Christopher Hitchens quoting Gore Vidal – segue much?
From the London Review of Books, January 2000, covering the American presidential election of that year.
“It was in San Diego, California in the late summer of 1996 that the working hacks finally tumbled to what they had done. A Republican National Convention had been arranged, as a sort of sound-stage or a mixed-media event, entirely for the convenience of the press and TV. The delegates were mere extras on the set, the coronation of the two nominees was a sure thing, the feral extremists and fundamentalists had been tidied out of sight, the corporate-sponsorship logos were beautifully placed, the camera angles and background briefings were the chief preoccupation of the Party managers and – there was exactly nothing to cover, nothing to transmit, and nothing to write about. A day or so passed, in this city of sinister charm (once described by Gore Vidal as ‘the Vatican of the John Birch Society’), in an agony of boredom and irrelevance.”
Eat that, San Diego.
And now a Hitchens original from the same article, writing about abortive candidates for President:
“While the other peripheral or marginal candidates have all received much more attention than they could normally expect, simply because of their supposedly ‘human’ qualities. Donald Trump – a ludicrous figure, but at least he’s lived it up a bit in the real world and at least he’s worked out how to cover 90 per cent of his skull with 30 per cent of his hair. Warren Beatty – a beaming former Adonis who has significantly narrowed the gender gap and who has a literal belief in the New Deal. Bill Bradley – boring and pompous and tenth-rate but used to play basketball and take showers with African Americans. John McCain – nobody’s idea of an intellectual but likes to talk dirty and got himself shot down while scattering high explosives over someone else’s country.”
The juxtaposition of this early scorn for our now-leader with his spot-on 90 percent/30 percent description…yes.
smq.world 