I don't need to read any further than this.
I couldn't read this piece. Vidal is too hard to read. There ought to be a Cliff Notes version for somthing this long when Vidal is the author.
Because I'm not positive what the article said, I can't be positive if this fits more than the title. I can't think of a single thing I ever read about TR that caused me to think "sissy."
Nonsense!
Gore Vidal calling Teddy Roosevelt a sissy? Puh-leeze!
I can speak to this particular little smear, I think, based on Morris' book. Roosevelt was an enthusiastic hunter who played fair, and once refused to shoot a trophy bear that had been captured and tied to a tree for the purpose - he insisted the bear be released. Hardly the practice of a "sissy."
But it might be better to learn about how Roosevelt treated hunting from that man's own very articulate pen. I have read, and highly recommend, his Hunting Trips of a Ranchman and The Wilderness Hunter, a double volume that is a treasure for the real student of the art. Click Here
As for Gore's claim that Roosevelt "who didn't know it until he could so something about it," a cursory glance at that man's life will tell you different. He was a frail, asthmatic boy whose father had to ride him around at night on an open carriage so he could breathe, a nonathlete who forced himself to become a boxer, swimmer, and horseman, a city boy who ran a ranch in the West and earned the admiration of the tough, no-nonsense men on it who tend to see through back-East pretension even today. I do not think they'd consider Roosevelt a sissy today, either, but they might so consider one Gore Vidal.
Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were the greatest presidents of the twentieth century. Teddy Roosevelt personified America's entrance into the community of world powers. Ronald Reagan taught everyone what government should be about, and brought down the evil empire.
Franklin Roosevelt was a pale shadow of his earlier relative. A devious, designing imperalist who conspired with his equally devious ally Churchill to bring America into two world wars. A man who used his position as Secretary of the Navy to help bring the U.S. into WW1, a war we should have avoided. A man who prodded the Japs into attacking at Pearl Harbor, made sure there were significant American casualties to engender a war spirit, and then gave away half of Europe to the insane, homicidal, commie Butcher from the Caucasus, Joe Stalin - a man who could have been Hitler's twin.
Yet liberals like Vidal will continue to trash men like T.R. and Reagan because they represent everything a liberal hates - patriotism, courage, manly virtue and traditional American piety.
Gorre Vidal, get lost and take your opinions with you!!
Vidal wrote of his grandmother's venture in Rock Creek Park,
"Well, suddenly, Mr. Roosevelt screamed at them, 'Out of my way!'" My grandmother imitated the president's harsh falsetto. "Stand to one side, women. I am the President." What happened next? I'd ask, delighted "Oh, they were both soaked to the skin by his horse's splashing all over them. But then, the very next year," she would say with some satisfaction, "nice Mr. Taft was the president." Plainly, there was a link in her mind between the Event at the Ford and the change in the presidency. Perhaps there was. In those stately pre-personal days you did not call ladies women.That story about Roosevelt made the news in late 1908. I saw it in a respectable newspaper, the Washington Star, but there was no follow-through, so it's hard to know one way or another. In what I saw, the girl wasn't walking, as Vidal says, she was riding. And Roosevelt whipped her horse, which scared it and threw her. Who knows. Frankly, I would't doubt it, although it's historically useless. Roosevelt was mightily interested in presidential authority and forms, from formal carriages and liveried coachmen to stuffy etiquette at the White House, which usher Ike Hoover called "tedious."
I do know it had nothing to do with Gore Vidal's grandmother. He abuses the truth for no reason. His grandmother clearly knew Roosevelt, for it would take a contempory to describe his "harsh falsetto" and to know the Rock Creek Park story and to feel the change to Taft, as she did. But why say it was her? I very doubt it was her.
This one about Alice Roosevelt, for instance, is a stupid fabrication:
In the years before World War II, Alice was to be part of a marital rectangle. The heart having its reasons, Alice saw fit to conduct a long affair with the corrupt Senator William Borah, the so-called lion of Idaho, who had once roared, "I'd rather be right than president," causing my grandfather to murmur, "Of course, he was neither."Does he think we're all morons? It's beyond silly. To show that Alice had an affair with Borah does not require plagarizing Henry Clay. Of course she had an affair with Borah (God, how awful, he was a part-time fool, the rest of the time a loud bore). And Nick Longworth was hardly "not interesting" -- he seduced Alice Roosevelt, for God's sake, then half the girls in DC... Who's Vidal jealous of here, Alice or Nick?
Gore Vidal is an old drunk, and I'm making it up, although I'm sure it's true.
A sissy? Sure.
Going back to TR's manhood, at his best,he was worthy of this, from Boewolf (Heany's translation):
...Behavior that's admiredWell, Roosevelt was a man. He succombed to the mortals too often, especially after 1907.
is the path to power among people everywhere.