(Audio Hint: hit the "pause" button on the Blue Radio blogtalk radio box to the right in order to listen to their famous exchange on You Tube, embedded below. - MC)
While Chicago police bashed, arrested and rioted through thousands of people outside the 1968 Democratic convention; two great guys had it out on national television - hence a portion of the exchange above. One may follow it with a second audio-visual portion after the famous exchange and watch their summations where our hero Gore Vidal predicts a possible "revolution" if Nixon is elected. Well, he got the cultural part of the "revolution" correct, at least. Our society is more tolerant and civilized since the "sixties" but we must have more, much more democracy to correct this empire.
Now Gore Vidal must contend with yet another literary transgression against him, this time coming from that fountain of newsworthiness, Newsweek magazine:
Now, to Newsweek’s obituary of this late dishonorable American in which my
editor-friend assures me that his brain-dead son Christopher had a hand:
“Buckley bridled at bullies.” And who was the bully in context? Myself. He was
also an expert at changing indefensible contexts. Buckley maintained that I
supported revolutionaries who favored murdering U.S. Marines. Yet all the talk
of Nazis etc. was started by Buckley. There was no lie he would not tell to get
back at those who defeated him in debate. Truthdig link
Such a prediction (if only we could have Gore Vidal again on television, in a press skybox at the upcoming Denver convention forty years later), would be ever more so timely, and appropriate as Obama is quietly iced out at the "Democratic" super-delegate lolapolluza.
Allow me to abuse "hope" for the future.We may well see more of this kind of debate, or most likely as a reader of this blog, be in one of those debates. Now we can only hope to sting so many bourgeois sensitivities of such polite "genteel" defenders of conservative "moral" values, as Gore did so long ago. Now such blood drenched apologists of empire are firmly entrenched in both money soaked and rotting edifices of corporate political machines. The Clintons, the Bushies, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Cheneys, the Neocons etc., etc.
Oh, did I say these are our "political parties"? Sorry.
Little Bill Jr., petty church vandal, as "free market" demi-god.
Thankfully, Gore Vidal has outlived - not well enough in my opinion*, William F. Buckley Jr. the well heeled "icon of the right-wing." Unlike Buckley, Gore Vidal has always had to work and never received large sums of money from CIA disinformation accounts, or inherited vast sums of Texas oil, like old mad Billy "boy" Buckley. Vidal's tremendous storehouse of work has made use of those "who fear democracies" in being a truth speaker as one who had the bloodlines and access among them, if only to embrace the libertine notions of those seeking freedom from below the depths of our class society. He speaks to, writes for and works for "us" on the bottom, and for that Vidal is reviled by "them" because he works so well at making "them" ill; being, the parrots, prostitutes and prize fighters of the ruling class. Take the manly magazine, Esquire, and how mad little Bill finagled disinformation a few mere years before he died at the desk. And we may be sure deprived good Gore Vidal of any compensations from such a prestigious organ of colognes and fast cars.
Esquire editors who were not aware of the libel action Buckley brought against
Esquire at the time included Vidal's essay a collection entitled Esquire's Big
Book of Great Writing, published in 2003. The book was recalled in order to
enforce Buckley's original libel action and prevent publication, even
thirty-five years later, of Vidal's version of the debates that the two authors
conducted during the Republican and Democratic Presidential Nominating
Conventions of 1968. Source link.
A "due and timely" notice of Vendetta, to both "left" and "right"
Quit goring Gore Vidal!
May I be frank? Oh Hell, why not? It's my blog - these priggish snobs are due as much beating as possible to give them through published cyberspace. He has returned from Italy, alone and in uncertain health - his "successor" Christopher Hitchens has withered into a stooge for the Neocon cabals in both the Republican and "Democratic" machines, a miserable beltway bandit of drunken diatribes against "islamofascists" - Vidal has even had a horrible experience in just getting solar panels installed on his home.
But then comes mad Bill's son:
"Next, the loyal son, suspecting that the pejorative use of “queer” is
politically incorrect in mag-land, Christopher rambles into a story about his
father’s kindness to a Mr. Bauman who had lost his seat in Congress after the
congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male
(note how prurient Newsweek’s prose is, in describing undesirable people). Chris
weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the
flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, “He
was a knightly man”: Who was—the cocksucker recipient of Buckley’s charity? Or
his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?—Bauman was very right wing, it is said. RIP
WFB—in hell." . Truthdig source.
These duplicitous dirty little shitbirds and their publishing "empires" should make critically thinking readers ill (and murderously angry) - censoring Vidal's writings 35 years later, over a court case long dead from a crappy little rag like the National Review, ever so busy defending war and conquest - wherever their masters tell them.
Here is Gore digging at his best into Buckley's hide (my emphasis - MC):
"The vandalism took on the appearance of similar occurrences in New York,
according to witnesses. Honey mixed with feathers was smeared on seats,
obscene pictures were placed in prayer books, among other desecrations."
According to the local police lieutenant 'the crime [was] one of the most
abominable ones ever committed in the area.' Twenty-four years later, on
Wednesday, August 28, at nine-thirty o'clock, in full view of ten million
people, the little door in William F. Buckley Jr.'s forehead suddenly opened
and out sprang that wild cuckoo which I had always known was there but had
wanted so much for others, preferably millions of others, to get a good look
at. I think those few seconds of madness, to use his word, were well worth a
great deal of patient effort on my part. The Mystery Link
(It is worth reading, printing and distributing upon "WFB's" grave.)
I Second the Motion! Damn them and "WFB" to Hell!
___________
My recommendation in furtherance of aiding our hero.
* - Purchase signed first editions from Gore Vidal’s personal library at the Truthdig Bazaar.
Here's to being "politically incorrect" well into our Autumn Years.
Cheers!
yer curmudgeon country editor,
Michael Caddell
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