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Gore Vidal, Iconoclast, Writer, Actor, Playwright, Progressive, Dies

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Gore Vidal, a celebrated, award-winning writer, actor, progressive activist and acerbic socio-political commentator, style icon, and iconoclast, has died, in his Hollywood Hills home, at the age of 86. Vidal’s nephew, Burr Steers, announced he had passed around 6:45 PM Pacific Time, from complications of pneumonia, after being ill “quite a while.”

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal appeared in a dozen films and was the author of 26 essays and works of non-fiction, 25 novels, 14 screenplays, and eight plays. Vidal once called George W. Bush “the stupidest man in the United States.”

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Vidal is believed to have had affairs with over 1000 men and women, and met his long-term partner, Howard Austen, in 1950.

“The acerbic Vidal was known for such best-selling novels as Burr and Myra Breckenridge, the play The Best Man, and for essays on everything from politics and literature to sex and religion,” the London Evening Standard wrote:

In the 1960s and 70s he was a fixture on talk shows and other television programmes and feuded openly with Norman Mailer, William Buckley and others.

He also worked on screenplays and appeared in several films, including Bob Roberts and With Honors.

Some of Vidal’s most-celebrated screenplays include Ben Hur (1959), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), and  Caligula (1979). 

 

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Vidal, often quoted, is believed to have said:

“Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.”

“I was halfway through Myra Breckinridge before I realized she was a man.”

“In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you’re a great writer, you must say that you are.”

“The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven’t seen them since.”

“By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he’s been bought ten times over.”

“The last time I sat on this stage, I was afflicted by a fly. An awful fly that kept buzzing around my head as I spoke […] After a while, I realized the fly was the late Truman Capote.”

“Fifty percent of people won’t vote, and fifty percent don’t read newspapers. I hope it’s the same fifty percent.”

“We have no war. We have acts of aggression by the president toward other countries. This is all illegal and unconstitutional.”

“I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

“It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

“Each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. Shakespeare has perhaps 20 players, and Tennessee Williams has about 5, and Samuel Beckett one — and maybe a clone of that one. I have 10 or so, and that’s a lot. As you get older, you become more skillful at casting them.”

“I am an obsessive rewriter, doing one draft and then another and another, usually five. In a way, I have nothing to say, but a great deal to add.”

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“Threaded throughout his pieces are anecdotes about his famous friends and foes, who included Anais Nin, Tennessee Williams, Christopher Isherwood, Orson Welles, Truman Capote, Frank Sinatra, Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Eleanor Roosevelt and a variety of Kennedys. He counted Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Al Gore among his relatives,” the L.A. Times reports:

“Style,” Vidal once said, “is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.” By that definition, he was an emperor of style, sophisticated and cantankerous in his prophesies of America’s fate and refusal to let others define him.

Noting that Vidal “could always be counted on for a spur-of-the-moment aphorism, putdown or sharply worded critique of American foreign policy,” the New York Times called Vidal, “the elegant, acerbic all-around man of letters who presided with a certain relish over what he declared to be the end of American civilization.”

“Mr. Vidal was, at the end of his life, an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right. Few American writers have been more versatile or gotten more mileage from their talent,” the Times noted:

Perhaps more than any other American writer except Norman Mailer or Truman Capote, Mr. Vidal took great pleasure in being a public figure. He twice ran for office — in 1960, when he was the Democratic Congressional candidate for the 29th District in upstate New York, and in 1982, when he campaigned in California for a seat in the Senate — and though he lost both times, he often conducted himself as a sort of unelected shadow president. He once said, “There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.”

…

He was a more than occasional guest on TV talk shows, where his poise, wit, looks and charm made him such a regular that Johnny Carson offered him a spot as a guest host of “The Tonight Show.”

Television was a natural medium for Mr. Vidal, who in person was often as cool and detached as he was in his prose. “Gore is a man without an unconscious,” his friend the Italian writer Italo Calvino once said. Mr. Vidal said of himself: “I’m exactly as I appear. There is no warm, lovable person inside. Beneath my cold exterior, once you break the ice, you find cold water.”

Mr. Vidal loved conspiracy theories of all sorts, especially the ones he imagined himself at the center of, and he was a famous feuder; he engaged in celebrated on-screen wrangles with Mailer, Capote and William F. Buckley Jr. Mr. Vidal did not lightly suffer fools — a category that for him comprised a vast swath of humanity, elected officials especially — and he was not a sentimentalist or a romantic. “Love is not my bag,” he said.

By the time he was 25, he had already had more than 1,000 sexual encounters with both men and women, he boasted in his memoir “Palimpsest.” Mr. Vidal tended toward what he called “same-sex sex,” but frequently declared that human beings were inherently bisexual, and that labels like gay (a term he particularly disliked) or straight were arbitrary and unhelpful. For 53 years, he had a live-in companion, Howard Austen, a former advertising executive, but the secret of their relationship, he often said, was that they had never slept together.

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Image, top, Gore Vidal, 1948

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OPINION

Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

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October 8, 2024

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Last year, when Donald Trump’s attorneys declared he had “total immunity” from prosecution, many in the legal community scoffed. No president in all of American history had ever proclaimed they could not be convicted for serious violations of law—most infamously, President Richard Nixon had to have been keenly aware he might be criminally prosecuted.

Just eleven days after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, TIME reported, “Nixon’s new status as a private citizen puts him in grave peril.”

In fact, TIME continued, “the Watergate grand jury had vigorously wanted to indict Nixon while he was President.”

The American public is aware presidents can be prosecuted for certain crimes, and there is a foundational expectation of that possibility. In February of 2021, after the Democratic House impeached Donald Trump, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the ex-president should face criminal prosecution rather than impeachment.

“Donald Trump’s legal troubles are far from over, despite his acquittal in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial that ended on Saturday,” Reuters reported on February 16, 2021. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted this just moments after voting to acquit Trump, saying the courts are the proper forum for holding the former president accountable for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.”

READ MORE: ‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

We now know that after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the claim of “presidential immunity” by Trump’s attorneys, it refused, waiting for a lower court to weigh in. Chief Justice John Roberts sent a “scathing critique of [that] lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule,” The New York Times reported last month.

“Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate,” according to The Times’ reporting.

“’I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently’ from the appeals court, he wrote,” The Times reported, offering this interpretation for the Chief Justice’s message: “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, had literally argued a president could order a coup and be protected by immunity because it was an “official act” of the presidency.

Sauer also argued a president could order the assassination of a political rival and still have immunity from prosecution.

Chief Justice Roberts responded to the “momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases…by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.”

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In short, the Chief Justice used his powers to intervene and craft an opinion that some experts have said creates new law—certainly nothing that is found in the U.S. Constitution.

“There’s no legal authority for it,” remarked CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen back in December.

Nor, as the “originalist” far-right justices on the bench have adopted, does Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling lie in the “history and tradition” of the United States.

And yet, despite decades of history starting with Richard Nixon, and despite the scathing dissenting opinion from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, CNN reports on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.”

“The Roberts Court has been in sync with the GOP political agenda largely because of decisions the chief justice has authored: For Trump and other Republicans. Against voting rights and racial affirmative action. Against federal regulations over environmental, public health and consumer affairs,” CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported. “Roberts, joined by his five fellow conservatives, found that the former president was entitled to presumptive, if not absolute, immunity for actions related to his official acts. Roberts’ view of official acts, as opposed to private ones, was vast.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion on Trump’s immunity blasted Roberts and the far-right justices, famously declaring:

“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.  It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

She also wrote:

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Trafficking in Nazi Race Science’: Trump Blasted After ‘Vile Trifecta’ of Antisemitism

 

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‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

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4 hours ago

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October 8, 2024

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Political experts and top journalists are delving into reports from Bob Woodward’s new book, and issuing warnings about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as Americans face a historic and pivotal election just four weeks from today.

CNN obtained a copy of Woodward’s latest, titled, “War.” In it, the Watergate journalist delivers stunning revelations.

Donald Trump, the ex-president and Republican Party’s presidential nominee, has continued his secret relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Christian nationalism-aligned autocrat and alleged war criminal. According to excerpts from Woodward’s book, Trump has spoken to Putin at least seven times since he left office in January of 2021.

Another bombshell: Trump sent Putin COVID tests at the height of the deadly pandemic while Americans were desperately seeking them. Putin warned the U.S. president to not tell anyone, “because people will get mad at you, not me.” More than 1.2 million Americans died from the deadly disease.

And still more: President Joe Biden knew months ahead of time that Putin would attack Ukraine, via a “treasure trove of intelligence,” including human intelligence from inside the Kremlin, and warned President Zelenskyy, who did not believe the Russian president would be so foolish. Later, as the illegal war was going badly, Biden administration officials warned Putin to not use nuclear weapons, which he had been considering. Reportedly, there was a 50-50 chance Putin would go nuclear.

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“’That fucking Putin,’ Biden said to advisers in the Oval Office not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Woodward,” CNN reports. Biden added: “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”

Critics are expressing anger and astonishment amid the latest revelations.

David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator shared his observations via social media: “So, let me get this straight, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government? And Putin is helping his campaign now? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy? It’s obvious he has no qualms about betraying the U.S. The question is why are those who support him willing to help him do so?”

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser added, “This day is a reminder that Trump kept a trove of secret classified foreign intel at Mar-a-Lago. Will there ever be a trial???”

Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist remarked: “Americans were dying by the tens of thousands and supply shortages were paralyzing our country’s pandemic response, and all Donald Trump cared about was helping Vladimir Putin. This is unconscionable.”

Dr. Norman Ornstein, the well-known political scientist and AEI emeritus scholar noted: “So Trump sent Covid tests to Putin when there was a shortage here. Meaning it is very likely that some people died as a consequence of his sucking up to his dictator buddy. Then add that he talked to Putin multiple times after leaving office. What top secrets did he share?”

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote: “Hard to believe this guy is still a coin flip away from a second term.”

Dan Barr, Chief Deputy Attorney General of Arizona responded to Rampell, writing: “Trump’s fan boy fascination with Vladimir Putin will someday be fertile ground for psychobiographers, but for now it is disqualifying for him to be President of the United States. Ronald Reagan would certainly think so, as do all his former aides who now support @KamalaHarris.”

READ MORE: ‘Trafficking in Nazi Race Science’: Trump Blasted After ‘Vile Trifecta’ of Antisemitism

Some noted that as Trump secretly sent Putin COVID tests, “in at least three instances” he “played politics and deliberately delayed disaster relief as president” because he did not want to send it to Democratic areas of the country, according to PEOPLE.

Ian Sams, senior national spokesperson and senior adviser to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, posted this to social media:

Alexander Vindman is the former Director for European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council (NSC). His congressional testimony on the Trump-Ukraine alleged extortion scandal led to Trump’s first impeachment.

On Trump’s “7 meetings with Putin,” he warns: “It is reasonable there is a recording of these calls in an exquisite intel program. Trump would not be the target of the collection, but because Putin is a high-value target, Trump would be caught in the collection. The Russians definitely have a recording of every call.”

“Trump’s 7 calls with Putin also explain why Putin was emboldened to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and sustain more than 2 years of war. Putin has made a huge investment in Trump and expects that investment to payoff,” Vindman adds. “It’s clear now more than ever that @realDonaldTrump was the decisive factor in convincing Putin to wage a wider war on Ukraine. Trump has taken the world to the brink of Armageddon. A second Trump term would have America—& with it the entire world—go over the precipice. Trump was, is, & will be a clear & present danger to the United States.”

Investigative journalist Dave Troy, who has written extensively about Vladimir Putin, in April at The Washington Spectator warned: “Trump’s Peace Plan? Nuclear Blackmail.”

On Tuesday he weighed in on the Woodward bombshells.

“The best way to understand Trump’s ongoing fealty to Putin is that they intend, together with Musk, Vance, Gabbard, Ramaswamy, Thiel, RFK, Orban, Kim Jong Un, and friends, to reorder the world using nuclear blackmail,” he wrote at the start of a lengthy thread on X. Troy concludes, “when you read that Trump sent Putin COVID tests in 2020, and has spoken with him seven times since being out of office, know why: they are partners.”

Watch MSNBC’s report below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Trump Did This’: SCOTUS Blocks Biden Emergency Abortion Mandate in Texas

 

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‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

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6 hours ago

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October 8, 2024

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The U.S. Secret Service reportedly intervened last month after tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose companies have received billions in taxpayer dollars through federal defense and intelligence contracts, subsidies, tax credits, and loans, posted a so-called “joke” on his social media platform X claiming no one is even attempting to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a nearly two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that posted Monday, Musk and the far right-wing host wisecracked about both his original post and his thoughts that led to the now-removed tweet.

After laughing about what will happen to Musk if Donald Trump loses his presidential bid, Musk suggested he will be imprisoned and wondered if he will see his children.

“I’ve been trashing Kampala nonstop,” Musk told Carlson, appearing to pronounce the Vice President’s name incorrectly. “Well, the Kamala puppet, I call her, you know, the machine that the Kampala puppet represents.”

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“Yeah, she’s irrelevant,” Carlson declared, waving his hand in the air dismissively.

“I made a joke, which I realized I deleted, which is like, ‘nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala, because it’s pointless’,” Musk said, laughing with Carlson. “What do you achieve? Nothing. Just buy another puppet.”

“Nobody’s trying to kill Joe Biden,” Musk added. “It would be pointless.”

“Some people interpreted it as I was, as though I was calling for people to assassinate her,” Musk explained. “But I was like, but I was like, doesn’t it seem strange that no one’s even bothered to try?” he asked, laughing.

“Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet,” Musk concluded.

The Daily Beast reports Musk is a “longtime financier of Republican causes,” and “joined Trump last Saturday for his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—the site of July’s assassination attempt. After jumping around on stage—a move that he was widely mocked for on his own site—the X CEO dished out some fear-mongering about how, if Trump doesn’t win, ‘this will be the last election.'”

Back in February The Wall Street Journal described Musk’s SpaceX as “a major national-security contractor” that “is deepening its ties with U.S. intelligence and military agencies.” The company has “a $1.8 billion classified contract with the U.S. government.”

“The Pentagon has more recently done business with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service, including agreements to pay for Ukrainian internet links during Ukraine’s war with Russia,” The Journal also reported, noting Starlink has a $70 million U.S. military contract.

A short excerpt (bel0w) from the Musk-Carlson interview dropped Monday night, garnering 5 million views in about 13 hours. It prompted many to express outrage, anger over the violent rhetoric, and concern over a military government contractor joking about presidential assassinations. Some said they believed the FBI or Secret Service should get involved.

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Brad Moss, a well-known national security attorney, commented: “If one of my clients made this ‘joke’ their clearance would be suspended before the interview ended.”

National security expert Olivia Troye served as Vice President Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, and has had roles at roles at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in the intelligence community (at the National Counterterrorism Center,
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Energy), and at the Department of Defense (DOD) according to her official biography.

“Joking about assassinating our elected leaders is not just tasteless—it’s dangerous,” she warned. “In today’s divided climate, we need responsible voices, not reckless rhetoric that normalizes violence. It’s un-American for Elon Musk & Tucker Carlson to make light of such serious threats. Our leaders—and all Americans—deserve better.”

Christopher Burgess, a writer, speaker and commentator on national security issues who served for over 30 years at the CIA, commented: “Reaction: DISGUSTING

Racist – Misogynist – Cultist

All on display in one 10-15 second sound bite – there is no place for this – anywhere let alone the United States of America”

“Nothing to see here,” remarked gun violence prevention advocate Shannon Watts. “Just a man with classified federal contracts worth billions fantasizing about the assassination of the President and Vice President.”

“Deport this clown,” urged Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce.

Journalist Jon Ralston, CEO/Editor of The Nevada Independent remarked: “These people are grotesque, the vanguard of Team Trump, simpering fools joking about assassinations. Musk, once thought a visionary, is a pathetic troll on a site he has destroyed.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Greene Mocked for Weather Control Claim as NC Lawmaker Pleads for Conspiracy ‘Junk’ to End

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