumpin’—they are now NORMATIVE for Democrats and the press, and are portrayed as average Americans. What does everybody think??
Sometimes it’s good to hear from old world leftists like Gore Vidal. Because of the great distance of years between his prime and now, we have the added benefit of perspective. We are able to see more clearly his embittered bias, his hopeless track on the wrong path, and to see his sassy, but inefectual ramblings for what they are: the last gasps of one of social history’s most prominent losers.
Ping!
Doesn’t he have a habit of calling black people the “n” word to their face?
CALL! CALL! CALL! CALL! AND KEEP CALLING TILL THE LINES FRY!
WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! WRITE! TILL YOU RUN OUT OF INK IN YOUR PEN!
Bombard the Democrats as well, especially the ones that ran on an anti immigration plank and the ones in marginal districts who could be vulnerable. keep pounding on them.
Wow, what scintillating wit. Don't know that I could stand to have lunch with such a staggering intellect, I'd probably choke on a French fry in awe and admiration.
Vidal is that saddest of things - a formerly articulate author who has lost his game, a formerly independent thinker now a slave to oppositionism, and a formerly influentual East Coast cultural figure now famous principally for being famous. It would no doubt disappoint his admirers to find that they have mistaken stridency for intellect, but it's difficult to picture them capable of it.