Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead
I can recall that day in the 1930s when a “news” (sic) magazine appeared in Washington, D.C.; it was called Newsweek: meant to be a counterbalance to Time Magazine’s uncontrollable malice. In due course the two became sadly alike as Vincent Astor morphed into Henry Luce: Was it something in the water? I once asked Henry Luce why he called Time a news magazine when it was simply Uncle Harry’s means of venting his rage (this was 1960 or so) at liberals, and “degenerate art” like the plays of Tennessee Williams-he had no answer. At Newsweek Vincent Astor was far too stupid to answer any such complaint. Now here we are in the Newsweek of 2008, and it’s still lousy. There have been a few decent writers in between that were less nutty than today’s Newsweek hacks.
But why is Newsweek currently lousy? Here’s an example provided by an editor who keeps a sharp eye on their crimes. He sent me their recent obituary of William F. Buckley, a hero to those who feared democracies.
Buckley bridled at bullies [we are assured]. But one of the rare times he lost his temper was debating Gore Vidal, who “got under his skin,” says son Chris. When Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” Buckley responded, “Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” But usually his public manners were genteel [I think they mean gentile]. With “Firing Line” guests who seemed nervous or over their heads, Buckley was gentle. Behind the scenes, he could show remarkable kindness. In 1980, a rising conservative star, Congressman Bob Bauman, was soliciting a 16-year-old [male] for oral sex. Bauman had been a gay-basher, and he instantly became a pariah. The next day, knowing what lay ahead for the disgraced congressman, Buckley quietly gave him an envelope containing $10,000. “He was a knightly man,” says Chris.
Unknown to them and everyone else who might read that publication, my views on many matters do not conform to the tired hacks who’ve taken over Newsweek, a magazine that has convinced itself that Bobby Kennedy Sr. was a great liberal. They love throwing about misunderstood terms like liberal and conservative that seldom suit their superficial, not to mention malicious, standards. Recently, their words of mourning for the fallen “genteel” paladin were incredible. As my editor friend knew that I seldom read the wilder attacks on me, he deconstructs Newsweek’s obituary of Buckley:
Parenthetically, I should note that, back in 1968, ABC TV had asked me and Buckley to “debate” each other at the Democratic and Republican conventions. Although Buckley was often drunk and out of control, he was always a spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude. When we were in Chicago during the Republican convention, the Chicago police decided it would be fun to attack the young co-ed demonstrators in Grant Park, not far from our studio. It was one of the worst displays of police brutality I’ve ever seen, and so I said on air; he liked what the police had done; in no time, the whole country was as shocked as I, but not Buckley. On air he was hissing like a cobra against the young people in Grant Park because, he said, they were egging on the Viet Cong to kill American Marines. They were not, of course. Buckley was a world-class American liar on the far right who would tell any lie he thought he could get away with. Years of ass-kissing famous people in the press and elsewhere had given him, he felt, a sort of license to libelously slander those hated liberals who, from time to time, smoked him out as I did in Chicago, when I defended the young people in Grant Park by denying that they were Nazis and that the only “pro- or crypto-Nazi” I could think of was himself. He sued me and got nowhere. He sued Esquire, in which our words appeared. By then the coming right-wing surge was in view. And so Esquire cravenly agreed to settle with him for a few paragraphs worth of free advertising for his weird little magazine The National Review, hardly the great victory he claimed.
Now, to Newsweek’s obituary of this late dishonorable American in which my editor-friend assures me that his brain-dead son Christopher had a hand: “Buckley bridled at bullies.” And who was the bully in context? Myself. He was also an expert at changing indefensible contexts. Buckley maintained that I supported revolutionaries who favored murdering U.S. Marines. Yet all the talk of Nazis etc. was started by Buckley. There was no lie he would not tell to get back at those who defeated him in debate.
The current editors at Newsweek appear to have listened eagerly to his son Christopher, who is guiding them to a benign view of what had been a most hysterical queen (WFB), much admired by a media that takes everyone at his own evaluation of himself as they did with Capote, who told them that he was a great writer like Proust (pronounced Prowst) and the hacks ate it up.
The correct assessment of any reputation today is so far from plausible reality that it might be a good thing if the hacks of a magazine like Newsweek steered clear of characterizing those disliked by the advertisers; hence his creepy son’s depiction of me as a “bully” when I was simply attending to one, and then-o, joy!- Buckley called me a “queer” and actually threatened me with physical violence, so great was his testosterone level. Next, the loyal son, suspecting that the pejorative use of “queer” is politically incorrect in mag-land, Christopher rambles into a story about his father’s kindness to a Mr. Bauman who had lost his seat in Congress after the congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male (note how prurient Newsweek’s prose is, in describing undesirable people). Chris weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, “He was a knightly man”: Who was-the cocksucker recipient of Buckley’s charity? Or his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?-Bauman was very right wing, it is said. RIP WFB-in hell.
The unique mess that our republic is in can be, in part, attributed to a corrupt press whose roots are in mendacious news (sic) magazines like Time and Newsweek, aided by tabloids that manufacture fictional stories about actual people. This mingling of opinion and fiction has undone a media never devoted to truth. Hence, the ease with which the Republican smear-machine goes into action when they realize that yet again the party’s permanent unpopularity with the American people will cause them defeat unless they smear individually those who question the junk that the media has put into so many heads. Anyone who says “We gotta fight ‘em over there or we’re gonna have to fight ‘em over here.” This absurdity has been pronounced by every Republican seeking high office. The habit of lying is now a national style that started with “news” magazines that was further developed by pathological liars that proved to be “good” Entertainment on TV. But a diet of poison that has done none of us any good.
I speak ex cathedra now, ad urbe et orbe, with a warning that no society so marinated in falsity can long survive in a real world.
Click here to see a short video clip of the incident described in this commentary.
National Book Award winner Gore Vidal has written twenty-three novels, five plays, many screenplays, short stories, well over two hundred essays, and a memoir.
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
Yay! Gore Vidal!
I always thought Buckley sounded drunk.
Three cheers for Gore Vidal, author of Julian and one of my favorite people; he’s certainly my favorite queer, ahead of even Tennessee Williams. Probably most Americans, not knowing much and judging by appearances and speech, would identify Buckley as the queer one among the three personalities. I would be surprised if 10% of the population could read this article with comprehension ( except maybe for the word cocksucker ), and therein lies the source of our national troubles.
He ran for senator in California about 40 years ago if I remember correctly, and I think he would make a great president today. Is the U.S. ready for a homosexual and a progressive for president? Does anyone know, please, is Vidal an atheist too?
Gore Vidal for president!
“A spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude.”
Such would sum up all the crackpot neocons that have seized control of our government.
Most americans wouldn’t understand what Gore Vidal was talking about. Got to remember the average american attention span is about as long as their dick. Love Vidal’s books great read.
Ghawar wrote: Is the U.S. ready for a homosexual and a progressive for president?
If the answer is no, then the US is surely not ready for a black or woman president.
I’m sure that Americans find a black or a woman more acceptable than a homosexual by far, but according to a poll I once encountered, Americans would be most unreceptive of all toward an atheist: a homosexual would be elected over an atheist, a black or a woman over a homosexual. Where would an intellectual fit in? Nowhere! Now, a truculent moron - there’s your winner, but John McCain sure has a tough act to follow.
egads. This is the only written discusion of WFB I’ve read. While I did want something to wash away the saccarin sweetness of the MSM, this is, ah.. informative.
yeah, I thought he was mostly wasted also. Can anybody corroborate Vidal’s statment?
Gore Vidal is a giant among men, a first-class citizen in the word and an American icon of the highest degree.
The Founding Fathers would have been proud of his courage and lifelong dedication to writing about and speaking honestly on many subjects.
I discontinued reading ‘Time’ and ‘Newsweek’ magazines about forty years ago. As for William F. Buckley, I’d watch his show occasionally because so much admirable credit was bestowed on his so-called logical and rational thinking and debating skills. After watching the show a half-dozen times or reading from his ‘National Review’ magazine, I knew what his answers would be on whatever issues were discussed. Vidal has him down pat. Buckley was a wordsmith in presenting his deeply ingrained conservative views on anything liberal and progressive.
The American monopolistic corporate media has reaped handsome profits from a steady stream of propagandized reporting of the news believed by the dumbed down public.
Those older folks reading this remember when the three nightly news shows had decent commentary from people like Eric Sevareid, Walter Cronkite, Howard K. Smith, Edward R. Murrow, John Chancellor, and men of this caliber.
We have Bill Moyers who epitomizes the highest standards in broadcast or print journalism, and on cable, Keith Olbermann is doing a fine job in a comedic way. On the same network as Olbermann, the great Phil Donohue was given the axe for questioning Bush and Cheney’s (and their group of gangsters in D.C.) motives for attacking Iraq.
Alternative media is the only way the public will find out the truth about issues and events. We read their articles everyday on Common Dreams and other media sources. Without an educated public, tyranny is easily made possible. Self-induced ignorance is a shame, because the person not only harms themselves by being a pawn of the dictator, they harm the rest of society by willing compliance to the whims of the crooks and liars. Look at the state of affairs in this country as you read this.
Having read just about everthing Vidal has ever written, I can say with assurance to Ghawar that he is indeed an atheist with a low opinion of religiosity generally. He has always refused to permit himself to be characterized as a “homosexual,” saying that it is adjective describing an act, not a kind of person. His essays on sexuality depict more of a bisexual with a homosexual tilt. He has written to not much liking the word “gay” but has always been a defender of sexual libertarianism and a critic of the ways in which the Powers That Be use sexuality as a method of social control.
Vidal is one of the first to say that there is very little difference between the Republican and Democratic party, refering to them as “two wings of the Property Party.”
He has always written from a leftist progressive stance but different from most because he was raised within the establishment (his grandfather was a blind Senator), a stepsister was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and he has rubbed elbows (among other things) with many historical political figures, JFK among them (he has praised Kennedy’s sense of humor but has pondered how “these callow young men” could take it upon themselves to make life and death decisions. He did not like Robert Kennedy, depicting his as an uptight prep school bully prick.
He won’t be with us much longer. The literary lions of progressive thought — such as Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut — have, as Vidal has tongue in cheek referred to it, “gone to a better place.” He will go there too one of these days and a valuable antiestablishment voice will be lost, with no replacement in site (except perhaps on a blog here and there).
I’m glad I’m not alone in noticing that Newsweek has descended into a level or crappiness hitherto thought impossible. There are copies of it in my doctor’s office, and I pick them up just to see if I can actually read them without nausea. The writing itself, for a billion-dollar magazine, is minor-league, even among the star columnists (of whom there are far too many, and yes, I include the redoubtable Anna Quindlen in that pack). Time is seldom better, and the fact that these two magazines look so much alike inside and out is very telling.
Mr. Vidal, your Latin has slipped. The optimal phrase in that last paragraph would be urbi et orbi, “to the city and the world.” Also, ad takes the accusative, which would result in ad urbem et orbem, meaning “toward the city and world.”
Loving the words of people who make me pay attention to phrasing, and look up words in the dictionary, reading this today is a perfect antidote to my political depression this week. I have spent 10 minutes alone with the last sentence, researching the Latin, and jotting down the phrase ‘a society so marinated in falsity’ in my book of writings to remember. I feel better. I trust that Mr. Vidal has written his own obituary for Newsweek to make us laugh and cry again when he dies, not too soon please.
Yeah! Gor Vidal - WFB was nothing more than a highly educated neo-con, thus the terrible damage that he did to our Society.
Buckley could never hold his own with anyone of genuine intellect. Witness his dressing down by Chomsky (well worth searching out on youtube). An insufferable psuedo-intellectual who seemed to think his brahmin tone leant him gravitas. Now if someone could explain John Nichols’ fawning obit in the Nation. Thank you (once again) Gore Vidal for setting the record straight (cough).
I agree with peaceman’s assement of Vidal being a giant among men. One has to wonder if, after Vidal has died, Newsweek would devote a cover story to Vidal as it did in its obsequious treatment of Buckley. For all his intellectual renown, Buckley was reduced to threatening Vidal and using an ad hominem attack against him during that debate in 1968. Buckley may not have been this towering intellectual colossus that so many people think as evidenced by a debate that took place on Buckley’s Firing Line program with Noam Chomsky in 1969. Buckley tried to rationalize the United States’ illegal invasion of Vietnam by referring to it as a case of “benign imperialism.” As Chomsky pointed out, the citizens of Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, South Vietnam [and now Iraq and Afghanistan]would hardly concede that the invasion and occupations of their countries could be considered to be benign. Buckley also tried to downplay the numbers of those people who have been killed by the U.S. military, perhaps believing that American foreign policy can never be wrong. The whole debate was interesting but in particular, perhaps, Part 4 and Part 5.
Noam Chomsky had said that at the end of the debate Buckley was furious at Chomsky, perhaps because Buckley was more than a little annoyed that Chomsky was able to swat aside, in my view, Buckley’s intellectual pretensions. Buckley told Chomsky that he would like to have Chomsky come back on his program but, perhaps not all that surprisingly, reneged on his promise.
When faced with someone who was not intimidated by Buckley, like a Vidal or Chomsky, Buckley’s reputation ends up looking less than stellar.
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2008/02/william-f-buckley-jr-has-died.html
{If one scrolls about halfway down the link, after clicking on it, one then finds the link to the debate between Buckley and Chomsky.
in his historical novel “burr,” vidal puts these words in the mouth of the title character, who has just been questioned on a point of law:
“the law, sir, is whatever is boldly asserted and plausibly maintained.”
sadly, cheney and the neocons seem to have taken this principle to its logical conclusion. they’ve been helped mightily by the corporate media, who supply industrial-strength plausibility in return for legislative favors such as the upcoming auction of the analog spectrum and the easing of cross-ownership rules.
the real burr had to contend with a fiercely partisan press, at a time when issues of libel were more likely to be resolved with pistols than with lawsuits. it’s amusing to think of buckley on the field of honor.
Common Dreams has, once again, made me glad that it is among the progressive alternatives to the corporate media.
Great commentary.
Great insights into the false history manufactured by major magazines, The national Review, and William F. Buckley.
Let the truth leave no stone unturned!
Thanks Gore Vidal!
Vidal always has a talent for correctly assessing the true character of others, then expressing it eloguently and succinctly.
————
I guess I’m old enough to have watch Buckley’s show, mostly in the eighties. His face and nose were always bright red, he was always slumped in his chair, and he mumbled and slurred his words….. it wasn’t too hard to figure out he was usually completely loaded plastered drunk.
Conservatives have grants, diplomas, and awards – but nothing in the way of intellect to back up this very public recognition. They are the mouthpieces of wealth and their efforts consist only in the invention of far-fetched rationalizations for the absurdities that the domination of wealth requires.
Unfortunately those who oppose conservatives need to obtain significant and sustained majorities of the public to defeat that monolithic stupidity. Alas the public accepts too many tenets of the conservative pseudo-science of economics for real insights to dawn over the benighted horizons of public discourse.
I thank Mr. Vidal for having taken up the cudgels and clear up all the fawning nonsense about Buckley. Like Nixon, too many were willing to overlook Buckley’s imperious, lying bluster with a teary-eyed charity it didn’t deserve. And I thank Mr. Vidal again for having the temerity to speak the truth about Newsweek (Newsweak?).
Ah Truth, that now elusive item.
I have to disagree with COMarc. Mr. Vidal, rightly praised as a great essayist, has done himself an injustice here. While I understand his anger at Buckley, instead of a reasoned, elegant argument, he has written here a rant in the line of Limbaugh or O’Reilly. Sadly, the amount of bile vented in this angry tract makes their usual swill sound genteel and thoughtful by comparison; these angry lines more resemble graffiti. “RIP WFB- in hell”? I generally would not presume to advise a famous author on how to write, but- the angrier your lines, and the more childish insults and obscenity you throw in, the less convincing you are.
I was absolutely floored when I saw the mind-boggling lionization of William Buckley when he, at long last, died. The man was nothing more than a bigoted, war-mongering clown.
Unfortunately — tragically — Buckley got the corporatist, war-loving, bloated military industrial complex he so fondly wanted. This was one sick, sick man.
What does it say about America that people like Einstein, and a host of other individuals who’ve championed peace and *sanity,* are hounded for their political beliefs by the FBI, while people like Buckley are given encomium fit for the gods? — a “knightly” man indeed — the stomach has a hard time knowing how many times to turn on that one!
Gore Vidal hit the nail right on the head when he wrote:
“The unique mess that our republic is in can be, in part, attributed to a corrupt press whose roots are in mendacious news (sic) magazines like Time and Newsweek, aided by tabloids that manufacture fictional stories about actual people. This mingling of opinion and fiction has undone a media never devoted to truth. Hence, the ease with which the Republican smear-machine goes into action when they realize that yet again the party’s permanent unpopularity with the American people will cause them defeat unless they smear individually those who question the junk that the media has put into so many heads.”
Sadly, people of Gore Vidal’s generation have seen America sink into the not cryto but rather quite *apparent* fascist state it has now become.
Newsweek as well as the other enablers of this fascist state would do well to keep in mind what the Nuremberg judges did about Julius Streicher. Streicher was the editor of several German publications that regularly spewed the vilest of Nazi propaganda to the German masses. I see no difference between Streicher and his counterparts in America’s mainstream media.
Don’t think so. Well, let’s do the math. …
– Take the over 1 million Iraqi killed in Gulf War II;
– add them to the quarter million Iraqis killed in Gulf War I;
– add the over 1 million Iraqis killed as a direct result of the intervening economic sanctions;
– add the two to three million Vietnamese killed during the Vietnam War, at least a million of whom were civilians;
– add the killed as a result of America bombing 20 differenct countries since the end of WWII, many of those countries bombed for several years at a time (Note: I’ll repeat that: the US has bombed *20* different countries since the end of WWI);
– then take that sum of corpses and add to it the hundreds of thousands of people that have been killed by dictatorial governments propped, supported, protected and financed by a variety of US administrations, both Republican and Democrat.
… This, in fact, gets us to a number GREATER than “six million dead,” doesn’t it?
And each of those deaths sanctioned by people like William F. Buckley.
As Norman Corwin put it in “Overkill and Megalove” — their brutality puts one in mind of “gorillas in suits.”
love you, man.
I think that Gore Vidal must be the best company in the world. Certainly the best gossip in the world. My fantasy used to be that I would visit him and have lunch with him and Howard at their hilltop home in Italy. Now the fantasy has shifted to Los Angeles, which doesn’t have quite the same savour, but I still have hope.
Gore Vidal is brilliant and his analysis of the US empire is spot-on.
I was very honored to speak with him at an event in L.A. once.
Rock on Gore…and why do these monster-war hogs get to RIP? If there is an afterlife, I hope theirs is not pleasant.
Happy Easter!
Cindy
Thank you Paranoid Pessimist for your answer about Vidal’s atheism. I have not encountered his essays on religion, but I gathered from his writing in general and from his intelligence and iconoclasm that he would be an atheist, as am I.
I also, like Vidal, have a little trouble in accepting the world ‘gay’ in its new colloquial meaning as, first of all, I found it a most useful and appropriate word in its now archaic or secondary meaning, and because I have a girlfriend named Gaye.
Valsmith, I agree. As much as I think Gore Vidal usually has something important to say, he should have put this one in his diary and satisfied himself to read it aloud to himself.
Sounds bitter and, alas, limbaughesque.
But the You Tube link was surely amusing and it made me realize that trash radio isn’t new. And yes, Gore did win that round.
Mr Vidal:
In my muddled memory, you were already ad orbe. Thanks for the unmuddling. But thanks especially for simply continuing to tell truth and keeping such a great sense of humor about it all. Saw your former town in Italy once; it’s just up the road from where one of my grandmother’s grew up (Aetena Lucana). She was a truth teller too. Must be something in the water, or maybe the limoncella.
Thanks so much.
Forty years ago, when I was a lass of twenty-four, I was privileged to see Gore and Buckley “go at it” on net work TV.
I did, and do, detest Buckley. I loathe what he represented. Conversely, I admire Gore, who is more ideologically sympathetic.
But it was fascinating to watch two quick witted egotists, with huge vocabularies, nearly come to blows.
At least Gore Vidal has outlived Buckley, has been able to see the other cocksuckers’ absurd lionization of him, and has had a chance to rebut them in his own words.
Good.
I myself found Vidal’s remarks quite convincing.
Vidal will get attacked by the right for saying things against the defenseless dead, but these things needed to be said to counter the glofification of fascism.
wsws.org website:
How interesting to see you posting comments here. As with your daily commentaries on your own website, I find myself in near complete agreement with you. (Except that maybe I find Buckley less personally offensive than many here do; despite his politics, I always enjoyed at least hearing him speak.) Your essays and political analyses are among the most astute and incisive anywhere, and I read selected articles of interest to me on your site six days per week. Thanks for such great reporting and discussion.
But I have a gripe for you, and I will take the opportunity here to express it before an audience and request a brief answer or link for reading rather than query you via a letter that may not be shown prominently at your site.
Despite the quality of your reporting and insight, I remain a capitalist. Corporations are extremely effective in carrying out various good programs large and small, far more effective, in fact, than a centrally planned socialist system. Now it is my opinion that the forces of capitalism need a strong dose of socialism, that they need to be strongly regulated, that, for example, the Glass-Stigel Act for banking needs to be re-instituted. As a capitalist, and as a progressive, I would eagerly vote for a guy like Teddy Roosevelt, trust buster and Republican. I also think that some industries, foremost the news organizations and television, should be 100% publicly owned, nonprofit and not perverted by private interests.
But you at the wsws.org site consistently, and without reasonable motivation or discussion, insist that the entire capitalist system must be banished and replaced with socialism. This is too extreme a view for me, and I never see any discussion at your site about how you arrive at this conclusion. In each of your essays you literally jump to this conclusion because the capitalist system has failed or been corrupted in some activity or other. It is your tacit assumption in every wsws article that reform or regulation of private enterprise is impossible. It’s a view that is unsupported at your site and with which I disagree.
I read your articles with great interest and appreciation, in exactly the same way that I might watch a PBS program on dinosaurs. Yes, it’s fascinating to see renderings of such fantastic creatures, and it’s intriguing to speculate on whether these animals were hot or cold blooded, did they lounge in knee deep swamps, or did they dart and scamper like chipmunks on dry ground? The trouble with these interesting dinosaur programs is that they end every sentence with ” a hundred and sixty million years ago.”
Now I know, Sir, that the earth is 6,000 years old. It’s in the Bible. So I enjoy those nature shows very much, but I ignore the ” hundred and sixty million years ago ” part just the same as I ignore your “global socialism” punch line to each article.
Best wishes.
I have the same sentiment towards Buckley as Vidal: GOOD RIDDANCE!
Vidal has been one of the most astute observers of the American political scene as well as America’s current biographer.
He is right on the mark on Buckley and has written pungent essays on the sellout by American Jewish intellectuals to the Zionists and religious fundamentalists.
He has also written critical essays on the origin of Harry Truman’s national security state and how we got to be in the mess we are now in.
Gore Vidal is fabulous and wonderful. he is an atheist and sexually adventurous. This is not a surprise or a coincidence. Homosexuals and atheists tend to be rather intelligent. It helps to be outside the bounds of normality to develop intelligence. To argue against almost everyone sharpens the mind quite beautifully.
You go Fat Lady!
Sopartacus: Your post is brilliantly funny.
WFB was a light weight disguised in GRAVITAS, arrogance and pose. I found him to be a sophist and most unimpressive. His loss is not a loss to me.
What a pleasure to read Gore Vidal again. I have not heard anything from him in quite a while.
Buckley was an unapologetic racist who did not hesitate to lie to promote right wing programs including the total dismantling of the New Deal and fierce attacks on any attempts to tax or regulate the super-wealthy and super-powerful corporate elite interests.
For a clear view of what they accomplished it is worth reading Paul Krugman’s “Conscience of a Liberal”. Unlike liberals and progressives, the “movement conservatives” have succeeded in largely dismantling much of the New Deal that resulted in the 1950’s rise of the working and middle class. They did this by pitting similarly situated working class people against each other and their own economic interests by supporting race and class ideas and flooding politics with huge amounts of money. At the same time their think tanks have mounted a superbly sucessful propaganda war on truth and equality. Now that they have succeeded in wrecking democracy and the economy the only thing they can offer is “fear itself” to a demoralized and impoverished nation.
I hope Gore Vidal lives for at least another twenty years in good health. He is one of the few who does not fear to tell it like it is.
Long live Gore Vidal!
Great to hear your voice once again. I still think that your “Burr” is one of the one of the greatest historical novels ever, with the possible exception of “Julian.” I, too, was a bit dismayed at the apotheosis of the late Mr. Buckley, who never was much more than a glib apologist for Joe McCarthy & his ilk.
As usual this man speaks oceans of truth. I have never agreed with everything he has said or written, but that’s the point. What Gore writes about is always thought provoking, interesting, and in the end, accurate. I wonder when we will see journalists show some independence and real writing skill: I wonder when more journalists will start being honest too. Here’s hopging that common dreams and Gore musings will continue to chip away at the ice burg that is corporae journalism and the denial of truth and reality that so doggedly continues.
I remember seeing Buckley on the Tonight Show in 1969 or 70 when I was about 13. The topic turned to migrant farmworkers, and Buckley stated they didn’t need decent pay or living standards because they wouldn’t have them in Mexico. I thought, what an irrelevant argument. They’re not in Mexico, they’re here, and should be treated to the standards that are prevalent here. You’re pretty bogus when a 13 year old can demolish your argument!
It’;s always fun to see a smart-ass whupped by someone just a little smarter. For those who would like to see Buckley bettered by a superior intellect, watching Noam
Chomsky take apart WFB is also fun.
You can see it at:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=William+Buckley+Noam+Chomsky&search_type=
AS Matthew Rothschild likes to observe about dislikable people who have finally passed away, “The good die young”.
davfin,
There are many good journalists who show independence and real writing skills. Common Dreams picks up many of their commentaries every day. And they do report on the truth of the matter and do not shy away from reality.
Gore Vidal is accurate when he speaks or writes as you say, and is as erudite as can be.
Keep reading the articles on Common Dreams and scroll down on the right side to some of the other names and read articles by those people.
dpnelson93, Good for you! A child prodogy at 13. (maybe a little hyperbole on my part) In spite of Buckley’s sophisticated power of reasoning, he still espoused the reactionary party line on the issues of the day
Like Erroll said above; A Vidal, Chomsky, Parenti, Fisk, and their scholarly brethren could debate Buckley and corner him on his faulty logic.
Awaken, Amen! Twenty years in good health and much inner joy for his contribution to the world.
Ghawar I can’t find anything in the Bible that says the earth is 6000 years old can you enlighten me? Is it based on Bishop Usher and the “Begats”?
Dear Gore–Love you madly, and am always made more intelligent after reading you.
Maybe someone else already pointed this out, but there is a mis print in this article. I am sure Gore Vidal knows it was the Democrats who were in Chicago in 1968, and it was during their convention that the Mayor Daily pigs rioted in Grant Park.
I was one of the demonstrators. I was 17 at the time and it taught me that most of what I learned in Civics class about our democracy were lies. The cops weren’t trying to enforce laws or arrest anybody, they were trying to beat us to teach a lesson about who was boss.
Best obit I ever read! Unfortunately there are plenty of hack writers to fill in the space that Buckley left….
I can only repeat: Long live Gore Vidal! - What a great, honest writer.
I thought his comment on William F Buckley, in all it’s entertaining brilliance, maybe a bit harsh - until I clicked the link and watched the actual exchange between WFB and GV on video.
My apologies to Vidal for my momentary insufficiency of trust - he is justified in his comments.
Watching part II of the ABC-tv WFB/GV Youtube video - Vidal Vs.Buckley: Part 2 (1968) - one must be struck by the prophetic qualities of Gore Vidal’s comment on Nov. 5 1968 on the (then) possible Presidency of Richard Nixon. Vidal could hardly have been more accurate - even with the benefit of hindsight seven years later. That is remarkable.
And the humour at the end, about Vice(!)-President Spiro Agnew - wishing Richard Nixon a long life in order to avoid Agnew as President - is a devastatingly funny direct hit. (Considering how Agnew later resigned this Vice(!)-Presidency in tax-fraud disgrace).
Hail to Vidal.
Vidal’s pithy commentary is on a par with H.L. Mencken’s obituary of William Jennings Bryan.
http://purple.niagara.edu/chambers/mencken.html
Wasn’t it Dorothy Parker who said, “If you can’t say something nice about a person, come and sit by me.”?
Thanks Gore, for setting the record straight on that conceited windbag.
What’s truly pathetic is that the pandering, grasping Michael Isikoff at Newsweek is often peddled as a muckraking journalist. Gore hit the nail on the head in the last sentence — there is a reality, and ignoring only works temporarily.
While we are talking about Gore, probably the only flamboyant literary / political figure I have long loved, would anyone care to discuss his treatment of JFK and others in Gore’s Palimsest? WFB was a pygmie, of course. But in Gore vs Mailer, I was in Gore’s corner, although Mailer was great, too.
Anyone with an ounce or more of intelligence in their head knows that WFB was a pompous, narcissistic sophist. He always liked to think he was a legend in his time, when in truth, he was a legend in his own mind. Three cheers for Gore Vidal. Three jeers for WFB.
People, people, let us be charitable to poor dear Mr. Buckley, for his most avid fan and uncritical booster in the whole world recently passed away, a man by the name of William F. Buckley.
But he had reason to be proud. He had saved at least one life. There was a woman in Otumwah Iowa who swallowed a bottle of pills one night, but when she saw Buckley on TV, she vomited so violently she lived happily ever after, with no ill effects.
What a memorial for the man, who visualized himself as The Great Heretic - to be remembered by history instead as The Great Emetic.
What will the shade of poor Billy-Willy do for coolth in the warm place he now inhabits? Imagine - of all of the souls of murderers, thieves and congenital liars collected together in that nether place, Mr. Buckley surely must find himself shunned by almost all of them. Imagine him, ever self-congratulatory to a degree, still trying to put one over on the Great Liar, Satan himself, and being - Oh No! - ignored? Such will be the richly deserved Eternal Hell of William F. Buckley.
Perhaps Satan will find William F. Buckley such an intolerable irritant, that he (Satan) will petition God to take Willy-Billy off his hands. Without a doubt God will refuse - after all, He may be fearsome and magnificent, but He does not hold a candle to William F. Buckley, at least in Willam F. Buckley’s estimation, and God’s first commandment, broken daily by Willy-Billy as he admired himself in the shaving mirror each morning, was, “Thou shalt have no other Gods but Me.”
And thus we have the wonderful prospect of Willy-Billy spending eternity lost in a limbo between worlds. Why is that so exhilarating? Because no matter which place I personally end up in, I will never again have to look up and try to spot the boogers in those arching Bostonian nostrils, as I listen to that carefully studied pseudo-British drawl out-pontificating the Pope.
What a blessed relief.
Little Brother: Alice Longworth Roosevelt is credited with the ” If you have nothing good to say …come sit by me.” quote.
Buckleys’ life illustrated the saying: “Self love is the beginning of a lifelong romance”
Yes so well said Mr Vidal. A great Democracy needs a free and unfettered press, this includes having ownership and market controls to prevent the truth from being told dispelled from our system. Newsweek, as one example, should not be owned by MSNBC which in turn is owned by General Electric the nation’s largest defense contractor.
A free-market must be free of excessive governmental regulation but even more importantly it must be free of totalistic controls; market walls– obstructions to the freedom of the marketplace– buyers and sellers– which are created when giant corporations bribe the all powerful politicians into doing their bidding. Essentially gaining control of the USA’s markets totally– some 14 trillion requires — relatively very small bribes in comparison to scumball politicians and their lying cheerleader cohorts like Buckley. We should have two amendments one no money or valuables of any kind to or from politicians or their supporters. Purge the Democracy of the cancer of bribery; and we should have an amendment to work actively to preserve the free marketplace from market walls such as super corporations who work to use their might to buy control over the market. We must have a free and powerful Democracy( a place where people live and breath freely bathed in truth and evolving in the constant progress of freedom)…. It’s simple do everything to stop the thieving criminal hoods from running our country. Make it a felony to give or receive money for any aspects of political campaigning or politics whatsoever. Then we can have our freedom and eat it too. We can have unending wealth and creative joys which are a product of a society whose government is not run by big oil or big defense or big anything. Imagine boundless energy that DOESN’T POLLUTE but actually makes the planet ever better for our fellow man and the multitudes of life forms which populate it– this all can happen today if we jail the felonious hoods who turn mass-murdering entire nations into vast loot for themselves.
But I just thought it was great how Gore pressure washes off the filthy lies to show the truth time after time. The truth. It’s what we must face to get to the other side of this seemingly never ending fascistic hell. It was great the way you put it so simply –they are the liars. All they are is little lowlife (WFB and others) criminals of the very worst sort if you think of what it is their lies are doing on so many levels all at once. I mean just think about that for a long while and don’t stop. It will take a while to really get what I mean.
I also see another big problem. That is well-meaning so-called liberals who repeat or even repackage the lies of the fascists mixed in with their messages of truth– this they do for fear or is it just plain stupidity I’m never sure which. But that’s another topic I suppose.
Yes so well said Mr Vidal. A great Democracy needs a free and unfettered press, this includes having ownership and market controls to prevent the truth from being told dispelled from our system. Newsweek, as one example, should not be owned by MSNBC which in turn is owned by General Electric the nation’s largest defense contractor.
A free-market must be free of excessive governmental regulation but even more importantly it must be free of totalistic controls; market walls– obstructions to the freedom of the marketplace– buyers and sellers– which are created when giant corporations bribe the all powerful politicians into doing their bidding. Essentially gaining control of the USA’s markets totally– some 14 trillion requires — relatively very small bribes in comparison to scumball politicians and their lying cheerleader cohorts like Buckley. We should have two amendments one no money or valuables of any kind to or from politicians or their supporters. Purge the Democracy of the cancer of bribery; and we should have an amendment to work actively to preserve the free marketplace from market walls such as super corporations who work to use their might to buy control over the market. We must have a free and powerful Democracy( a place where people live and breath freely bathed in truth and evolving in the constant progress of freedom)…. It’s simple do everything to stop the thieving criminal hoods from running our country. Make it a felony to give or receive money for any aspects of political campaigning or politics whatsoever. Then we can have our freedom and eat it too. We can have unending wealth and creative joys which are a product of a society whose government is not run by big oil or big defense or big anything. Imagine boundless energy that DOESN’T POLLUTE but actually makes the planet ever better for our fellow man and the multitudes of life forms which populate it– this all can happen today if we jail the felonious hoods who make mass-murdering entire nations into vast loot for themselves.
But I just thought it was great how Gore pressure washes off the filthy lies to show the truth time after time. The truth. It’s what we must face to get to the other side of this seemingly never ending fascistic hell. It was great the way you put it so simply –they are the liars. All they are is little lowlife (WFB and others) criminals of the very worst sort if you think of what it is their lies are doing on so many levels all at once. I mean just think about that for a long while and don’t stop. It will take a while to really get what I mean.
I also see another big problem. That is well-meaning so-called liberals who repeat or even repackage the lies of the fascists mixed in with their messages of truth– this they do for fear or is it just plain stupidity I’m never sure which. But that’s another topic I suppose.
Funny. My dad is a right-winger who attacks with lies when he’s confronted with facts and reason. He also had this habit of lapsing into a strange kind of speech - a drawn-out emphasis on certain vowels in a stilted string of uncommonly used words - when he was really worked up. I thought, as a child, this was meant to confer on himself instant intellectual superiority. That it shut everything down irritated me. It was only just recently, while watching a brief snippet of one of Buckley’s old shows (in memory of his recent passing), that I was startled to realize that my dad all along had been imitating Buckley! Nothing original at all.
And my dad’s a drunk too.
Someday we’ll find out why our “culture” is so hostile to genuine culture, why great writers like Vidal have to live outside the country to get anything done and not get shot….Ask The Pilgrims! http://ancientgreece-earlyamerica.com
vidal was too kind to wfb
among other things the oldsters here might remember, wfb was once written up (i do forget by who, where or when)
for plagiarizing himself in novels — taking a section from one and recycling it another –
i remember as a kid watching the two face off — don’t remember the content, only that gore was my hero thereafter
Loved every word of the article and didn’t think it was “Limbaughesque” at all. Remember every word out of Limbaughs mouth is backed by a bald faced lie. How that can be compared to the truthfulness of GV escapes me.
I could easily imagine Gore Vidal as one of the founding fathers of the US. His mind thinks original thoughts and he is brilliantly eloquent.
As for how kind WFB was to some people..well..some people are kind in order to gain influence and to convert minds to their way of thinking. It is more difficult to oppose someone’s philosophy when they have a nice personality and have been kind.
But people should work from principles to avoid being sucked into that trap of the seemingly nice person with the damaging philosophy.
This country needs more Gore Vidals and Bill Moyerses. We are a nation of
sheep willingly going to the slaughter house. I owe everything that I know
to Mr. Vidal.
Cindy:
There is no after life just life in many various forms. The war-mongers are not happy people now and when they make the death transformation they will still be unhappy unless they repent: same as you, same as me - predominately unhappy now, predominately unhappy then.
I have no qualms about people telling it like it is and calling a spade a spade, but if it only boils down to another self-righteous petulant vent at a false father figure where does it get one?
I’ll tell you where it gets you, it get you that picture of the Buddhist monk with the blood streaming down his face, it gets quivering blobs of depleted uranium babies, it gets you the “resignation” of Gen. Fallon and the escalation of war - All hail self-righteousness (but PT, if I had no self-righteousness I’d have no self at all…[ya gotta do what ya gotta do dude).
Well, the neo-cons were certainly nutured by William F.Buckley. So he must have died happy…? (Not that dying in itself is happy)
To Hazmat: Aaron Burr did indeed say what Gore Vidal put into his mouth about the law.
It is indeed good to read something critical about WFB. I looked at his first book and found it glib, shallow, and polemical.
Gore Vidal for Prez!
Gore speaks so well because he sees with a clear eye, which is only possible from outside the box. They’re Building a Box - and You’re In It - http://www.rudemacedon.ca/dlp/box/box-intro.html
Thank you, Gore Vidal! Buckley’s racist support of apartheid, his contempt for the African nationalist freedom movement, his support for European colonialism and American segregation, and his unregenerate intrusion of Catholicism into most discussions were horrible failings. Sure, he sometimes had a “nice” side for those he liked or felt sympathy for, but he was unrelenting in belittling those with whom he truly disagreed - - and they were legion. Parenthetically, as a lifelong sailor devoted to simplicity, I used to despair at Buckley’s addiction to “effete” sailing: expensive boats laden with expensive gadgets, alcoholic beverages, and Buckley’s prejudices. He never asked me to sail with him, but then I wouldn’t have wanted anyway!
Hah! The finest tribute to Buckley written! Bravo, Mr. Vidal! Its one of the finest pieces you’ve ever written. Hee hee hee- WFB was such a pretentious cretin!
I watched Buckley alite from a limo on a street on the Yale campus back in the 70’s.
Forget a’knightly man’.
What I vividly recall was watching a queen twirl out of the car,turn and hand a social-exray onto the pavement.
I’m STILL amused.
He was everything that all the comments above this entry write.
Plus one more observation:He was SUCH a silly man!
Thank you Gore.
I hope your rant gave you closure..it gave ME great Pleasure!
It is a bit tacky to jump on a dead guy like this. Makes it hard to claim the high ground.
Of course, he’s right. But so is the jerk who tells the unpopular girl, “you are fat.”
It also mutes the argument to recall that generally, in our culture, we remember the best about people when they pass on — even the worst scoundrels.
Of course, that being said, I’m very glad I read Hunter S. Thompson’s “eulogy” for Richard Nixon. This one is in a similar vein, though far more restrained.
As always, Gore Vidal says what no one else has the courage to say. WFB was an old style bigot, homophobe, misogonist, etc. and so enamored of his own voice that he just never shut up about anything.
It is inspiring that Vidal, an octogenarian, has not lost his
ever-sharp mind and still puts our so-called media to shame.
Personally, I’ve never found it necessary to be angry with someone who is dead.
Thank you again, Gore Vidal!
The Buckley/Vidal tape most of all shows the humanness of one and the inhumanity of the other.
The bully who was WFB seems also to have been a drunk;
but certainly not worthy of more than a few minutes of amused/confused attention — though, remember, he was brought to us by PBS-!
With Buckley’s death some interesting stuff has floated out re the CIA’s funding right-wing Senators/House members via the Howard Hughes company, part of which was a CIA front. It seems that the CIA arranged to finance
the campaigns of right-wingers — two of them named were Sen. Strom Thurmond and Sen. Gerald Ford.
This tallies neatly with OPERATION GLADIO which the CIA ran in most European nations post WW-II in order to keep right wing governments in power. Obviously, OPERATION GLADIO was brought home to America …
We have had computer voting since the mid-1960’s –
http://www.constitution.org/vote/votescam__.htm –
making clear that 2000 was not our first election steal
by the right-wing.
Wake up, America !!!
Back to Gore Vidal, I can’t think of another who has such a personal impact and connection with those he educates.
I’m amused at the questions re his sexual orientation because it is not homosexuality but bisexality which remains the taboo subject in America today. Kinsey made it clear though it is religously ignored.
My day is made when it begins with Gore Vidal — !!!
Mr. Vidal,
Well said, and the world is a “far far better place than it has ever been” “SO” too bad that a few more of that ilk, we hear currently could not join Mr. Buckley.
I checked out the hoopla about Buckley, figuring that he must be really smart. Instantly, I was made aware of what a smarmy, pompous born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth sophomoric son-of-a-bitch he was. His prissy manufactured contempt for America’s working class did not endear him to this American. As an ancient Jew said of disagreeable Goyim, “may he be boiled in flaming excrement”. Gore Vidal is a saint.