Gore Vidal: The Man and the Writer [Remember when Bill Buckley Called Him "Queer" On National TV?]

National Review ^ | 08/29/2015 | Ron Capshaw

[SeekAndFind]

Moments after his infamous televised dust-up with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, William F. Buckley Jr. encountered a livid Paul Newman. Newman told Buckley that his calling Vidal a “queer” on national television was the most disgraceful thing he’d ever seen. The actor’s rage was not lessened even when Buckley reminded him that Vidal had started the incident by calling him a “crypto-Nazi.”

“That was political,” Newman replied. “Yours was personal.”

In the years that followed, both Vidal and Buckley would frequently defy their political labels. Buckley, the supposed reactionary, would often display a surprising openness. He would generously state that even though he did not like Vidal, he would “never call him a bad writer.” In the 1990s, Buckley would conclude that he should have supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And in the 2000s, while neo-conservatives were beating the drums for the war in Iraq, Buckley opposed it.

Meanwhile, Vidal, the supposed progressive, would behave as a reactionary. To him, Buckley’s politics were disgusting, which made his writings disgusting too. Around the time of their televised exchange, Vidal had the epiphany that America was a “fascist security state.” He claimed that the military–industrial complex had kicked into high gear during the presidency of Harry Truman, whose Cold War containment policies he saw as part of an effort to bolster the economy by maintaining a permanent state of war.

Vidal would cling to this worldview no matter the counter-evidence. Like Oliver Stone, Vidal would argue that the very lack of proof of a military–industrial cabal was evidence enough of its existence and its control over American lives. Vidal viewed every unpredictable event through this prism. The Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan was the result of the American military–industrial complex’s goading them into this venture in order to bleed them dry and, by doing so, remove them from the running for the military–industrial-complex sweepstakes. Vidal believed that these maneuverings, not ordinary people’s desire for freedom, led to the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Jay Parini’s new biography, Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal, doesn’t shy away from reporting such open paranoia or any of the other unsavory aspects of Vidal. It is advertised as a look “behind the scenes at the man and his work in ways never possible before his death.” And the book lives up to the hype of being very different from previous biographical efforts. Fred Kaplan was so nervous about offending Vidal that one can practically feel the eggs he was tip-toeing around. There were certainly good, although not admirable, reasons for such timidity. Vidal was as lawsuit-happy as Tom Cruise; he responded to every slight and reveled in hateful feuds, the longer the better.

Unlike the one with Buckley, these feuds did not always have a basis in political antagonism. And the bi-partisan nature of them reveals just how ego-driven and petty Vidal could be. He responded to fellow leftist Norman Mailer’s assertion that he was intellectually dishonest by reminding readers that Mailer had once stabbed his wife. But in the light of his own comments about women, Vidal was a hypocrite. When asked about the attacks on director Roman Polanski for raping an under-age girl in the 1970s, Vidal asked, “Am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?”

With Vidal safely buried, Parini pulls no punches. For a figure who always proclaimed he didn’t care what people thought of him, Vidal spent considerable time and energy constructing a “Rosebud”-like explanation for his sexual coldness (he had a penchant for anonymous sex to the point that he didn’t want to know his partner’s name or history). Parini is part of a growing consensus that disputes Vidal’s stories to the effect that this was traceable to the death of his only love, Jimmie Trimble, during the Pacific campaign in World War II. (Parini even disputes that Vidal had a homosexual relationship with Trimble.) But these tales do double duty in accounting for Vidal’s dislike of Asians (with the Soviet Union near to imploding in 1986, Vidal urged that the Soviets and the U.S. link up to fight the Japanese empire) and his belief that FDR maneuvered the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor in order to let him take the U.S. into World War II. Like Christopher Isherwood, Vidal believed that the war was not worth the life of a true love.

Nor does Parini accept Vidal’s oft-repeated assertion that he was bisexual. For Parini, Vidal was strictly homosexual and displayed a detectable self-loathing about this.

Parini still regards Vidal, in spite of his flaws, as one of the best essayists of the 20th century. He had a lively wit and could combine personal anecdote — it seems as if Vidal knew everybody worth knowing, from Amelia Earhart to Orson Welles — with literary and historical themes. This was especially remarkable given that Vidal did not go the Ivy League route to becoming a writer: Once upon a time he was so patriotic that he enlisted in the army rather than attend Harvard or Yale. However, by reading to his grandfather, a U.S. senator who had gone blind, Vidal had got a kind of education that was too rare even then. And his connections — his father was the director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Air Commerce under FDR — assured that he would not have to pay his dues as a writer.

In later years, Vidal was the epitome of the limousine liberal. He lamented the plight of the poor while enjoying all the creature comforts an Italian villa could provide, and he lived up to his belief that one should never pass up the opportunity to “have sex or appear on television.” He thundered on Larry King’s show that the U.S. was a fascist security state, but he remained unmolested by the all-powerful U.S. “gestapo,” all the while being feted by its media “mouthpiece.”

There is a moment in a documentary on him that shows just how unashamed he was of being a parlor — actually villa — radical. He sits at an impressive dinner table, waited on by his servants, in the company of Hollywood liberals Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon. The actors have the good sense to look embarrassed in such opulent surroundings. Vidal, however, expresses nothing of the sort.

#share#And any praise he received as a writer he regarded as deserved. Conservatives, whom he loathed almost as much as he did conventional liberals, often bypassed his Bizarro World politics and were able, unlike himself, to appreciate talent. Thomas Mallon published in National Review a paean to Vidal’s writing — another example of Bill Buckley’s generosity. Despite Vidal’s hoping after Buckley’s death that his deceased antagonist would “burn in hell,” Buckley’s son still praised Vidal’s talent as an essayist. Newt Gingrich, the kind of inside-the-Beltway politician Vidal saw as rotting the country, would not allow any criticism in his presence of the author of Lincoln; when this was reported to Vidal by Christopher Hitchens (who would jettison his early admiration of him because of his opposition to the War on Terror), Vidal responded, “That is how it should be.”

Like Hemingway, Vidal was a great writer in spite of being a bastard. Parini shows him warts and all. Empire of Self is an excellent biography.

— Ron Capshaw writes from Midlothian, Va.

[SeekAndFind]

Here is the complete exchange

Here is the clip where Vidal called Buckley a CRYPTO-NAZI and Buckley countered by calling him QUEER

[SeekAndFind]

The climactic moment of the movie, as it was of the debates, comes after the moderator, Howard K. Smith, refers to the fact that some of the antiwar demonstrators in Grant Park had brandished Vietcong flags prior to the police onslaught. Here, in full, is the relevant frank exchange of views:

SMITH: Mr. Vidal, wasn’t it a provocative act to try to raise the Vietcong flag in the park in the film we just saw? Wouldn’t that invite—raising the Nazi flag during World War II would have had similar consequences.

VIDAL: You must realize what some of the political issues are here. There are many people in the United States who happen to believe that the United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting to organize their own country in their own way politically. This happens to be pretty much the opinion of Western Europe and many other parts of the world. If it is a novelty in Chicago, that is too bad, but I assume that the point of the American democracy—

BUCKLEY: (interrupting): —and some people were pro-Nazi—

VIDAL: —is you can express any view you want—

BUCKLEY: —and some people were pro-Nazi—

VIDAL: Shut up a minute!

BUCKLEY: No, I won’t. Some people were pro-Nazi and, and the answer is they were well treated by people who ostracized them. And I’m for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you don’t care—

VIDAL (loftily): As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that—

SMITH: Let’s, let’s not call names—

VIDAL: Failing that, I can only say that—

BUCKLEY (snarling, teeth bared): Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face, and you’ll stay plastered—

(Everybody talks at once. Unintelligible.)

SMITH: Gentlemen!

[SamuraiScot]

“That was political,” Newman replied. “Yours was personal.”

Newman, you self-righteous dork. You were too old-fashioned to admit that the "personal," where homosexuality was concerned, had already become political.

[virgil283]

Its funny that I saw that particular program. We were in a isolated area and only one channel could be picked up so we were watching it when all the cursing began...Shocked I tell you.

Vidal was being a jerk and provoked it...

[Mikey_1962]

The Gore is the same Gore as Al Gore as they are family

[Politicalkiddo]

“Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your G****** face, and you’ll stay plastered—”

Charming fellow.

[IronJack]

Vidal would argue that the very lack of proof of a military–industrial cabal was evidence enough of its existence

And THAT, my FRiends, is the core of liberal "logic." If you see it, it's proof that it exists. But even if you don't, it's still proof. In other words, even if it's not there, it's there. Because you can't find it.

[mountn man]

Nope, 2 different families.

[Cyman]

Vidal was strictly homosexual and displayed a detectable self-loathing about this.

Here is the Cliff note version.

[SeekAndFind]

The surprising thing to me is — This was ALLOWED on National TV ( back when colored TV was rare ).

I’m not sure if that will be allowed in today’s PC world.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Vidal was strictly homosexual and displayed a detectable self-loathing about this.

Here is what he wrote (from WIkipedia ):

“We are all bisexual to begin with. That is a fact of our condition. And we are all responsive to sexual stimuli from our own as well as from the opposite sex. Certain societies at certain times, usually in the interest of maintaining the baby supply, have discouraged homosexuality. Other societies, particularly militaristic ones, have exalted it. But regardless of tribal taboos, homosexuality is a constant fact of the human condition and it is not a sickness, not a sin, not a crime ... despite the best efforts of our puritan tribe to make it all three. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality. Notice I use the word ‘natural,’ not normal.”

[Alas Babylon!]

Reminds me of their take on Global Warming!

[Lisbon1940]

I don’t know anything about his personal life. His historical fiction is fantastic.

[miss marmelstein]

A great novelist and a great essayist. He’s unsurpassed in modern American literary criticism. Eat your heart out, Mr. Buckley, you couldn’t come close to “Burr” or “Lincoln.”

[originalbuckeye]

Bkmk

[goodnesswins]

So...if I were to read ONE Gore Vidal book...which should it be?

[IronJack]

And the argument is a tautology. It cannot be defeated because the "logic" doesn't branch. There is no separate conclusion for "x" and "not x." Both arrive at the same point, a point arbitrarily chosen by the advocate, and one that permits of no deviation.

It is fruitless to try to counter such an argument, based as it is on that foundation. Ridicule, exaggeration, and equal intolerance are the only weapons against such idiocy.

[miss marmelstein]

Read two. Lincoln which is magnificent and Burr which is still dying to be made into a movie. His take on Burr and Washington is fun and witty. Lincoln is just...amazing. And what’s great about him is he’s a straightforward writer. None of the Hillary Mantel pretentious present tense nonsense.

[IronJack]

A little research shows you to be correct. But I’ve got my own lyrics so stuck in my head I doubt the real ones will ever take.

[goodnesswins]

Thanks...