During a nationally televised debate at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Gore Vidal called conservative commentator William F. Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley — first employing a sexual epithet — pledged to “sock” Vidal in the face if he said such a thing a second time.
Months later, in the last sentence of an elaborately self-defensive article in Esquire, Buckley apologized. Vidal’s turn at Esquire was about as apologetic as a declaration of war. Along with some ugly shots that cost the magazine $115,000 in an out-of-court libel settlement, he said that Buckley’s “forehead suddenly opened” on the broadcast and “out sprang that wild cuckoo which I had always known was there … .”
Vidal — novelist, playwright, screenwriter and essayist — has great familiarity with wild cuckoos. They follow him fondly,constantly, with great devotion, as when he recently joined the board of directors of the newly formed International Endowment for Democracy, which says the United States is “a greater threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of people all across the globe than … any other regime.”
Cuckoo!
Vidal’s signing on with this group, which also says the U.S. government is trying “to bring people of the whole world under its control,” should surprise no one. In an interview with The Independent, he once said the Bush administration was “a dictatorship that has been totally militarized. Everyone is spied on by the government itself. All three arms of the government are in the hands of the junta.”
Cuckoo!
On rare occasions, Vidal is not so sure of himself. He is not entirely certain that Bush and friends purposely allowed the Sept. 11 attacks to happen, although he has raised the question repeatedly and in conspiracy-mongering detail. He is back to his old, utterly-convinced self when he says that the United States went into Afghanistan not to deprive al-Qaida of state sponsorship, but to secure a passageway for oil and natural gas from central Asia.
Cuckoo!
Vidal has been up to this kind of ranting for years, long preceding Sept. 11. Bush is a dictator? Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, was as well, the historical novelist tells us. Bush let an attack happen? So did Franklin D. Roosevelt; Vidal contends the Democratic president knew perfectly well the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and let it happen. Islamic fundamentalists are a made-up enemy? Vidal believes the Soviet Union was a made-up enemy, too. The communists were no threat.
Cuckoo!
There’s much, much more, as I discovered while looking at interviews with Vidal, his writings, reviews of his books and commentaries of various kinds. Sadly, the list has to end somewhere, although I cannot resist sharing with you that Vidal thinks that Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor who dogged Bill Clinton, was “an agent of corporate America.”
There he is again, that bird leaping from the front of his skull — Cuckoo!
In the final analysis, the answer to Vidal is not to call him some irrelevant, inexcusable name, as Buckley did, or to vow to punch him, but simply to understand that his observations are no more to be taken seriously than the tale of a good ol’ boy who has been hitting the bottle all night and wants to talk about his ride in an unidentified flying object. The appropriate response is to pat the fellow on the back and, if he will permit the kindness, help him home, where he can do little harm to himself or others.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies.
