Gore Vidal, a fabulous playwright and essayist, has written a wonderful piece for The Nation magazine. The piece is here.
While I certainly don’t agree with everything Vidal says, he offers significant intellectual insight into the current status of the nation. He certainly is indeed a great man.
A couple of my favorite lines:
Vidal’s contempt for Ann Coulter–
Anorexic, vacant-eyed blonde women on TV now describe as the “liberal elite”…
The conservative definition of law and order:
A code phrase meaning “get the blacks.”
And finally, Vidal’s comparison of 1972 and 2004:
I should note that in the thirty-two years since this particular state of the union, our political vocabulary has been turned upside down. Although the secret core to each presidential election is who can express his hatred of African-Americans most subtly (to which today can be added Latinos and “elite liberals,” a fantasy category associated with working film actors who have won Academy Awards), and, of course, this season it’s the marriage-minded so-called gays. So-called because there is no such human or mammal category (sex is a continuum) except in the great hollow pumpkin head of that gambling dude who has anointed himself the nation’s moralist-in-chief, William “Bell Fruit” Bennett.
He truly has a gift for storytelling and language.
0 Responses to “State of the Union, 2004”