THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

CATFIGHT | 2004-10-23

Gore Vidal is an interesting person. He was raised in a privileged, very blond WASP family. He became a homosexual and a far leftist.

But in his biography of Lincoln, the last sentence of the book is staggering. He said Lincoln knew that the South had a right to secede.

William Buckley is the founder of Respectable Conservatism. He never says anything unkind to liberals. But Vidal once upset Buckley so much that Buckley called him, on national television, "a queer."

At a cocktail party in New York, Vidal told Norman Mailer that he looked like "a typical Jewish Intellectual." Mailer then BUTTED him. Vidal ended up with a bloody nose. It was the kind of catfight you would expect when New York writers get together.

Norman Mailer sees himself as a Tough Guy. One sitcom had a girl calling Norman Mailer and she kept saying things like, "Yes, you are a tough guy, GRR!" "Yes, you can whip me."

The way Mailer shows he is tough is by talking about dung. He wrote a book called Ancient Evenings about the smell of dung, the TASTE of dung in bread, dung, dung, dung.

Even in New York, the reviewers of Ancient Evenings were offended by that monomaniacal talk about dung.

Bathroom talk is the trademark of a New York Jewish writer. I have noticed that when you talk with a Northeastern Jew, the conversation very quickly goes, literally, into the toilet.

Portnoy's Complaint was a hilarious book about a New York Jew talking to his psychiatrist. It was a best-seller written by a New York Jew. When I refer to it I am anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

In one scene Portnoy talks about when he was a boy and he was on the toilet. His mother is worried he is sick. She is banging on the door and demanding to look at his feces.

When you watch programs on cable television or movies, you are puzzled by the constant use of the s*** word. You wonder, "Why offend people like that so pointlessly?"