The novelist and fantasist Gore Vidal has always been a
political extremist. With him, it is business as usual to
describe respectable conservative journalists as fascists or
worse. The hysterical access of anti-Americanism and
anti-Bush sentiment that has swept through the chattering
classes of Europe and America in the last few years seems to
have finally pushed the poor fellow over the edge. In “Uncensored
Gore,” an interview in the November 14–20 issue of LA
Weekly, an “alternative” (that is, rabidly left-wing)
California paper, Vidal lets loose with a torrent of
paranoid animadversion that should make his friends
concerned for his sanity.
The ostensible occasion for the interview was the publication
of a new book by Vidal about George Washington, John Adams,
and Thomas Jefferson. The real subject of the interview,
however, was Gore Vidal’s feelings of bitterness about
America and its leaders. Vidal begins with a little
throat-clearing in order to inform us that “Ours is a
totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale.”
Really? Is Bill Gates or Warren Buffet going to snap up that
prize? But Vidal doesn’t really get going until he utters
the name “Bush.” It seems to act like a drug on him,
obliterating his ability to make distinctions. Reflecting on
the Enron affair and other recent business scandals, Vidal
concludes that what we have in our society is “despotism.”
It is the sort of authoritarian rule that the Bush
people have given us. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic
as anything Hitler came up with—even using much of the
same language… .I think of [Bush and John Ashcroft] as an alien army. They
have managed to take over everything, and quite in the open.
We have a deranged president. We have despotism. We have no
due process.
“Authoritarian rule”? “As despotic as anything Hitler came
up with”? “An alien army”? Why does any self-respecting
publication pay the slightest attention to someone capable
of such rantings? LA Weekly described Gore Vidal as
“one of our most controversial social critics.” Alas, he is
only one of our most deranged.
