Movie Review: Best of Enemies, a documentary directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, starring William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal (2015)

Poster for the 2015 documentary Best of Enemies, directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville.

Vidal and Buckley in the makeup chair, 1968.

William F. Buckley, threatening to do bodily harm to Gore Vidal, 1968.

Best of Enemies, an excellent 2015 documentary directed by Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville, takes a look at the relationship between authors William F. Buckley, Jr., and Gore Vidal. Specifically, the film examines the ten debates between Buckley and Vidal during the 1968 Republican National Convention, held in Miami Beach, and the Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago. Buckley and Vidal were hired by ABC News to provide commentary on the happenings at the conventions, and also to debate with each other on the various issues facing the country. 

Buckley and Vidal hated each other by the time they met on camera in 1968. In fact, the one person Buckley said he would not debate with was Gore Vidal. But ABC News hired Vidal anyway. Buckley and Vidal had previously sparred in 1964 at the Republican National Convention in San Francisco. That convention was the moment that Buckley’s right-wingers officially seized control of the Republican Party, as the nomination went to Senator Barry Goldwater rather than moderate Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Rockefeller was heckled by the crowd with shouts of “lover!” as he attempted to address them. The taunt was a reference to his recent divorce and quick remarriage. Rockefeller told the audience, “It’s still a free country, ladies and gentlemen.” And while Goldwater went down to ignominious defeat in the fall, the seeds of a new Republican revolution were being planted. Just days before the 1964 Presidential election, actor Ronald Reagan gave a nationally televised half hour speech called “A Time for Choosing,” in support of Goldwater. The speech was responsible for Reagan’s entry into politics. When prominent California Republicans saw the speech, they immediately thought that Reagan might be a good candidate for the 1966 California Governor’s race. Never mind that Reagan had been a Democrat until 1962. Buckley was a good friend of Reagan’s, and one of the last books Buckley wrote was The Reagan I Knew, an ode to their friendship. 

Best of Enemies does a great job of showing us Buckley and Vidal’s lives and careers, and putting them in the context of their times. They were two of the leading American public intellectuals in 1968, back in the day when we actually had public intellectuals. Buckley was really the only choice ABC had for a conservative pundit, as he was the only conservative who was nationally known and was also an excellent speaker.

Vidal was partially to blame for Buckley’s rise as a media star, as he had mentioned Buckley in 1962 on Jack Paar’s Tonight Show, and Buckley was given time by Paar to answer or clarify statements that Vidal had made about him. When Buckley appeared on Jack Parr’s show, Paar was expecting to come face to face with an ignorant bigot. But Buckley proved to be a handsome, well-spoken intellectual. And then there was his voice. Mellifluous and rich, Buckley’s unique plummy accent was a mixture of his mother’s Southern drawl, the typical rich East Coast establishment accent, and a brief spell at a British boarding school. With his intense blue eyes and toothy grin, Buckley looked like a lost Kennedy cousin, perhaps from another line of the family that had turned conservative rather than liberal. Buckley’s obvious ease on camera led to him starting his own public affairs television show, Firing Line, in 1966. Firing Line ran for 33 years and more than 1,500 episodes. 

Gore Vidal also knew how to best present himself on camera. Vidal was also quite handsome, and like Buckley, he had a typical East Coast establishment accent. (It’s sometimes difficult to tell Buckley and Vidal’s voices apart. Also, no one on television in 2016 would be caught dead with such an “elitist” accent!) Vidal was a polished TV performer, and he prepared extensively for the debates with Buckley, hiring a researcher and rehearsing his seemingly ad-libbed insults to Buckley. Vidal was out for blood, and in the earlier debates in Miami Beach Buckley seems slightly flustered, having not correctly anticipated Vidal’s venom. It doesn’t take long before things get personal, with Vidal saying that Buckley was the inspiration behind his transsexual character Myra Breckinridge, which was one of the most scandalous novels of 1968. 

One of the best quotes during the debates was when Buckley said, “Freedom breeds inequality.” When prodded by Vidal, Buckley expounded further: “Unless you have freedom to be unequal, there is no such thing as freedom.” That struck me as a very true statement, but one that few people would actually own up to, since we like to think that freedom makes people more equal. You can have a society where everyone is equal, but that means you won’t have any freedom. And of course that’s never happened, because there’s never been a society where everyone is truly equal in every way.

The most infamous moment of the debates occurred in Chicago. Vidal and Buckley were discussing the anti-war protests and the extreme police response to them. Moderator Howard K. Smith said something about if the protestors raising a Viet Cong flag would be like raising a Nazi flag during World War II. Vidal then moved in for the kill, saying to Buckley, “As far as I’m concerned, the only sort of pro or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” Buckley responded, “Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” You can tell from the clip how pissed off Buckley was, as he leaned over towards Vidal and it seemed for a moment that he might make good on his threat. Reid Buckley, Bill’s younger brother, said in the documentary, “I think Gore Vidal was fortunate that Bill didn’t punch him in the nose.” The moment quickly became notorious, as the usual decorum of a debate had devolved into vicious name-calling on both sides. 

Best of Enemies makes it clear that Buckley was troubled by the incident. I think Buckley was chagrined that he had resorted to the personal attack. As time went on, it became clear that the exchange with Vidal was the one time that Buckley ever lost his cool during a debate. In an effort to examine his feelings, Buckley wrote an essay for Esquire magazine, “On Experiencing Gore Vidal,” which was published in the August, 1969 issue. Vidal was allowed to respond, and his own essay, “A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley, Jr.” was published in the September, 1969 issue. Both essays generated much controversy, and Buckley sued Vidal for libel, on the grounds that Vidal had implied that Buckley was gay. Vidal promptly countersued Buckley. The case ground through the courts for years, and eventually all the suits were dropped, with Esquire footing the bills for Buckley’s legal fees, and apologizing to Buckley in the pages of the magazine. Part of the settlement also stipulated that Vidal’s essay would not be republished in any future book. (It’s one of the rarest Vidal essays; it’s only been republished in Smiling Through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties.) Buckley took the opportunity to declare legal victory, which of course irked Vidal. 

In the years following their encounter, the two men took different approaches to the incident. Buckley rarely mentioned it again, whereas Vidal never missed an opportunity to bash Buckley. To me, that speaks to the difference in character between Buckley and Vidal. My own politics are more in line with Gore Vidal’s than William Buckley’s, but from everything I’ve read about both of them, Buckley was by far the nicer person and better man. Vidal was an amazingly talented writer who wrote sentences of incomparable beauty. His range of gifts was immense, as he authored screenplays, essays, plays, and novels. And yet, at the same time, he was a rather nasty person. If you look at Vidal’s life, it’s full of feuds and fights. As Vidal once wrote, “Every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies.” That quote sums up Gore Vidal so well that it’s actually the British title of Jay Parini’s 2015 biography of Vidal. (The title in the United States is Empire of Self: A Life of Gore Vidal.) A quote that venomous would have never passed the lips of William F. Buckley, who was extremely generous and thoughtful to pretty much everyone he dealt with. Buckley could even strike up friendships with those on the opposite side of the aisle from him politically, like his famous friendship with the liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith. One has only to read some of Buckley’s more personal non-fiction, in books like Cruising Speed, Overdrive, and Miles Gone By to get a sense of his zest for life, and the friendships and relationships that made his life worthwhile. Buckley had a generous spirit, and Gore Vidal did not. Buckley had hobbies and passions, like sailing, painting, and playing Bach concertos on the harpsichord. Gore Vidal’s only passion was for himself. 

Buckley was even generous towards Gore Vidal’s talents as a writer. When asked in 1978 if he thought there were any good liberal writers, Buckley said, “Philip Roth and Norman Mailer. And Gore Vidal-in his essays-has great style.” (Conversations with William F. Buckley, Jr., p.79) Buckley could have easily used the question as an opportunity to attack Vidal, but he didn’t. In an incident described in Best of Enemies, after Buckley taped the last episode of Firing Line in 1999, Ted Koppel interviewed Buckley and showed the clip of him calling Vidal a queer. Buckley said nothing. When there was a break in taping, he hurried over to Sam Tanenhaus and said, “I thought that tape had been destroyed.” Buckley was still unwilling to say anything bad about Vidal, but if that clip had been shown to Vidal in a similar setting, I feel quite confident that he would have used it to attack Buckley.

Gore Vidal proved again what a jerk he was after Buckley passed away in 2008. Vidal wrote an essay in which he savaged Buckley, writing, “RIP WFB-in hell.” Well, that’s subtle and clever. Gore Vidal never had a kind word for anyone. There was no forgiveness possible in his egocentric world. Christopher Buckley, WFB’s son, wrote of Vidal in 2012, after Vidal’s passing, “…one was left to wonder what it was within him that animated such hatred in him, at such a late stage?... Why was Vidal’s cauldron of bile still set, not on ‘simmer’ but on high in his final years? WFB had—to my knowledge—not once opened his mouth or uncapped his pen against his old adversary since the early 1970’s. I was present, on a number of occasions when WFB was accosted by an interviewer or lunch guest, asking for comment about Vidal. Without exception, he demurred—and demurral was emphatically not WFB’s default position.” 

One of the saddest moments in Best of Enemies is a clip of William Buckley being interviewed by Charlie Rose in March, 2006, less than two years before Buckley’s death.

Rose: “Do you wish you were 20?”

WFB: “No, absolutely not. If I had a pill which would reduce my age by 25 years, I wouldn’t take it.”

Rose: “Why not?”

WFB: “Because I’m tired of life.”

Rose: “Are you really?”

WFB: “Yeah. I really am. I’m utterly prepared to stop living on. There are no enticements to me that justify the weariness, the repetition.” 

Even as Buckley says this, his eyes still sparkle. The indefatigable William F. Buckley still managed to write four more books in the less than two years he had left on Earth. 

Best of Enemies is a superb documentary, and it is essential viewing for fans of Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley. My vote for the most entertaining person in the documentary goes to Reid Buckley, Bill’s younger brother, who looks and sounds just like Bill. It’s clear that Reid had the same joie de vivre that his older brother did. 

One final quote on the whole matter, which the directors used at the very end of the movie, and seems an apt summing up: “There is an implicit conflict of interest between that which is highly viewable, and that which is highly illuminating.”-William F. Buckley.

Book Review: But Enough About You, by Christopher Buckley (2014)

Cover of But Enough About You, by Christopher Buckley, 2014.

Christopher Buckley

Christopher Buckley’s most recent book is But Enough About You, a collection of essays he has written for various publications over the last 15 years. Buckley is one of my favorite writers, and I devoured But Enough About You with delight. The pieces collected in But Enough About You are a true grab-bag, running the gamut from humorous to serious. However, the essays collected here work well together, even though they span a decade and a half. As a writer, Buckley is consistently funny, witty, and smart. His prose entertains and informs, as he sprinkles witty bon mots throughout. 

But Enough About You also includes more serious pieces, and for me these were some of the highlights of the book. Buckley’s essay about visiting Auschwitz with his father was quite moving, as was his tribute to his late friend Christopher Hitchens. There is an excellent essay on Buckley’s relationship with President George H.W. Bush. Buckley was a speechwriter for then-Vice President Bush from 1981 until 1983, and his admiration for Bush is clear. Another fascinating personal essay was “Dear Joe,” about Buckley’s correspondence and friendship with Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22. My only criticism of “Dear Joe” is that while Heller’s letters to Buckley are quoted, Buckley’s letters to Heller are not. Buckley may have thought that his letters would not be of interest, but he sells himself short, as his authorial gifts are many. 

I was particularly fascinated by Buckley’s 2012 essay on the death of Gore Vidal. Here a little historical backstory is required. Back in 1968, Vidal and William F. Buckley, leading light of the conservative movement and Christopher’s father, squared off in a series of televised debates during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. During one debate, Buckley and Vidal got into a rather heated exchange, with Vidal calling Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley responding in kind by calling Vidal a “queer.” The following year, both men wrote articles for Esquire magazine about the event. Vidal’s article had some rather nasty things to say about Buckley, who ended up suing Vidal and Esquire for libel. Buckley won the case, and with it the eternal enmity of Gore Vidal. While Buckley refrained from criticizing Vidal in print, Vidal never missed a chance to lay into Buckley.  In keeping with his cranky nature, Vidal had only nasty things to say upon Buckley’s death in 2008. Adding insult to injury, as was his wont, Vidal also insulted Christopher Buckley, calling him “creepy” and “brain dead.” Christopher Buckley has every right to hate Gore Vidal and say nasty things about him when he died in 2012. But Buckley doesn’t, and instead crafted an intelligent essay that acknowledged both Vidal’s strengths as a writer and his faults as a human being. As a fan of both William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, I can safely say that while politically I agree much more with Vidal, William F. Buckley was twice the man Gore Vidal was. 

Ironically, But Enough About You doesn’t include what might be Christopher Buckley’s most famous, or notorious, short essay, “Sorry Dad, I’m Voting for Obama,” which was published on The Daily Beast website in October, 2008. Buckley hated the title of the piece, and he demanded that the editors change it. (They didn’t.) In the essay, Buckley explained the reasons why he was voting for Barack Obama rather than John McCain in the 2008 election. Buckley’s reasons were quite rational, as he wrote, “Obama has in him…the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.” So as to not unduly antagonize the right wing, Buckley purposely did not publish the piece in the pages of National Review, the magazine his father started, and for whom he had recently begun writing a column. Nevertheless, the piece caused the right wing to virulently turn against Buckley, and it forced him to resign from National Review. The kerfuffle over Buckley’s piece is a good example of how the Republican party has purged itself of any dissenting voices. In the essay Buckley quotes his father as saying, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, now it’s the Tea Party and their kooks separating the Right from anyone with half a brain. 

If you’re a fan of Christopher Buckley’s satirical novels, you will surely enjoy But Enough About You, and the humor of essays like “The Origin and Development of the Lobster Bib-Volume II: Rome to the Present Era,” and “How to Write Witty E-Mail (Hint: Pretend They’re Telegrams),” a 1998 essay that was the first piece I ever read by Christopher Buckley.

Gore Vidal 1925-2012

Gore Vidal, 1972.

Gore Vidal, 1964.

JFK and Gore Vidal, 1960.

A Life's Work. Gore Vidal, 1925-2012. Taken at Powell's Bookstore, Portland, OR. Photo by Mark Taylor.

The great American writer Gore Vidal died yesterday. Our world is a little less colorful today without him. Vidal was one of my favorite authors, and I was saddened to hear of his passing. Vidal was truly the last of a generation of American writers, including Norman Mailer and Truman Capote, who were also very public celebrities. Vidal famously feuded with both Capote and Mailer during his long career. It’s safe to say that all three writers shared a very high self-regard. 

Gore Vidal has been one of my heroes since high school. I admired his courage for speaking his mind, even when his views were not shared by a majority. I liked the way he presented himself, full of knowing humor, with a clever bon mot always within reach. If I become a famous writer, I said to myself in high school and college, I would want to be a lot like Gore Vidal. A straight Gore Vidal, that is. Well, I’m not a famous writer, at least not yet, and if I did become a famous writer I’m not sure if I would be as bold as Gore Vidal was in his public pronouncements, but I can still hope, can’t I? I even wrote Gore Vidal a fan letter when I was 17, and to my great shock and surprise, he wrote me back. One of the great thrills of my life was opening that envelope from Italy. I was always amazed that Vidal took the time to write me back.

In my past posts about Gore Vidal I’ve commented on his contribution to the screenplay of “Ben-Hur,” and been critical of his post-2001work.This post will be an overview of his career with my capsule reviews of the books of his that I’ve read. 

Vidal was a precocious talent, publishing his first novel, the war story “Williwaw,” at the age of 21 in 1946. “Williwaw” was well-received, but it was Vidal’s third novel, 1948’s “The City and the Pillar,” that truly made him famous. 1948 was also the year that Truman Capote published his first novel, “Other Voices, Other Rooms,” and Norman Mailer published his first novel, the monumental “The Naked and the Dead.” “The City and the Pillar” was one of the first, if not the first, American novels to deal seriously and honestly with homosexuality. The main character of “The City and the Pillar” is gay, but he does not conform to the limp-wristed stereotype of that era. It was a bold move for Vidal, as he essentially outed himself with the book. It was a scandalous best-seller, but it also made the literary establishment wary of this young author. Vidal quickly found himself informally blacklisted from the nation’s most important media outlets. The New York Times stopped reviewing his novels, as did Time and Newsweek. The New York Times obituary of Vidal mentions this fact, but it doesn’t mention that Vidal was right. “Mr. Vidal later claimed that the literary and critical establishment, The New York Times especially, had blacklisted him because of the book, and he may have been right.” Yes, he was right. You didn’t mention his name in your newspaper for years; you were blacklisting him because he was gay. Vidal’s next five novels all landed with a thud, as most people probably weren’t even aware of the books. So Vidal wrote for television, wrote screenplays-yes, he added the gay subtext to “Ben-Hur,” and wrote novels under pseudonyms. (He wrote three murder mysteries as “Edgar Box.” These were all favorably reviewed in The New York Times.) Vidal also ran for Congress in upstate New York in 1960. He ran as a Democrat, under the slogan “You’ll get more with Gore!” Vidal lost, but he always mentioned that he got more votes in his district than JFK did. It was for the best that Vidal lost, although the thought of him as an actual member of Congress is a delicious one. 

Vidal returned to the novel, publishing “Julian” in 1964. “Julian” was a historical novel about the 4^th century Roman emperor who tried to turn away from Christianity and back to paganism. “Julian” was unquestionably the best book Vidal had written to that point. Finally reviewed again in The New York Times, “Julian” went on to become one of the best-selling novels that year. Vidal had found his niche-historical fiction peopled with real historical figures, but with all the gossip and detail that historians would never include. In 1967 Vidal published the first of his “American Chronicles” historical novels, “Washington, D.C.” (The “American Chronicles” series is also referred to by Vidal as the “Narratives of Empire” series.) Vidal was now on a hot streak, and through the rest of the 1970’s and 80’s he was on a roll, publishing one best-seller after another, while at the same time decrying the fact that the American public had no taste for literature. (How then did Vidal explain his own popular success?) Vidal was a frequent guest on television talk shows, and he proved that he really was an actor. Sure, he must have been funny and acerbic off camera, but Vidal clearly loved to perform for an audience. Vidal also wrote essays on many topics, from the Kennedy family to the novels of John O’Hara to his friendship with Orson Welles. And of course, he wrote many, many essays on the United States government, and our foreign policy, which he almost always disagreed with. 

Gore Vidal may have become more and more of a crank as the years wore on, but at his best he was always a funny, sharp, engaging crank. He saved one of his best books for late in his life, his memoir “Palimpsest,” published when he was 70. The title of the book is a word referring to something that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing sometimes visible underneath. What a wonderful title. “Palimpsest” covers Vidal’s fascinating family, which I did not cover here, and his life until 1964 and the publication and success of “Julian.” It’s a wonderful book, full of gossip and yet very poignant. I don’t think that we shall encounter another talent quite like Gore Vidal. 

Some thoughts on the works of Gore Vidal:

Williwaw, 1946: A good first novel. The prose is tight as a drum, with doses of Hemingway and no sign of the gadfly that would eventually emerge.

The City and the Pillar, 1948: A fine novel with a sympathetic attitude towards homosexuality. It may seem prim and proper now, but at the time it caused a sensation.

Dark Green, Bright Red, 1950: An interesting short novel detailing a revolution in a South American country. The book is a premonition of the CIA-sponsored coup in Guatemala in 1954. Unfortunately, Vidal re-wrote many of his early novels in the mid-1960’s, so it’s tough to know what was in the book in 1950 and what he added later. 

The Best Man, 1960: Very funny play, later adapted into a movie and currently being revived on Broadway. Excellent portraits of Adlai Stevenson and Richard Nixon-under different names, of course.

Julian, 1964: An amazing book. I couldn’t put it down. This is one of my favorite Vidal novels. Vidal really puts you inside the waning Roman Empire. If you liked I, Claudius, you will enjoy Julian.

Myra Breckinridge, 1968: A funny, silly book. Combines two of Vidal’s favorite subjects: sex and the movies. It’s not my favorite of Vidal’s, but it was another shocking and scandalous best-seller.

Two Sisters, 1970: This is a weird one. A combination novel and memoir, it’s not very good as either. It’s about incestuous twins. Supposedly it was a veiled attack on Jackie Kennedy and her sister Lee Radziwill. The paperback edition features one of my favorite book blurbs of all time. Norman Mailer used to put his bad reviews in ads for his books, so Vidal decided to praise himself on the back of his own book. "A work of perfect genius!”-Gore Vidal. Which I think accurately sums up how Gore Vidal viewed all of his own books, and that makes me smile.

An Evening with Richard Nixon, 1972: This play, written before Watergate, is an attack on the character of Richard Nixon. Vidal uses Nixon’s own words as often as he can, which makes the play better read than performed. It’s very entertaining.

Burr, 1973: A wonderful examination of one of the most interesting of all the Founding Fathers. (Or members of the Founding Generation, or whatever you want to call Aaron Burr.) Vidal very successfully conjures up the scheming and devious Burr. Along the way there are many great portraits of all the other Founding Fathers. I always thought that a good miniseries could be made of Burr, with Vidal himself playing the aging Burr dictating his memoirs. 

Views from a Window-Conversations with Gore Vidal, 1981: An interesting book, this is a compendium of interviews with Vidal over the years. Very funny and very readable. 

Duluth, 1983: As someone from Minnesota, I felt like I had to read a Gore Vidal novel called Duluth. This is one of Vidal’s “inventions” where he just lets his imagination run wild. So the Duluth of the novel has little in common with Minnesota’s Duluth, as Vidal’s Duluth borders Mexico. A hilarious book.

United States: Essays 1952-1992: I haven’t read all of the essays in this massive tome, but this is the best introduction to Vidal’s essays, and maybe to his work in general. No matter what you’re interested in, Vidal will have an essay for you. He has an essay where he reads all of the books on the New York Times best-seller list, it’s wickedly funny.

Palimpsest, 1995: Vidal’s memoir. As I said above, this is a terrific book. Vidal pulls no punches as he chronicles the first 39 years of his life. There’s even a chapter about his one-night stand with Jack Kerouac. 

The American Presidency, 1998: A very short volume containing an essay about the occupants of the Oval Office. Brief, but entertaining.

The Last Empire: Essays, 1992-2000: I’ve read most of these essays, and as usual they are quite insightful and funny.

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, 2002: Short collection of essays. Features Vidal’s thoughts about 9/11. Good, but it also includes some essays previously published in The Last Empire.

Dreaming War, 2002: Another short collection of essays published in the run-up to the second Iraq war. It’s very good, but also includes some essays previously published in The Last Empire.

Inventing a Nation, 2003: A short book about the Founding Fathers. Quite good.

Imperial America, 2004: Another short essay collection. The new stuff is okay, but I think it also has some previously published essays from, you guessed it, The Last Empire.

Point to Point Navigation, 2006: Vidal’s second memoir, this isn’t as good as Palimpsest and treads some of the same territory. 

And that’s all the Gore Vidal books I’ve read. It’s a lot, but when I look at this list all I can see are the many books of his I haven’t read yet. I need to read more of his “American Chronicles” series. Hopefully this will inspire some of you out there to read some of Gore Vidal’s books. He was truly a great writer.

The Decline and Fall of Gore Vidal

Christopher Hitchens had a good little article in the February issue of Vanity Fair, "Vidal Loco," about how the quality of Gore Vidal's writing and public statements has fallen off since 9/11. It's an interesting article, and I have to agree with Hitchens. I have been a fan of Vidal's writing since high school, so it pains me to admit this. I think Vidal's best essays are nothing short of brilliant, and his best novels are witty and sharp. He is, as Hitchens says, the 20th century's Oscar Wilde.

I would actually say that Vidal starting losing the plot slightly before 9/11, when he starting corresponding with Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. McVeigh wrote to Vidal from jail, sensing that he had found someone who shared some of his anti-government views. Now, most people would have said, "I don't want to have anything to do with this nutjob." But not Vidal. For whatever reason, his ego was stroked, and he wrote back, starting a correspondence between the two men. Vidal has never condemned McVeigh's actions. There's a difference between being a patriot and being a terrorist, but Vidal chose not to see it.

In a crotchety interview with Johann Hari of the London Independent, Vidal rants and raves about many things, but one thing he pointedly does not do is place any judgement on McVeigh's murderous actions. Vidal says that McVeigh was "too sane for his place and time." He goes on to call McVeigh "a noble boy." Hari tries to prod Vidal, asking if McVeigh showed a callous disregard for human life. Vidal's response, "So did Patton! So did Eisenhower! Everybody's rather careless about it once you start getting involved in wars." But McVeigh's act was committed in peacetime, against his fellow American citizens. Even if it were committed in wartime, it would be a war crime. Hari then asks Vidal if there were more people like McVeigh, would that be a good thing? "It strikes me as a perfect nightmare. Of course I don't want more people like McVeigh." Hari then writes: "I don't understand. I try again and again to tug him back and get him to say whether this means he thinks McVeigh was wrong to plant the bomb. He won't. Finally, he jeers: 'You are trying my patience.'" How sad that this great thinker is unable to see a monstrous act for what it truly was.

Vidal has an inability to say anything nice about anyone else, which has grown worse in the last few years. His ego has consumed him. In talking about his fellow writers, he used to be quite funny. In the past, Vidal would have had a sharp comeback or a witty bon mot, but now he is simply bitter and angry. When asked about John Updike, whom Vidal never cared for, he says contemptuously, "Updike was nothing." Really, Gore? Or are you just jealous of his 2 Pulitzer Prizes? Vidal's worst instincts have unfortunately taken over, and he seems to be content to simply be a parody of himself as an angry old man. He couldn't even find much of anything nice to say about his friend and rival Norman Mailer. "Mailer was a flawed publicist, but at least there were signs every now and then of a working brain." That's about as close to a compliment as Vidal gets these days. As Hitchens writes, "One sadly notices...the utter want of any grace or generosity, as well as the absence of any wit or profundity." Well said.

In Vidal's interview with the Independent, Vidal says that China will surpass the US as the world's great power, and then China will "have us running the coolie cars, or whatever it is they have in the way of transport." This is a familiar sentiment coming from Gore. Whereas now it's the Chinese who are out to own us, back in the 80's and 90's, it was the Japanese who we would soon be serving, he said. I remember reading those essays in the late 90's, after Japan's economy had collapsed, and thinking, "Well, that didn't quite happen Gore."

Vidal seems to have simply run out of gas. He hasn't published a novel since 2000's "The Golden Age," and his essays just re-tread the same old subjects. His 2006 memoir, "Point to Point Navigation," reads as just a re-tread of his 1995 memoir, "Palimpsest," which was a truly great book. It's difficult to criticize someone who has had an immensely prolific and varied career for slumping after the age of 75, but it is a sad way for Gore to exit. Nothing seems to interest him any more, and he has run out of things to hate. I suppose after 24 novels, more than 200 essays, 6 plays, and 46 books overall, it's expected that Vidal's energy would eventually run out. But no matter what he does in his old age, the post-2001 Vidal will not be the one I remember. I'll remember the Vidal who rubbed shoulders with the Kennedys, who was a great friend of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward's, who made the Roman empire come alive in "Julian," who created a bizarre and funny world of his own in "Duluth," who wrote with skill about a disgraced Founding Father in "Burr," and who made me laugh and question the world in his essays.

Ben-Hur and Gore Vidal

With the recent passing of Charlton Heston, Hollywood has lost yet another of it's larger-than-life screen stars. Kirk Douglas is really the last big star left who came to prominence in the 1940's and early 50's. Heston was never my favorite actor, and I disagree with everything he came to stand for later in his life. Although Heston actually started out as a Democrat, and was a very vocal supporter of civil rights. He was at the March on Washington in 1963, along with Burt Lancaster and Harry Belafonte, when Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. When one of his films premiered at a segregated theater in Oklahoma, Heston picketed the theater. It's really too bad he became so conservative. Had he turned Republican about 10 or 15 years before he actually did, he might well have been President. Think how popular Ronald Reagan was as President, then imagine if Heston, who was actually an A-list Hollywood star, had run for President! I mean, he played Moses, for God's sake! Ben-Hur! Michelangelo! Get your paws off me, you damn dirty ape! Soylent green is people! President Heston in a landslide!

Anyway, this got me thinking about my favorite Charlton Heston story, about Gore Vidal and the gay subtext of Ben-Hur. Gore Vidal wrote most of the screenplay for Ben-Hur, although he went uncredited at the time. Working with director William Wyler, Vidal needed to come up with a reason for the rivalry between Heston's Ben-Hur and Stephen Boyd's Messala. So Gore decided that Ben-Hur and Messala had been lovers, and Messala wanted the relationship to continue, and Ben-Hur did not. Wyler didn't think it would fly, telling Vidal, "Gore, this is Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur! 'A tale of the Christ' or whatever that subtitle is. You can't do this with Ben-Hur..." Vidal convinced Wyler that none of the dialogue would hint at any kind of sexual relationship, and that it would all be shown by the expressions on the actor's faces. Wyler said to Vidal, "I'll talk to Chuck. You talk to Boyd. But don't you say a word to Chuck or he'll fall apart." According to Vidal, Heston was oblivious to the subtext, but Boyd got it and played the scene the way Vidal intended. After the scene was rehearsed, Vidal said to Wyler, "Chuck hasn't got much charm, has he?" Wyler replied, "No, and you can direct your ass off and he still won't have any."

The above quotations are taken from Gore Vidal's memoir, Palimpsest, which also features a great picture of Heston and Vidal on the set; Heston is grinning and has his hand on Vidal's shoulder.