June 28, 2005
Getting Even With Gore Vidal
Getting Even With Gore Vidal
Recently, dear reader, one of the senior editors here at “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”—let’s just call him “Chip”—was perusing a handful of book reviews penned by Gore Vidal. Mr. Vidal, the leftist novelist, essayist, playwright, self-professed “homosexualist,” and full-time Jew-hater has often irked us.For one, he’s about as close to the Gods of Hypocrisy you can get whilst still remaining a mere mortal. Apparently, he writes his political polemics about the evils of capitalism from his palatial Italian villa. And he bleats on about the oppressed a few sentences after he brags about his blue-blood connections to the Kennedys, et al. As if this weren’t horrid enough, he’s sufficiently anti-Israel to make Al Jazeera seem philo-Semitic.
But perhaps what most rankles about Mr. Vidal are his longwinded book reviews for the New York Review of Books. In the course of these umpteen-word pontifications, the reader begins to realize that Mr. Vidal has not actually read the book under review. Or, if he has, he isn’t terribly interested in commenting on it.
Rather, Mr. Vidal offers pages and pages of darkened wood pulp devoted to his own enlightened views on the topic of the book he never bothered to read. Frankly, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” find this deeply insulting. Ever since “Chip” recently wended his way through a few Vidal reviews, we have pondered a way of getting back at him.
And we think we came up with a brilliant idea. We are using today’s humble post as a book review for one of his tomes, which we have not read. In fact, we’re not even terribly sure that we got the title correct.
Without further ado, then, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” are content to present:
A Review of Imperial America by Gore Vidal by the Crack Young Staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” none of whom have read the book in question
Gore Vidal has quickly become the darling of the anti-Semitic, homosexual Left. And no wonder: He’s a very entertaining half-pint popinjay.
Unfortunately, in his book Imperial America, Mr. Vidal has proved less subtle in his argumentation than Norman Mailer and Tariq Ali. In comparison with these anti-American polemicists, Mr. Vidal seems incapable of nuance. Perhaps Molly Ivins can show him how to craft a good argument. Or Michael Moore: We hear he’s very subtle.
In addition, the production values of the book in question are simply atrocious. The little volume appears to be printed on recycled toilet paper. We mean, come on: It’s as if the publisher is announcing that the work in question has the shelf-life of a boy band.
And so, dear reader, we shall conclude by informing you that Gore Vidal’s latest book is in fact the intellectual equivalent of the Backstreet Boys. And, boy, what Gore Vidal would do if he could get his hands on them.
