Help Me, I've Been Gored

Gore Vidal is nuts.

And I don't mean a cute, eccentric writer kind of nuts. If he just rode his bicycle around in circles in the middle of town square with a vaporous grin on his face in tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, we could all say, "Oh, that Gore Vidal. He's just a nutty writer." Then we'd all have a good laugh and hoist a brew in his name.

But Vidal is nuts in a beady-eyed, consuming, paranoid kind of way. He is the Oliver Stone of the literary world.

Case in point: A New Paranoid Ranting in the Observer. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately - perspective is important here), his fanatical ravings are only available in the print edition. The linked article only provides tantalizing snippets of the full article.

But a vein of stupidity as rich as the political writings of Gore Vidal can be mined just by reading the excerpts. Such is the magnitude of his lack of understanding. Let me share some samples from his work:

'We still don't know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose.

This would be true only if you stuck your fingers in your ears and went, "lalalalalala" while Osama Bin Ladin described exactly why America was attacked.

Let me skip ahead here a bit and fill you in on the details: Vidal is claiming that George Bush attacked America. This is all a big plot by the oil and gas companies to rape the world. And apparently, they came to the conclusion that attacking themselves was the best way to achieve this. And apparently, Osama Bin Ladin was available on contract to be the designated stooge:

'Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan ... [because] the administration is convinced that Americans are so simple-minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable, lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it 'cause he hates us because we're rich 'n free 'n he's not.'

Got that? Osama was picked because he's a 'lone, crazed killer'. Oh yeah, with an army. But that's beside the point. And it really wrecks the point he's trying to make. Apparently, Bush got on the phone and said, "Hey Osama, you know all that evil stuff you've been doing before I had any influence? Like bombing ships and stuff? I think that's great. And I know you really hate America and all, but do you think you could be a buddy and attack us soon? 'Cause I need to have an excuse to come over there and overthrow your government so we can pipe oil through Afghanistan. Thanks a bunch."

This, in Gore Vidal's world, makes sense.

The Observer describes more of the article:

At the heart of the essay are questions about the events of 9/11 itself and the two hours after the planes were hijacked. Vidal writes that 'astonished military experts cannot fathom why the government's "automatic standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking" was not followed'.

These procedures, says Vidal, determine that fighter planes should automatically be sent aloft as soon as a plane has deviated from its flight plan.

First, I'm willing to bet that the military experts were 'astonished' that Vidal would be so stupid as to ask the question. They probably had the same look on their faces that they get when Art Bell crashes an Air Force press conference. And anyway, for Vidal's little conspiracy to be true, it would require that every area control center flight controller on the east coast be part of it.

And is there anyone in their right mind who believes that the government would have scrambled fighters, intercepted commercial airliners, and shot them down before any of them had crashed into anything?

Vidal asks why Bush, as Commander-in-Chief, stayed in a Florida classroom as news of the attacks broke: 'The behaviour of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.'

He stayed seated because leaping up and running out of the room in front of those kids would have scared the hell out of them, you putz. He did what a good leader would do - he took the news calmly, then looked for the first opprtunity to leave without causing a scene. And hey, Mr. Conspiracy, if Bush really knew about the attacks, don't you think he would have tried to act surprised, if for no other reason than to keep the long arm and penetrating mind of Gore Vidal from figuring out his dastardly machinations?

Asking whether these failures to act expeditiously were down to conspiracy, coincidence or error, Vidal notes that incompetence would usually lead to reprimands for those responsible.

Hey, someone's still paying you for your thoughts, aren't they? If incompetence always ended careers, no one would have heard from you after Caligula.

Posted by Dan at October 28, 2002 02:15 AM