[r9etb]

Well, I guess when it comes to a discussion of vanity, Normal Mailer would qualify as the supreme expert on the topic.

[stuck_in_new_orleans]

what a dumb sonofa bitch...and this Mailer guy sounds like a jerk too!

[Constitution Day]

Glad I checked, was just getting ready to post this little hissy fit.

[TomServo]

and so vain..."

Yup, that's right folks. I've been Carly-Simonized...

[tcostell]

"'Am I ready to die for my ideas?'"

Aren't you Norman?

[Paul Atreides]

"so big, so powerful, and so vain..."

When I first read that, I immediately thought of the former Soviet Union.

[KC_Conspirator]

Norman Mailer is so full of hate.

[YourAdHere]

How old is this guy? I remember an episode of MASH, set in the 50s, where Frank was burning Norman Mailer books. Hmm. Maybe Ferret Face was on to something there.

[skeeter]

Why do we need all this reaffirmation? It's as if we're a three hundred pound man who's seven feet tall, superbly shaped, absolutely powerful, and every three minutes he's got to reaffirm the fact that his arm pits have a wonderful odor.

With sophomoric metaphores like this its no wonder Mailer hasn't been able to sell a new book in 30 years.

[Tacis]

Is this the same Normy that was so vain that he knew that his judgment was so much better than society's that he was able to spring a murderer who could write and once sprung, the murderer murdered again? Oh, Norm, please, please guide us, show us the true way.

It isn't every day that America gets direction from a guy with tapioca for brains. Well, actually, I guess it is a daily thing.

[nravoter]

Norman Mailer: spouting the great un-American drivel.

Cue up Carly Simon, w/ words revised to:

You're so vain
You probably think this war is about you...

[Joe Brower]

every American has to ask himself, 'Am I ready to die for my ideas?'"

Why, yes, Norman, I swore an oath to that regard some time ago; something a yellow-bellied leftist coward like you will never understand. Know full well, though, that I'll do everything in my power as an American citizen to hold that doorway for the other guy first.

Take a few guesses as to who those "other guys" are.

[RAT Patrol]

This man is clearly insane.

[nimc]

'Am I ready to die for my ideas?'"

Yes I am. But would not expect you or your kind to understand that.

[Burkeman1]

"Let's suppose ten people are killed by a small bomb on a street corner in some city in America. The first thing to understand is that there are 280 million Americans. So, there's one chance in 28 million you're going to be one of those people. By such heartless means of calculation, the 3000 deaths in the Twin Towers came approximately to one mortality for every 90,000 Americans. Your chances of dying if you drive a car are one in 7,000 each year. We seem perfectly ready to put up with automobile statistics. I fear I am ready to say there is a tolerable level to terror...

Disgusting heartless Sophistry! To compare auto accident fatalities to 9/11 is the act of an immature malicious smart ass school boy. 2500 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor. I guess we shouldn't have got hysterical about that (but even here there was a key distinction- the Japs attacked us with their military and they attacked a military target- not civilians- their primary goal wasn't to kill people to just kill people!)

This guy has so much blood on his hands from his past stances that I will not even read his screed. He is an embarassment to himslef and this nation.

[Mr. Bird]

Ever notice that the foreign press is constantly giving a platform to American has-beens?

Of course Mailer detests America: he has been irrelevant for nearly 30 years. It is his vanity that is so embarrassing.

And what is the Sunday Times thinking? This is like calling up John Ritter for a comment on the state of the network sitcom....

[mhking]

Y'know, I'm sick and tired of every Tom, Dick and Jacka$$ coming out of the freakin' woodwork and calling GW stupid!

The joke is old. Find some new material!

Mailer is so transparent while he bends over and plays Hoover next Monica in the lap of Clinton. His hatred for this nation and the people in it is so thick that you can spread it with a trowel.

I keep hearing bad jokes; Garry Trudeau keeps trying to defend his hatred as he spews it in "Doonsbury"; Julian Bond doesn't even pretend any more - he just shows his hatred at the NAACP convention, just before smiling in your face later.

Peter Jennings practically jumps up and down in his anchor chair when he thinks he's got something over on the Administration; and Woody Harrelson just needs to find someone who gives a damn. Maybe once he gets laid, he'll shut up for awhile.

Ah well...let me climb down off my soapbox...

[wasp69]

The legendary Mailer rips the United States, calling it "so big, so powerful, and so vain..." and warns "every American has to ask himself, 'Am I ready to die for my ideas?'"

Dying for ideas is what made this country so great. Dying for ideas is what we Americans have been doing for over two hundred years. Dying for ideas is what gives you the privilege to bad mouth your country and it's leaders while praising a known rapist and perjurer. With pissant little hissy fits like this, it makes me abundantly aware that you would not fight or die to defend your own. You would rather us conservative low life patriots do it for you.

BTW, Norman, just who in the f@#k are you, anyway?

[dubyagee]

"I detest this totally promiscuous patriotism. Wave a little flag and become a good person? Ugly.

But promiscuous sex is okay, right?

[Alissa]

Clinton made a point of surrounding himself with people who might be 90% as intelligent as himself, but never his equal. Bush is smart enough to know that he couldn't possibly do the same, or the country would be run by morons.

Another pompous East coast "intellectual." His books are awful - it seems these types are only impressed with themselves. I've never thought Mailer was a good author.

And I've about had it with these pseudo-intellectual putting down Bush. If Gore was elected then we'd have a moron leading the country.