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New York, 7:29 AM
Mon Dec 7
15 posts in the last 24 hours

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    Dsmvwl  Admin  Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×
    Image of Novaload Novaload
    10/31/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    Biden was the most inscrutable choice, ever, for VP. Instead of "change" Obama brought out an old hack, who had trouble with both truth telling, even during the campaign, and with inserting his foot into his mouth. Oh, to know what kind of negotiation that was, to get him on the ticket---except, perhaps to allay terrified old white guys who feared a woman and a (half)black man on the ticket would bring on the apocalypse. #joebiden
     Reply
    Novaload was starred Novaload was unstarred
    Image of Thistledew Thistledew
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    apparently I am in the minority, but I love Joe Biden! I think he's like the lovable Steve Urkel of the White House. He comes in, says stupid stuff, knocks shit over, and is like "Did I do that?" Oh Joe. #joebiden
     Reply
    applejuice promoted this comment Thistledew was starred Thistledew was unstarred
    Image of ModestProposal ModestProposal
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    Joe Biden is everything thats wrong and fucked up with congress. This dope won his seat in the Senate when he was 29 and has never had another job until being VP. He has learned about as much about how the country works from his perch in DC as Palin learned about Russia from staring at it. He is walking proof we need term limits.

    And he doesn't drink. I don't trust people who don't drink, unless they've already been alcoholics. #joebiden
     Reply
    ModestProposal was starred ModestProposal was unstarred
    Image of Motoko Kusanagi Motoko Kusanagi
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    Why is it that I feel compelled to defend Gawker's subject matter against the editors/writers at least once a day lately?

    Either this new crop of staff writers is utterly fucked, or the editorial direction has taken a nosedive, or both.

    Is there some negative correlation between the quality of stories and the quality of AJAX/CSS? #joebiden
     Reply
    Motoko Kusanagi was starred Motoko Kusanagi was unstarred
    Image of romulus romulus
    10/30/09

    @Motoko Kusanagi: From where I'm standing, it would appear to be a positive correlation. It's a good day when I get tripped up by fewer than five unresponsive scripts, infinite waits for comments to load or what have you. #joebiden
     Reply
    Motoko Kusanagi promoted this comment romulus was starred romulus was unstarred
    Image of Motoko Kusanagi Motoko Kusanagi
    10/30/09

    @romulus: The site gets prettier, and the content gets lamer. Just callin it as I see it. #joebiden
     Reply
    Motoko Kusanagi was starred Motoko Kusanagi was unstarred
    Image of romulus romulus
    10/30/09

    @Motoko Kusanagi: Oh yeah, I didn't mean to quibble. I agree that the site gets fancier all the time, but features seem to break often. I should have added before that it could well be my OS and browser causing headaches most readers don't experience. And in all fairness, I haven't been reading long enough to judge contemporary content against the past. #joebiden
     Reply
    romulus was starred romulus was unstarred
    Image of meerkat meerkat
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    Not sure what point you're trying to make, Amrita... that you think Cheney's worldview makes some sense? That Cheney was initially popular, before everything he did brought his popularity rating to a low of 28%? I love it that Biden is willing to call a moron a moron. This is a ridiculous post. #joebiden
     Reply
    meerkat was starred meerkat was unstarred
    Image of Conchie Birdie Conchie Birdie
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    Oh, and if you're trying to poke fun at Vice Prez Biden for weeping during the debate when he spoke about his first wife and baby daughter who died, well then, that's just messed up. #joebiden
     Reply
    Conchie Birdie was starred Conchie Birdie was unstarred
    Image of Novaload Novaload
    10/31/09

    @Conchie Birdie: One might argue that it was the worst kind of political hackdom for him to bring them up expressly to show his "empathy" side and try to squeeze a tear out of his plastic-surgeryized eye slots. #joebiden
     Reply
    Novaload was starred Novaload was unstarred
    Image of Conchie Birdie Conchie Birdie
    10/30/09

    In reply to Nobody Loves Weepy VP Joe
    I'm absolutely NOT a supporter of ANYTHING Dick says... but, Good Lawwd, Biden, Bin Laden will always BE a part of the issue. I'm sorry, I guess if you had the prez saying this I could understand... but, uh, Joe? Nope.

    That being said, why are we posting crap from Fox News anyway - I thought we weren't supposed to take this stuff seriously?
    #joebiden
     Reply
    Conchie Birdie was starred Conchie Birdie was unstarred
    Image of procrastination_state procrastination_state
    10/29/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    Does Vidal mention in the interview that he himself "took advantage of" Jack Kerouac while Kerouac was passed out drunk?
     Reply
    Edited by procrastination_state at 10/29/09 12:54 PM procrastination_state was starred procrastination_state was unstarred
    Image of topsy topsy
    10/29/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    Gore Vidal is a brilliant man. Unfortunately being brilliant doesn't prevent him from MISSING THE POINT. Yes, there was a different story at the time of the rape. The girl (and her mother) was called a lot worse than 'hooker'. The thing that Mr. Vidal and other Polanski supporters always seem to forget is that the victim said NO. It doesn't matter if she was a hooker or the Blessed Virgin. She said no and he ignored it and stuck his dick in her anyway and kept it there while she repeated her refusal. Over and over and over again. That's rape. Plain and simple. And then there's that whole 13 years old thing.

    Being brilliant doesn't prevent you from being dumb #gorevidal
     Reply
    topsy was starred topsy was unstarred
    Image of TheBusinessGuy TheBusinessGuy
    10/29/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    Vidal's literary essays are still eminently worthwhile. The Best Man and Lincoln are shrewd and entertaining. His political stuff is smart but, as someone below said, too topical and thus tiresome; it was yellowing before it was bound between hardcovers. (You read his collected essays and you scream at the 592nd clever occurrence of "the National Security State.") Buckley's politics and prejudices were misguided and too often reprehensible. But Buckley, unlike Vidal, could change his mind, and didn't throw bombs for the joy of startling the horses. And Buckley disagreed with his opposites without loathing them (except for Vidal): Buckley was friends with Galbraith, Schlesinger, and even Allard Lowenstein. Vidal, for all his virtues, seems incapable of that sort of spiritual generosity. Sadly, nowadays, Vidal is the cultural critic equivalent of an old man yelling "Get off my lawn!" and should be treated as such.
     Reply
    Edited by TheBusinessGuy at 10/29/09 3:59 AM TheBusinessGuy was starred TheBusinessGuy was unstarred
    Image of Seeräuber Jenny Seeräuber Jenny
    10/28/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    It was a fascinating interview. In order to reconcile the comment about Polanski with my own affection for Vidal, I'm going to have to believe he's playing the provocateur.
     Reply
    Edited by Seeräuber Jenny at 10/28/09 11:34 PM Seeräuber Jenny was starred Seeräuber Jenny was unstarred
    Image of meursault69 meursault69
    10/29/09

    @Seeräuber Jenny: He was always playing the provocateur, much as he was playing the writer. #gorevidal
     Reply
    Seeräuber Jenny promoted this comment meursault69 was starred meursault69 was unstarred
    Image of Benny Benny
    10/29/09

    @Seeräuber Jenny: He's absolutely playing the provocateur, which is exactly why he's so lame. #gorevidal
     Reply
    Benny was starred Benny was unstarred
    Image of Seeräuber Jenny Seeräuber Jenny
    10/29/09

    @meursault69:

    I've never actually read anything by him.

    @Benny:

    It hurts less if he doesn't really mean it. #gorevidal
     Reply
    Seeräuber Jenny was starred Seeräuber Jenny was unstarred
    Image of Baroness Baroness
    10/28/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    The Thing About Gore: Yes, he's quite the cold-hearted one. An unrepentant snob. He's always been such.

    Yes, his comments about the Polanski case sound dreadful if you completley erase his first sentence in that paragraph: "I really don't give a fuck." Yes, it sounds cruel that he wickedly alluded to the victim as a whore. It's ghastly, actually. And very wrong.

    I'm not excusing Vidal for that sentence he uttered. This is the person who described the depravities of Tiberius in Suetonius's "Twelve Caesars" with an icy remove- about what we would consider beyond the pale, involving children. Yes, it shocks. Yes, I myself blanch and am appalled. Disgusted. My point is that someone who could describe this horror so icily in the 1960's in an essay on Suetonius is clearly someone who has no problem calling Polanski's victim a teen prostitute.

    Which is awful. Wrong, harsh. But that's Gore Vidal. It's his opinion, his words- wrong as the are, they are merely words. He really doesn't "give a fuck", and never has.

    But seeing all these wishes for him to just die already, he surely shall soon. But I can't sit by and let his very real contribution to keen analysis of the American scene in the last half of the 2oth century just be trashed. He was unbelievably prescient about the worst excesses of the W Bush administration, he absolutely predicted it years before- how power, and the seizure of power works. How war is our perpetual state in the US. How creating war is how Presidents seize power and get noted by History as "great". And a thousand other things. His essays of the last 40 years have been incredibly clear snapshots of how power works in America, and a stray recent unfortunate comment about Polanski's victim cannot take that away from him.

    No, he won't go on Oprah and apologize, and weep, like our confessional culture demands. He has an aristo's contempt for pieties and having to play to the crowd. He says what he says, and though it's increasingly wicked invective that I very often disagree with, I'm damned glad for Gore Vidal. #gorevidal
     Reply
    Baroness was starred Baroness was unstarred
    Image of raincoaster raincoaster
    10/28/09

    @Baroness: The thing about Gore Vidal is, all his enemies are dead. He needed some new ones. One by one they've been picked off. I wouldn't cross Gore Vidal, but I don't think he gives a flying fuck what we think of him any more than he gives a flying fuck about anything anymore except the death of his dreams for the American republic. #gorevidal
     Reply
    raincoaster was starred raincoaster was unstarred
    Image of cocobanal cocobanal
    10/28/09

    @raincoaster: Except if he really didn't give a fuck, he would have stopped there: "I don't really give a fuck." The end. Instead, he went on, and demonstrated that at least in some way, he does give a fuck.

    Fuck him. #gorevidal
     Reply
    cocobanal was starred cocobanal was unstarred
    Image of triplethreat triplethreat
    10/29/09

    @Baroness: So when he says violently awful things about the rape of a child it's "merely words" but when he says stuff you agree with it is "keen analysis." Got it. #gorevidal
     Reply
    triplethreat was starred triplethreat was unstarred
    Image of tribalpottery tribalpottery
    10/28/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    So much for the southern genteel. Being gay, it's disappointing that such a public figure has become (or has always been) a vicious queen.

    The following is from author Edmund White's interview with Salon discussing Vidal:

    "He's been nice to me over the years, but he's always like this seething volcano and you're always wondering when he's going to go off.

    I don't know what he's famous for anywhere, really, because I think those historical novels are complete works of taxidermy. Nobody can read those. 'Myra Breckinridge' was funny but light. The essays are what everybody defends -- but a friend of mine who did a volume of the best essays of the 20th century said they're all so topical that they've all aged terribly. I don't know where his work is. You have to have one or two books that are actually good if you're going to have a lasting career, and I don't think he does." #gorevidal
     Reply
    tribalpottery was starred tribalpottery was unstarred
    Image of snugbug snugbug
    10/28/09

    @tribalpottery: Pretty sure Gore Vidal was a vicious queen before they came up with the term "vicious queen." You have to begrudgingly admire that he hasn't ossified into some kind of respectable relic.

    And kudos for bringing Edmund White to the table! I just finished his autobiography, My Lives, and I'm currently very much in love with him. He's such a wonderful writer.. #gorevidal
     Reply
    snugbug was starred snugbug was unstarred
    Image of tribalpottery tribalpottery
    10/28/09

    @snugbug: LOVE Edmund White. My faves from here the obvious ones "A Boy's Own Story" and "A Beautiful Room is Empty". Also, I liked "A Farewell Symphony" and "The Married Man". It's the autobiographical fiction of White's that I love. I believe I read "My Lives" years ago and even gave a copy to my mother. My favorite passage in that revolved around hoping his words were a legacy to a generation yet unborn in as faraway as I believe east Asia. Looking forward to his latest "City Boy".

    Back to Vidal, I was hoping he'd grow old with dignity and a reflect an elder statesman's sense of gravitas. Or he could've gone like the fabulously eccentric old gay like Quentin Crisp. It's just disappointing to see Truman Capote's once arch-nemesis end as equally miserable. #gorevidal
     Reply
    tribalpottery was starred tribalpottery was unstarred
    Image of forwardmotion forwardmotion
    10/28/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    So he's bitter about homophobia yet embraces sexism and classism to his wrinkly, pock marked bosom? Olds like this need to die out ASAP. #gorevidal
     Reply
    forwardmotion was starred forwardmotion was unstarred
    Image of snugbug snugbug
    10/28/09

    @forwardmotion: He will outlive us all. And so will Caligula, his masterfully penned contribution to the art of film. That pure venom coursing through his veins has kept his body young and his mind sharp.

    Yet one has to admit that the cranky coot has never* been a bad writer. Plus he's had this a-hole agitator sideline gig for over half a century. Why do we expect him to drop character now, just before the final curtain?

    *Except for Caligula, as previously noted. #gorevidal
     Reply
    snugbug was starred snugbug was unstarred
    Image of valet_of_the_dolls valet_of_the_dolls
    10/28/09

    @snugbug: Never? You obviously haven't read much of his fiction. (Caveat: I enjoyed Creation and Myra Breckenridge, but most of it is tin-eared & godawful.) #gorevidal
     Reply
    valet_of_the_dolls was starred valet_of_the_dolls was unstarred
    Image of autoclavicle autoclavicle
    10/28/09

    In reply to Gore Vidal — 
    When will that old fucker die already? #gorevidal
     Reply
    Smitros promoted this comment autoclavicle was starred autoclavicle was unstarred
    Image of Smitros Smitros
    10/28/09

    @autoclavicle:
    I don't want him to die while I live in DC. He has a space reserved in the Rock Creek Park cemetery. #gorevidal
     Reply
    Smitros was starred Smitros was unstarred
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