Weekly Jackass Number Four - Gore Vidal

I wanted to do something special for the holiday edition of Weekly Jackass. I thought of doing a Google search for somebody saying something outrageous about Christmas, but that's too easy. This week's Jackass would look at someone complaining about Christmas as a novice, in light of his impressive record of outrageous statements. He's a man of some talent, a great deal of paranoia, and a blinding hatred of anyone who loves America that rivals that of the great Chomsky. I give you - Gore Vidal.

The great thing about the Radical Left is they not only give you enough rope to hang them, but they throw the noose over the tree and tie the knot for you. Observe the twaddle that issues from our honoree's lips:

[The government] plays off [Americans'] relative innocence, or ignorance to be more precise. This is probably why geography has not really been taught since World War II -- to keep people in the dark as to where we are blowing things up. Because Enron wants to blow them up...

The Afghans had nothing to do with what happened to our country on September 11. But Saudi Arabia did. It seems like Osama is involved, but we don't really know...

We went to Afghanistan partly because the Taliban -- whom we had installed at the time of the Russian occupation -- were getting too flaky and because Unocal, the California corporation, had made a deal with the Taliban for a pipeline to get the Caspian-area oil, which is the richest oil reserve on Earth. They wanted to get that oil by pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan to Karachi and from there to ship it off to China, which would be enormously profitable. Whichever big company could cash in would make a fortune. And you'll see that all these companies go back to Bush or Cheney or to Rumsfeld or someone else on the Gas and Oil Junta, which, along with the Pentagon, governs the United States. We had planned to occupy Afghanistan in October, and Osama, or whoever it was who hit us in September, launched a pre-emptory strike. They knew we were coming. And this was a warning to throw us off guard...

I sometimes feel like I am the last defender of the republic...

The right wing are the bad guys, but they know what they want -- everybody else's money. And they know they don't like blacks and they don't like minorities. And they like to screw everyone along the way.

--- from an Interview with Vidal by Marc Cooper of the L.A. Weekly, 07/03/02

The entire world is horrified by what we do. He [Bush] goes into an innocent country called Afghanistan, knocks it down. One of his cabinet members knocks it down. Then he gives contracts to rebuild it to his vice president with Halliburton. Then he knocks down another country which has done nothing to us. Why don't you hit Denmark?...

Bush is about as evil as you can get, in the way of an American president...

There is no representative government. Congress doesn't represent anybody. And the Supreme Court, I must say, why some of them are not in jail, I don't know. ..

...democracy was something that the founding fathers hated. This is not generally known because it shouldn't be known, but it is...

This is the nation of torture...

---from an Interview with Vidal by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, 06/04/04

And that's just two interviews I've excerpted! I could go on and on and on and on (in fact, we'll have to do this again soon - do I smell the first repeat Weekly Jackass?), but this post is long enough as it is. As a parting shot, here's a link to some comments Vidal made to Liz Smith about Tony Blair and George Bush being dangerous 'Jesus-Lovers'.

I can say without reservation that Vidal is truly deserving of the honor of being our fourth Weekly Jackass.