Boxer Mickey Ward

retracts his earlier endorsement of Former State Senator Scott Brown on grounds of union affiliation & gay marriage of all things.
Wow.
I mean who knew?
This gay marriage thing has friends in strange unlikely places...

Clint Eastwood speaks to the RNC

ranting& raving at an empty chair that was supposed to represent "President Obama"or the GOP collective psychotic projection of Obama I dunno.
Maybe poor Clint has finally hit the wall, who can say?

I dunno what it is about cowboy actors, but they tend to get lost in that simpleminded patriotic gunslinger on horseback meme.
Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Ward Bond, Slim Pickens, Chuck Connors, Fess Parker, Ronald Reagan etc etc, all wingnuts of one type or another.
So of course, Clint Eastwood that notoriously persecuted "small businessman"and lavish consumer of tax credits and subsidies...has to make the case in Tampa for small gummint and cheap ammo.
In all a disheartening & loutish spectacle to be sure.
It is akin to West End Native Leonard Nimoy getting up in front of the Democratic National Convention and lobbying for more investment in faster than light technology....
***
The cowboy meme (However surreal the invocation by Clint Eastwood), is a powerful one in GOP Politics.  Years ago I blogged about the intellectual & moral decline of the GOP from the "First Cowboy" (Barry Goldwater) to the "Second Cowboy" Ronald Reagan  and onto the frankly decadent and corrupt "Third Cowboy" George Bush Jr.
Now I guess Mitt Romney bids to be "The Fourth Cowboy"or some damn thing , all I know is that the Former Governor would look utterly idiotic on horseback and he'd likely shoot himself in the foot if they handed him a longhorn revolver as well.
It is a depraved and shopworn metaphor and the GOP cannot get enough of it.

Last Week

GOP VP Nominee Paul Ryan referred to rape as a "method of conception".
Wait for it, hold on to that outrage...
Consider this week's RNC Platform which calls for a complete ban on all abortions no exceptions for rape or incest etc etc.
From which we can deduce that the law and order loving GOP is apparently trying to Legalize Rape...what else to conclude from Rep Ryan's logic?

Jeff Jacoby

in  a very earnest missionary tone today, that is is okay to change your mind about politics, if it leads you to vote for Mitt Romney.
It is just never ever okay to change your mind about abortion and walk over to the pro-choice side of the street...to say nothing of changing your mind about Israel's national security requirements.
Nope then it is Katey-bar-the-Door innit?
Ya gotta love Jeff Jacoby US Politics offers him endless column fodder this week with the RNC and all he can come up with is this easily refuted tripe.
Jeff may actually have a conscience (even if it is an uneasy conscience)...but week after week he generates this laughable hackwork and calls it punditry.
He misquotes, selectively reads and mangles the facts, no one on the Op Ed Page of the Globe generates more corrective letters...but nevertheless, Jeff abides.
Good money in return for sheer dreck, its a editorialist's dream.

Romney opts to declare cultural war

in an attempt to draw in white working class voters into his coalition via "Volatile Racial Issues".
In other words, Mitt is saying "Vote for Me or Else The President will Parachute Crackheads & Homosexual Married Couples into the Suburbs!"
Ahhhh this is truly vintage Romney, utterly blatantly hypocritical& shrill as well.
I've been waiting for this dingbat to show up all Summer and he did not disappoint me on the eve of Labor Day.
Anyone else recall a mere six months ago when Mitt Romney was running as a "Severely Conservative"candidate with a fetish for low taxes & a balanced budget who was the de facto scourge of culture warriors like Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich?
What happened to that guy? Brian McGrory's fabled "grown up" candidate? Nothing Romney just did what he always does "severely" adjusting his beliefs in pursuit of a new set of potential benefits.
Look Humble Elias has been a biased observer of Mitt Romney for over eighteen years now, The Former Governor doesn't believe in much save money, the semi divinity of corporations and his own self interest.
All of this though, doesn't make Romney a very original thinker, in fact you could say creativity is anathema for him. Thus Romney tends to repeat old formulas he thinks will lead to success...and that makes him weirdly predictable and perhaps, vulnerable.

Y'know...

If Mitt Romney doesn't catch a break pretty soon from Aoelus, God of the Winds, then it is possible that his  hated rival President Obama could be flying over Tampa in Marine One to survey the storm damage whilst the Former Viceroy is stumbling thru his acceptance speech.
KIDDING
KIDDING
KIDDING!!
I kid, because I love...
I love...
To Kid...
***
Anyway here is hoping "Tropical Storm Yitzhak"proves a damp squib, who needs the casualties and the attendant costs eh?

The Eagle Has Departed...

A simultaneous pang went thru an entire generation of late born -baby boomers yesterday when word came down that Astronaut Neil Armstrong, The First Man To Walk On The Moon, had died at the age of 82.
Maybe it is the way we found out, while cruising the internet more than likely, we were robbed of that "where were you when you found out Neil Armstrong had died" moment.
Ah but Neil was something special even for a US Astronaut, he had a real disconnect from the global reach of his own enduring fame, a tendency he shares with some of the other class acts like Ted Williams  or perhaps Bob Dylan.
And it is that very disconnect that kept fresh his fame even as others lapsed into decline, personal or public embarrassment or self parody.
Armstrong had self control, self possession, self mastery for better or worse, others may have seen it as affectlessness but Neil was unique sui generis among engineers.
Thru it all, Neil kept quiet, spoke to what he knew, taught, wrote, got divorced, got remarried and somehow remained true to that mysterious Great Society Astro-Mojo...It is literally The Zen that is past all  reckoning of Tom Wolfe's bumptious The Right Stuff.
Let us also remember that NASA was a public institution with something akin to a sense of humor in the 1960's, they sent to the moon a strangely eclectic crew on Apollo Eleven, A Catholic (Michael Collins), a Lay Protestant Deacon (Buzz Aldrin) and...an alleged agnostic (Armstrong).
It is like the hook to a Morey Amsterdam routine "So a Catholic, a Protestant and an Agnostic flew to the moon and the Catholic sez...".
Ah but world broke that agnostic's heart, his two year old daughter died of a brain tumor in 1962, some say Neil and his wife never got over it.
***
I sometimes think that a near disaster likely put Armstrong on the short list for the moon, his first space flight, Gemini Eight had to be aborted when a stuck thruster threatened to tumble the space capsule into oblivion. Keeping the pilot's adage "don't screw the pooch" uppermost in his fertile noggin, Armstrong and co-pilot David Scott tapped their re-entry fuel supply and got home safely.
Armstrong never turned a hair during the crisis in orbit thus his affectless demeanor probably got him to the moon ahead of guys who flew perfect flights.
In that picture up there I see an inscrutable Mona Lisa quality, you'd never know he'd just spent two full hours walking on the moon, he looks like he just finished mowing the lawn or something.
Sui generis indeed.

"We consider him a Senator who votes Pro-Life"

so said "Massachusetts Citizens for Life" who came out banging the pots for Scott Brown today.
This despite an election year burst of rhetoric asserting Brown's pro choice bona fides and his blasts at Rep Todd Akin yesterday.
Taken in full one can marvel at Brown's capacity to evade and distort and contradict himself and still hold his coalition together....in that he much resembles his mentor Mitt Romney he of the five distinct positions on abortion in six years.
Well, Massachusetts Citizens for Life is right in one respect, Scott Brown IS a pro life vote, if the GOP gains control of the US Senate he will be a very reliable vote in favor of making a anti abortion fanatic Mitch McConnell Majority Leader.
This is not news that helps Brown's "trudge to the center" on the other hand abortion aye or nay has never been a game changing issue in the Commonwealth. Certainly banging that particular pot did Martha Coakley no good at the last minute in 2010. However a general case can be made that on this issue Brown is unreliable and at best a feeble negotiating partner with the pro-life majority of the GOP as well as being a de facto latah for the GOP's Senate leadership team.

Ach, Scott Brown is...

Up in the Polls.

I suspect those "turncoat democrat" TV ads might be working.
This is ironic because Citizen Warren herself is a turncoat republican, she was (according to the Sunday Globe) a registered GOP voter as recently as 1998.
How exactly she counters Scott Brown's slow "trudge to the center", remains an open question, I doubt she can gin up an endorsement from a republican with statewide name recognition and credibility.
And anyway, the GOP's party discipline is a lot tighter than the democrats, I hate to admit it, but it is true.
Another factor at play here is the relatively benign economic conditions pervasive in Massachusetts, this works somewhat to Brown's advantage as I have noted before.
 If Brown has an Achilles Heel it is the National GOP which is desperate to make this election a referendum on embracing outright autocracy. Moreover with twitchy mooks like Paul Ryan and Tod Akin on the ticket here and elsewhere Brown has to scramble every day to issue press releases "clarifying his differences with the National GOP".
I"m gonna suggest, five point lead or no five point lead one does not "clarify" themselves into high office.
The short term parameters are clear, Brown will continue his surly "trudge to the center" while Citizen Warren to continue to try and manacle the Junior Senator to the unfolding madness of the National GOP.

Congressman Akin is actually

holding onto a slender lead in the polls out in Missouri!

Does this mean Romney is gonna drop his crude attempts to oust Akin from the Senate Race and try to toady up to the embattled GOP Senatorial nominee?
It would be a signature Romney move to be sure...

As for Akin's polling position I can't for the life of me think that it'll last, his frankly infantile and ignorant remarks about rape are a good example of what Spiro Agnew used to call "Positive Polarization".
Possibly Akin might be holding his lead among men, especially independent conservative leaning married men, but their wives that is a different matter.
That is who I'd aim my pitch at if I was Clair McCaskill.
Akin has handed the democrats a very powerful wedge issue, something that peels off a important electoral cohort....No wonder the Flower of the GOP are scrambling to scuttle Akin's candidacy, the remember Agnew and "positive polarization" as well.
Meanwhile, Ghod Bless em', Akin is hanging tough and even trying to run to the right a bit, he remains the Gift That Keeps on Giving.

Rep. Tod Akin

wingnut candidate for the US Senate in the "Show Me State", told an interviewer this weekend that victims of "legitimate rape" seldom become pregnant because their bodies have natural defenses against unwarranted impregnation.
The Taliban have a firmer grasp on human female biology...and this is allegedly a grown adult & educated man betraying a level sexual insight that would induce guffaws in a Middle Schooler.
One has to pause and wonder at the cataract of sheer rubbish, what are the victims of "illegitimate rape" supposed to do??
There you have it, Congressman Tod Akin, The Gift that Keeps on Giving.
My only complaint he has betrayed such a complete and profound stupidity that he will likely be driven out from the US Senate Race.
If Akin hung in there long enough, Claire McCaskill might reconsider her decision to skip the DNC in Charlotte North Carolina.
Ghod even a mook like Romney finds Akin repulsive, that alone speaks volumes.
****
Otherwise I'd like to apologize to my tiny readership, a politician as crass stupid and self satisfied as Tod Akin requires a veritable H.L. Mencken to delineate all the mirthful potentialities....you all are stuck with Humble Elias and his "sarcastic rant driven chatter".
:D

Oh and Paul Ryan

did make it to Florida after all, where he cringed behind his elderly mother at campaign appearances and lied outrageously about the President's record on issues related to Social Security.
I'm telling you, this guy is a perfect fit with Romney....Mitt has no pride, Paul has no pride, a match made in Heaven truly.
***

BTW...With the selection of Rep. Paul Ryan as Romney's running mate, that leaves Barack Obama as the only mainline Protestant running on either ticket.  Ryan and Biden are both Roman Catholics, Romney is of course a Mormon, while The President is a Methodist or some damn thing.  The last ramparts of the Protestant Ascendency in the USA, are now being defended by Barack Hussein Obama of all people....Da Irony is killin' me.

To no one's surprise

it is learned that GOP Veep Designate, Rep. Paul Ryan voted for TARP, the Prescription Drug Benefit, Mr. Bush's entirely unfunded wars, the Bush Tax Cuts, the Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere and while he decried the Obama Admin's stimulus package, he sucked up every dollar of it he could for his own district.
Ryan is in a word, A Big Government Conservative, that is to say he loves public spending as long as his party gives him the entirely hypocritical out of denouncing any and all forms of taxation as inherently wicked.
Given a record like this is it any wonder he rose to the Vice Presidential Nomination of the Republican Party circa 2012?
He embodies the GOP's intellectual corruption almost perfectly, indeed who else would they nominate quite frankly?
Paul Ryan's first political patron in Washington DC was Dollar Bill Bennett a money grubbing lout who sits on the board of dozens of conservative PACs, draws a six million dollar salary out of all of them and then jets off to Vegas to blow off steam at the high roller's table.
Bennett is DC phenomenon, a bloated denizen of basic cable chat shows his speciality is a sort of repulsive jowl shaking indignation....The TV Punditariat just love him especially when Bennett starts ranting and raving about basic moral values etc etc.
He largely makes his living thus and as a lobbyist for various rightical chic causes, to date he has never successfully influenced congress in any manner shape or form with respect to his conservative ideology...but people keep giving Bennett money nonetheless, must be all those quotes from Marcus Aurelius about "personal responsibility".
All I can say is Young Ryan learned his lessons well from such a master....

Dave Rogers in Menotomy....

The 24th Middlesex Democratic Primary keeps trudging along, now a mere two weeks away, a moment of truth looms for something like four very active precincts in Arlington.

So, comes to town one Dave Rogers an attorney and a democrat from North Cambridge who seems to think he can "Shoe Leather" his ass into the Great and General Court.
He is a very bright, patient and persuasive fellow who has been "Good to His Mother"and is blessed with a good memory.
All reasonable qualities in a state representative I grant you.
He also claims to have knocked on some 2,200 doors throughout the district seeking direct contact with voters, this is the "Marzilli Model"for election, maximum voter access supported by a strong get out the vote effort on election day.
Whether or not a North Cambridger can win using this method in a district dominated by the inscrutable Town of Belmont, remains to be seen.
He has the usual list of liberal priorities ( Helping the needy, education, public transportation, the environment a certain commitment to investing in public institutions etc etc), there are certain tax credits he wants to sunset (notably the film tax break) and like any good would be freshman legislator, he wants "reform before revenue".
Which was Deval Patrick's mantra back in the day.
Oh and like almost everyone from Left to Right in East Arlington and Belmont he wants to prevent the infamous "Mugar Property"from being handed over to private development.
Along this lines Rogers does have some good ideas, among them centralizing procurement services for the various Commonwealth departments...That alone could be a big cost savings over time.
Politically Rogers just picked up the endorsement of the SEIU as well as ATDC Chairperson Aimee Coolidge (this is very important, Coolidge is a Spartan Warlord in Menotomy, she has many friends and is a tireless organizer),  neutral State Senators Ken Donnelly and Will Brownsberger have allegedly been saying nice things about the Rogers campaign as well.
But lets be blunt, the Man faces long odds, it is predicted to be a low turn primary (scheduled for Thursday the Sixth I believe) amidst school starting up, a Jewish Holiday, Labor Day and the Democratic National Convention no less!
That however might turn to Dave Rogers favor if he can gin up the vote in the high democratic turn out wards in Arlington & North Cambridge and then surf the waves off of a "Battle for the Soul of Belmont" between Reardon and Hegarty.

Of course doing all this is a labor intensive enterprise and so far I haven't seen much of a presence on behalf of any of the captioned democrats in Arlington....I begin to wonder if a low turnout in Arlington is what certain candidates are counting on?

I could be wrong, it is hard to gauge progress in a local campaign like this, lacking polls and sustained dedicated press coverage, I guarantee you Humble Elias was the closest thing to a "journalist" at last night's candidate coffee....now that is a thought to truly chill the blood!

On Civility

A scant week ago, the Presidential Campaign was being hyped as an almighty clash of ideas, a pseudo intellectual pundit's dream in other words.
That was before the Vice President cracked that the banks wanna put us all in chains and then Mitt Romney started howling that the President is a hate monger...
Didn't take long for the usual unseemly slanging match to kick in now did it?
Of course, incivility is a relative thing, political passions tore the nation in two back in 1861 and the state of civility in public discourse has hardly improved since then.
The basic legitimacy of one's captioned opponents seems to have always been debatable in this country,hard thing to admit but it's true.
Moreover lets put aside this farcical self image that we have of American's being "nice people"
We aren't, we really never have been.
Yuu don't rise to our current international eminence and prosperity, without a certain degree of callousness and insensitivity.
Which is not to say we are brutal or sadistic or authoritarian, but purely civil....no.
A civil polity does not stage a revolution, create a democracy, survive a civil war or become great prosperous or most of all, keep it's freedom.
And unfortunately, rhetorically rampant politicians is a tax we pay to that freedom.

Have a Nice Day....

Scott Brown's "Major Policy Address"

In Randolph yesterday consisted of accusing Citizen Elizabeth Warren of wanting to raise 3.4 Trillion Dollars in new taxes over the next ten years.
Which brings a nice classical McCarthyist note to the campaign I think.
Paul Ryan's veep nod, intellectually speaking wasn't good news for Former State Senator Scott Brown as it pretty much cut off any hope that Romney was gonna track to the middle for the General Election.
Moreover Ryan's nomination means the discussion over the short term will be about cuts, to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid etc etc etc, po' folk's gittin' less, rich folks ridin' high.
Scott Brown really can't afford to get caught up in that narrative given the necessity of his "trudge to the middle".
So in tried and true GOP fashion ( a trick that goes back to Ronald Reagan in fact) Brown starts screaming like a stuck pig about taxes all in an effort to obscure the heartless budget plans of the National Ticket.
Simple eh?
Whether or not it works is another matter, it is notable that after this demagogic eructation, Brown all but fled the scene declining to take any questions from reporters.

Oh and Boston Globe columnista Jeff Jacoby

agrees with our Junior Senator that poor people should not be encouraged to vote.

Well, one of Jeff's notable intellectual failings is a desperate desire to suck up tyrant's table in the Great Cafeteria of the USA High School.
Of course he has no such comparable qualms about the queasy mixture of God and raw electioneering that eructates from our Evangelical Churches these days....No No No, those people are persecuted for their beliefs, they must vote to save their very lives, cryeth Jeff.
Poor people not so much it isn't as if they have anything at stake sniffeth Jeff.
Another month or so, and Jeff will likely come out banging the pots for a poll tax and a literacy test to keep the riff raff at bay.
Thanks again Bush v. Gore.

Scott Brown thinks

that poor people should not be encouraged to vote.
This is a pretty blatantly Augustan notion, but a sorts of democracy-hating proposals are very freely bruited about and even written into law these days.
I blame the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision, it made vote suppression (previously the favored option of Argentine Juntas) sexy again.
Scott Brown, (R-Massachusetts, no really!) goes the whole mishaugas one better, these days thanks to the covert power of redistricting, politicians get to select their constituents, now Scott Brown wants to select just who gets to vote at all.
Pretty wretched stuff for a guy who has been uneasily tracking back to the center all year long, but we should take it as a good indicator of the sort of turnout concerns that must be at the center of his campaign.

I like how

Mitt Romney is going down to campaign in Florida alone, leaving Social Security Hater Paul Ryan to flail around Iowa pretending he knows something about farm problems.
Ghod Paul Ryan is like every Florida retirees nightmare son-in-law, glib condescending, a great quoter of Ayn Rand at the dinner table, great annihilator of other people's pensions and a great hoarder of his own privileges.
After all the snarky little mook hasn't been off the public payroll since he graduated college, he learned well from his patron, Dollar Bill Bennett how to cash in on conservative welfare.
Sure they are screaming their hatred at "Obamacare" at all of Rep. Ryan's rallies right now, but those howls come from the same haters who have been carrying on this way since 2008.
I'll be curious to see what the numbers look like among indepedent voters once the "Ryan Sugar High" has worn off....

I wanna thank The Boston Sunday Globe

for reminding me that Former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn has a long unsavory history of loudly endorsing Republican candidates for Governor, President and now US Senate despite his status as a nominal democrat.
He got what three terms as Mayor and a stint as a US Ambassador to the Holy See out of the democrats...And look how he rewards us?
What has the GOP ever done for Ray Flynn anyway?
Demonstrably nothing except enable his primitive notions on social issues....But apparently that is a high enough bid to get him out on the airwaves banging the pots for Scott Brown.

Politics, is a strange game indeed with strange players as well.

Y'know...

All told, Mitt Romney has been actively and publicly kissing right-wing ass for seven years now. I date his courtship from the day in 2005 he arrived in Spartansburg SC to lecture the natives on the sinful habits of the Kulaks of Massachusetts.
Seven full years of toadying of the most appalling sort, and after all that Romney still hasn't sealed the deal with the forces of wingnuttery and must to appease them (Always to Appease Them), Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate.
I'm beginning to think these guys saw Mitt coming a mile off, they kept raising the asking price and sure as shootin' Romney's negotiations turned to abject capitulation and voila' Paul Ryan.
Which seems to indicate that the unseen powers and principalities of the GOP want to create a successor personality for 2016, someone to lay a stronger claim to the nomination than say twitchy Rick Santorum or the corpulent money loving Newt Gingrich.
Clearly that person is Paul Ryan a nice personable eloquent fanatic, the sort of "conservative intellectual" who makes pseudo intellectual schlockmeisters like Jeff Jacoby go into ecstatic spasms.
Ryan is a great choice for activating the GOP Base, I doubt he will do much business with independents as the campaign evolves given his bona fides as a idealogue.
In some ways this is a decision much akin to McCain's selection of Sarah Palin, save that Ryan seems smarter than the Former Alaska Governor, but then again that ain't sayin' much.
It is said that Ryan read "Atlas Shrugged" as a teenager was ever after influenced by Ayn Rand's seminal libertarian screed.
 All I can say is, God Save this Republic from Teenagers who Avidly Read "Atlas Shrugged"...Look how they turn out.

Mitt Romney is FOR Gays in the Boy Scouts of America?

I don't believe it.

It is certainly not the sort of opinion that Mitt Romney would historically maintain if any pressure was exerted on his right.
Just ask him to clarify his stance the next time he is doing a Joint Press Conference with Mike Huckabee or the President of the Southern Baptist Association....

How is Niall Ferguson ever gonna

The Curiosity Mars Rover's successful landing on the Red Planet as a sign of the USA's inevitable decline?

And will his conclusions ever print in the paper version of Newsweek before said weekly vanishes into the misty shades of the internet?

Weighty things to be considered as Prof. Ferguson paces the floor of his mansion in Belmont Ma.

***
I don't care what anyone sez, 2.6 billion for a rocket powered space probe hoist seems like a sound investment & not an extravagance to me.

If Barack Obama had to release

his long form birth certificate to quite spurious rumors spawned by rightical chic ne'er do wells, I don't see why Mitt Romney should get a pass for withholding his income tax returns from legitimate scrutiny.
At this point he has all but said out loud "I have something to hide so I am not going to release them", an Augustan response to be sure.
Anyhow there the matter stands, as a program note unto the Laity, Humble Elias is on vacation this week thus blogging will become arbitrary and capricious...unless of course something blows in the wide political world out there.

Whenever Mitt Romney has a purely

political problem, sure as shootin' he throws money at it.
In this case hires ever more ruthless spin doctors to hit back at the charges that he was nothing but a tax evading job destroying plutocrat during his tenure at Bain Capitol.
A typical Romney response, insteadof answering a few questions honestly, put more bullies on the payroll and unleash them like rabid dogs.
This is pretty much an open confession that the issue has been bungled along with his recent trip to Europe and lord knows what else as the Tampa Convention looms.
And there is just something ironic about Romney's Nietzschean Will to Spend when his ass is on the line, he turns cruel reactionary miser whenever anyone else's interests are in play.

There is a ballot initiative this November

ensuring that the consumer has a "Right to Repair", ergo, allowing independent auto mechanics access to manufacturer's computer codes in order to diagnose a particular mechanical problem.
Humble Elias fully supports said "Right to Repair", dealerships notoriously overcharge customers for repair work and independent auto mechanics are unto themselves an entire industry with outlets in every hamlet and township across the nation.
A "Right to Repair" law is good for jobs, good for the consumer, good for small businesses and is good for the USA's manufacturing base....
Of course the Governor is trying to stay ahead of the game  by signing a law guaranteeing such access (like gay marriage Massachusetts would be the first in the nation with respect to the "Right to Repair"), if preserves the spirit of the pending ballot initiative and protects small business and the consumer, then Humble Elias is for it.

Gore Vidal...RIP

But for his irrepressible homosexuality Gore Vidal might have ended up as the Book Editor of the National Review.
His quaint Jeffersonianism, icy patrician demeanor and bottomless bon mots made him a good candidate for the Review's Editorial Board, nasty jewbaiting notwithstanding.
Deep down though, for all his one time democratic bona fides, Gore Vidal hated FDR, truly the portals of the National Review could have been thrown wide to him.
And the Kennedys his onetime patrons? He lived to tattle on them all, so many of the New Frontiersmen beat Vidal of to the grave that his side of the story threatened to become canon for a while there.
It all says a Friend of Bill Buckley to meeee-ee.
***
Of course in real life Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal hated one another, their famous confrontation on the air at the 1968 Democratic National Convention set the standard for fifty years of cable chat show bluster. Viewed today their exchange of bitter insults resembles two embittered sophomores impotently snapping wet towels at one another.
***
Oh I know to radicals of a certain age, Vidal is a savory fine wine, he is dragged out by the intellectuals when they want to get good and drunk on American Declinism.
And for the record, Vidal started predicting America's fall in 1967 and he went on and on predicting the past with a tedium that put the Manchester New Hampshire telephone directory to shame.
Eventually he fled this dying empire to the very hub of dying empires, Italy and doddered away in a villa, convinced of his status as the USA's own Edward Gibbon.
***
He was a very able writer and a very witty man, but sometimes wit is about as useful as tits are to a bull.
His historic novels are uniformly excellent, full of wry dialogue and unsubtle payback at various real persons and institutions, retaliation and vituperation were his watchwords when it came to fiction.
In the life after this one he'll sit two seats over from Ambrose Bierce and H.L. Mencken, one doubts they'll talk to one another much.