Old enmities die hard. Gore Vidal takes a swipe at Newsweek for sullying his reputation in the course of burnishing that of the loathsome William F. Buckley. It’s worth reading, if just for the prose stylings, though it appears to suffer from a lack of editing. I’m old enough to dimly remember the debate to which Vidal refers, in which Vidal defended the rights of the demonstrators in Chicago 1968, and Buckley stood up for the police state. Vidal is right that Buckley consistently got a free pass from the “liberal” media, which chose to ignore his Neanderthal views and some quite despicable actions because he kissed their asses and used big words, which in the view of many made him a bona fide intellectual. All that aside, there seems to have been a falling off since then, judging by the type of idiots who pass for commentators these days. Buckley does appear to be an intellectual giant compared to pygmies like Sean Hannity, and when was the last time someone as decidedly left wing as Gore Vidal was allowed on national television.
Toward the end of his screed Vidal makes an observation about the state of our media which I must pass on, since it is in accord with my own thinking, and therefore must be right:
The unique mess that our republic is in can be, in part, attributed to a corrupt press whose roots are in mendacious news (sic) magazines like Time and Newsweek, aided by tabloids that manufacture fictional stories about actual people. This mingling of opinion and fiction has undone a media never devoted to truth. Hence, the ease with which the Republican smear-machine goes into action when they realize that yet again the party’s permanent unpopularity with the American people will cause them defeat unless they smear individually those who question the junk that the media has put into so many heads. Anyone who says “We gotta fight ’em over there or we’re gonna have to fight ’em over here.” This absurdity has been pronounced by every Republican seeking high office. The habit of lying is now a national style that started with “news” magazines that was further developed by pathological liars that proved to be “good” Entertainment on TV. But a diet of poison that has done none of us any good.
Unfortunately, this paragraph is one that suffered from bad editing or bad transcription, but the basic message gets through.
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