Gore Vidal: Bush Is A Thug. There Is Something Really Wrong With Him.

[kpete]

Gore Vidal
By David Barsamian
August 2006 Issue

.....................

Q: In 2002, long before Bush’s current travails, you wrote, “Mark my words, he will leave office the most unpopular President in history.” How did you know that then?

Gore Vidal: I know these people. I don’t say that as though I know them personally. I know the types. I was brought up in Washington. When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what’s going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it’s trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Q: Bush’s ratings have been at personal lows. Cheney has had an 18 percent approval rating.

Vidal: Well, he deserves it.

Q: Yet the wars go on. It’s almost as if the people don’t matter.

Vidal: The people don’t matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They’ve got the troops. They’ve got the army. They’ve got Congress. They’ve got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him.

more at:
http://progressive.org/mag_intv0806

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

1. Didn't Gore Vidal mention Bush's "simian charm" a long time ago?

It seems to me that he was one of the first to describe Bush as a Chimp, during the 2000 election.

[Cleita]

4. Except he didn't call it charm.

What he said was that he was pleasantly simian looking, which was the best thing he could say about him. Back then he had his number as he still does.

[nashville_brook]

7. pooh flinging monkeys have their "charm"

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

8. Vidal called him "charmingly simian" in his editorial Democratic Vistas

written by Gore Vidal December 21, 2000 and appearing in the January, 2001 issue of the Nation magazine. To me, Vidal stating that Bush has all the charm of a monkey is even funnier than an obvious put-down.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20010108/vidal

Here's the final paragraph from the article, written by Vidal in 2000 in which he compares George Bush to a monkey. It predicts a couple of wars, tax relief for the rich, and hyper vigilance of terrorism, things that have all come to pass:

"...What will the next four years bring? With luck, total gridlock. The two houses of Congress are evenly split. Presidential adventurism will be at a minimum. With bad luck (and adventures), Chancellor Cheney will rule. A former Secretary of Defense, he has said that too little money now goes to the Pentagon even though last year it received 51 percent of the discretionary budget. Expect a small war or two in order to keep military appropriations flowing. There will also be tax relief for the very rich. But bad scenario or good scenario, we shall see very little of the charmingly simian George W. Bush. The military--Cheney, Powell et al.--will be calling the tune, and the whole nation will be on constant alert, for, James Baker has already warned us, Terrorism is everywhere on the march. We cannot be too vigilant. Welcome to Asunción. ..."

[Bad Penny]

12. Nice pic of here of (r to l) Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld

Who said dubya can't ride a horse

[Cleita]

34. I never saw the article. I saw him on a TV show, maybe it was

The Tonight Show or Letterman, I can't remember, and he called him pleasantly simian looking.

[StellaBlue]

2. k&r

I LOVE Gore Vidal. Got into him while I was working in a bookstore in England. Our politics section carried several of his collected essays titles. I was hooked. He perfectly sums up my own personal view. I think I am secretly an old, gay man. :crazy: LOVE him!

[nealmhughes]

52. Vidal says he isn't gay, but a "homosexualist." He scoffs at the notion

of what he likes to do in bed defining him.

Gore Vidal is not old! He is timeless, as is his wit and his wisdom and wordsmithery.

[StellaBlue]

53. Thanks for telling me that

That's awesome!!! I like him EVEN better now, and I tend to agree, since I identify myself as straight, but see sexuality as a spectrum. One of my good friends in high school's moms told me that one night when she came home drunk, and it stuck with me. Spectrium. I am a heterosexualist, but might become a homosexualist for Salma Hayek. ;)

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. I love Vidal

K & R

[Sal Minella]

5. Hard to top his description of Cheney as "200 pounds of rancid veal

in a three-piece suit."

[mcscajun]

19. Isn't that sooooooo much better than

"he's a stinking sack of shit."

My gahd, the man uses the language SO Well. :)

[liberalhistorian]

30. Yes, the man does have a wonderful

way with words, doesn't he? Thank God for writers like Vidal who aren't afraid to tell it like it is, no matter what!

[Cleita]

6. I do too.

He is so liberal and so erudite in explaining why that is a good thing.

[confludemocrat]

9. AND Bush hit the jackpot with the quality of his opposition

a pathetic lot

and he considered 9-11 as hitting the jackpot when no DECENT human being would take it and use it that way

BTW, where has Gore Vidal been? I have missed him.

[StellaBlue]

10. He's been living in Italy

But recently moved back to LA. I read in an interview a few years ago where he quoted Henry James, saying America is a great place to go to die.

:rofl:

True, true.

Seriously, he is getting older now. I think he has health probelms.

[BlooInBloo]

11. ROFLMAO!! "It's like a war against dandruff"

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl::rofl: :rofl:

Yyou guys GOTTA read the interview - better than Ivins or Krugman - he should work with Chappelle/Stewart/Colbert - LOLOLOL!

Q: You’re a veteran of World War II, the so-called good war. Would you recommend to a young person a career in the armed forces in the United States?

Vidal: No, but I would suggest Canada or New Zealand as a possible place to go until we are rid of our warmongers. We’ve never had a government like this. The United States has done wicked things in the past to other countries but never on such a scale and never in such an existentialist way. It’s as though we are evil. We strike first. We’ll destroy you. This is an eternal war against terrorism. It’s like a war against dandruff. There’s no such thing as a war against terrorism. It’s idiotic. These are slogans. These are lies. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we ever invented and developed.

[malaise]

29. A brilliant analogy n/t

[Reckon]

13. I'm glad someone has a clue!

"Q: Talk about the role of the opposition party, the Democrats.

Vidal: It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican."

[Selatius]

14. Oh no, he's a NADERITE!!!

:sarcasm:

[bananas]

15. Wasn't it "Steal this book" Rubin who said..

the American eagle needs two wings to fly, a left wing and a right wing.

Now we have two right wings, any pilots want to tell us what will happen?

Welcome to ... The spin zone!

[Norrin Radd]

54. I would rather the eagle walked, with just a left wing. n/t

[Alexodin]

55. That was Hoffman but yeah.

[Voltaire99]

16. Q: Talk about the role of the opposition party, the Democrats.

Vidal: It isn’t an opposition party. I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party—the property party. It’s the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democrat and the other is Republican.


Perfect. :-)

[Ghost Dog]

40. Absof*ckinglutely. But also:

Q: What can people do to energize democracy?

Vidal: The tactic would be to go after smaller offices, state by state, school board, sheriff, state legislatures. You can turn them around and that doesn’t take much of anything. Take back everything at the grassroots, starting with state legislatures. That’s what Madison always said. I’d like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.

Q: Do you see any developments on the horizon that might suggest an alternative?

Vidal: Newton’s Third Law. I hope that law is still working. American laws don’t work, but at least the laws of physics might work. And the Third Law is: There is no action without reaction. There should be a great deal of reaction to the total incompetence of this Administration. It’s going to take two or three generations to recover what we had as of twenty years ago.

[lvx35]

17. "let the chattering masses chatter." brilliant!

I love Vidal's way with words...Just to take "chatter", a word used to describe "intercepted terrorist transmitions" and apply it to the talk of those opposed to Bush says soooo much with a few words. The monkey house in a verbal nutshell.

[ProfessorGAC]

18. Well, Vidal & I Are Sure In Agreement On One Thing

Well, more than one actually, a lot more. But, this is the one that stood out for me.

"I’m willing to believe practically any mischief on the part of the Bush people. No, I don’t think they did it, as some conspiracy people think. Why? Because it was too intelligently done. This is beyond the competence of Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. They couldn’t pull off a caper like 9/11. They are too clumsy."

Boy do i like the way he said that. I think the Bushgang is responsible for 9/11 through incompetence and hubris. But, i don't think they're smart enough to pull this off without someone dropping a dime or blabbing about it. There just not as smart and devious as some here think they are.
The Professor

[tomp]

24. those "hijackers" had help from somewhere...

...within the us govt and possibly the airlines at the very least. and somebody placed those put options. was it really "clumsy" of cheney to be overseeing an airline disaster drill on the morning of 9/11?

bush, for sure, is perhaps the dullest tool ever in the govt shed. but look at halliburton's profits. cheney is capable, however hamfistedly, of pulling off a lot of shit.

i think vidal is wrong here. for a brilliant man i don't know how he comes to be so anti-"conspiracy".

[ProfessorGAC]

32. Then We Disagree

The Professor

[npincus]

20. K & R

[UTUSN]

21. Take back office by office, the grassroots? We are LOST

The vast majority of eligible voters DON'T EVEN VOTE. If every eligible voter actually did the deed there would not be a Repuke in office anywhere. It's the apathy, the busy-ness, the ignorance that allows the thugs to take power.

[sagesnow]

22. The Question I'd Love to ask Gore Vidal...

Is there any faction of the Bush Administration that could have developed and implemented 9/11 to be their "Reichstags Fire"?(sorry no time to check spelling). Could Richard Perle and/or other elements of the military or CIA that had the template for ready to implement when Bush/Cheyney stole the Executive office? There are way too many coincidences for me to so easily dismiss MIHOP or at least LIHOP.
The call options on American Airlines- the identification papers that miraculously survived- way, way to many question remain uncleared for most Americans to dismiss LIHOP at a minimum.

[Nimrod2005]

31. Lol...

[Dinger]

23. Good Article, Especially This Part:

" . . . Q: What can people do to energize democracy?

Vidal: The tactic would be to go after smaller offices, state by state, school board, sheriff, state legislatures. You can turn them around and that doesn’t take much of anything. Take back everything at the grassroots, starting with state
legislatures. That’s what Madison always said. I’d like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian."

I wholeheartedly agree!

[EFerrari]

27. So do I. We watch federal elections as if they are a movie

when our own communities have opportunities for us to effect reform. Vidal is right.

[cyberpj]

37. I agree too. And so does Dean. Which is why DLC w/fight him. nt

[mopinko]

38. jefferson left us a back door- impeachment thru statehouses

imho, this is the only route to impeachment that would not be seen as a beltway coup. we can work on this angle NOW!

[earth mom]

25. Thugs Indeed! Vidal has quite a way with words-Love Him!

Instead of eloquent and intelligent people like Vidal telling us the way it really is, we have total nutjobs like O'Lielly and Rush! No wonder America is going to hell in a hand basket at lightning speed!
:argh:

[zippy890]

26. "monkeys make trouble"

'you see a couple of monkey loose and one is the president and one is the vice president..'

:rofl:

[skypilot]

28. kick

*

[saltpoint]

33. Vidal is refreshing as hell. Love 'im.

[DemExpat]

35. Love that he says it all so well!

:loveya:

:D

DemEx

36. Vidal says what will prevent us from a war with Iran is China

China will take their money out U.S., because we will be bankrupt.

[nickgutierrez]

50. He's dead right

The thing we need to remember is that the vast majority of the US deficit takes the form of loans from China. China and Iran have an oil alliance. Start a war with Iran, China calls in their debt, US goes bankrupt.

[gauguin57]

39. OK, Mr.Vidal. Why did you REFUSE to support Al Gore in 2000?

Now you're complaining about Bush again and again. No, despite the fact that Vidal and Al Gore are actually related, Vidal supported Nader in 2000.

Still mad at him.

[Az_lefty]

41. bush is a RW coward who has fantasies of being a thug...

him and his minions set watching "shock and awe" on the TV while masturbating.
:puke:

[L0oniX]

42. Here's proof that Bush is a chimp

http://www.bushorchimp.com/pics2.html

:crazy:

[Cobalt-60]

43. It's true

You've got to see this.
I've never thought of chimpy as an actual chimp.
Our cousins are pretty cool, I'd hate to insult them like that.
But the Decider's simian nature is brought into sharp focus

[Vogon_Glory]

44. Dang It, Vidal Is Right Again!

I have long thought of most of Gore Vidal's political theory as being too far to the left, but I find myself concurring more and more with what Vidal has been saying. He was certainly right as to what the incumbent mal-administration's behavior would be.

I wouldn't go so far as to call * a thug. I see * as being one of those guys who has made friends with bullies, agrees with the bullies' attitudes, and is only too happy to let the bullies do the heavy lifting while he tries to look good to the rubes too dumb to know any better.

[Mist]

45. I'm a huge Vidal fan, and I appreciate how urbane he is:

urbane: polite, refined, and often elegant in manner. (from Dictionary.com). Urbanity is a lost art, but for Mr. Vidal. Saddest line in the interview: "It's going to take two or three generations to recover what we had as of twenty years ago." A bitter truth.

[Time for change]

46. Excellent interview

(sigh)

[riona]

47. Excellent!

Thanks for the link.

[sinkingfeeling]

48. Vidal is brillant here, as usual. Loved his conclusion that Bush&co.

couldn't have pulled off 9/11 because "it was too intelligently done."

[bdamomma]

49. Vidal did not say anything we do not know here

I THINK SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG WITH HIM.

that is the sentence that should be shouted from each and every one of us.

[Kurovski]

51. Kick

:kick: