NEW YORK In an interview for this Sunday's edition of The New York Times Magazine, famed novelist/essayist Gore Vidal appears to question Sen. John McCain's account of being imprisoned by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam war.Asked what he thinks of McCain, Vidal calls him a "disaster," then tells Deborah Solomon, "Who started this rumor that he was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?"
This is an amazing example of outright, upfront, bare-knuckle goebbelism from one of the media culture's foremost icons.
| What an odious little man ... |
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, Vidal's heroes themselves (the Stalinist butchers in Hanoi) saw McCain as quite a prize and made much of him in their propaganda. Were they lying, too?
Why would you doubt him? Solomon wonders. "HeÂ’s a graduate of Annapolis," Vidal explains. "I know a lot of the Annapolis breed. Remember, IÂ’m West Point, where I was born. My father went there."
Vidal's only reference to McCain's opponent is a fleeting reference to "the United States of America, as Mr. Obama likes to call it."
At least he is not supporting Obama. The B*H campaign probably pays him not to.
Asked how he felt when he heard about the passing earlier this year of his conservative nemesis, William F. Buckley, Vidal says, "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred."
Hell will be a duller place when this g**d****d q***r (Buckley's term) finally croaks.
Vidal refuses to explain again how he is related to Al Gore, claiming that even he has forgotten.
The Goracle probably paid him to forget. He is apparently a distant cousin. Vidal's mother's maiden name was Gore. (Incredible as it seems, this wretched piece of fossilized catamite dung did have a mother.)
On other subjects, Vidal says he has no interest in the gay marriage debate, suggests there was "no sex" in his 50-year relationship with one man, and calls Italo Calvino the greatest writer in his lifetime while dissing Norman Mailer and Philip Roth.
Unfortunately, Mailer died last November and is therefore finally unable to get drunk and kick Vidal's ass.