• Oh, it's on: Tilda Swinton has joined a fight against Donald Trump's latest golf course, which would be built on the Scottish coast and would displace residents. Trump's people responded by calling Swinton and other protesters "extremists." We imagine Swinton can get a bit more extreme than a petition. She looks sweet, but we see some crazy in those eyes. [AP]
  
  
• The ever-fecund Heidi Klum gave birth to her and husband Seal's fourth child, a girl named Lou. Klum's probably too exhausted to speak, so Seal released a statement wondering — and explaining — how he found even more love in his heart for the new tot. We could try to be cynical about this, but good golly, Seal and Klum just too darn adorable. [People]
  
  
• Carrie Underwood will host a two-hour holiday special that will feature Dolly Parton and David Cook. Because, you know, all the other recent variety shows have done so well. [Reuters]
  
  
• Remember when Tyra Banks told us all to kiss her fat ass and stop discussing her weight because she loved herself and all that? Well, now she's dropped four dress sizes. Body confidence must be out this season. [Daily Mail]
  
  
• In other weight-related "news:" Star magazine had an expert say that Tori Spelling's only 95 pounds, so Spelling tweeted that she's 107 pounds and the tabloid can weigh her if they want. The aforementioned expert, meanwhile, says that 5'5" Tori's still 13 pounds shy of "remotely healthy." These weight wars sure can be ugly, huh? [Star]
  
  
• Madonna's former trainer, Tracy Anderson, will have to defend herself against a $1 million lawsuit filed by an ex-boyfriend who swears she used her feminine wiles to put a curse on him and make him spend his money on her business. He also claims she made up big, fat whopping lies, like that she had been in Cats and was a Power Ranger, all easily verifiable facts. [Page Six]
  
  
• Paul Anka will receive 50% of the publishing rights from Michael Jackson's new track, "This is It," because he helped write it. [TMZ]
  
  
• Joe Francis participated in last weekend's gay rights march in DC not because he wants to get good press, but because knows the pain of being dogged by the religious right and can therefore empathize with the same-sex crew. Um, really? [Page Six]
  
  
• Some say gay writer Gore Vidal's an anti-Semite, which explains why people such as former NYC mayor Ed Koch are furious he'll speak at the famously Jewish 92nd Street Y next week. Koch, who some say remains closeted, remarked, "Those who invited him are, as Jews, either most forgiving, or schmucks. The latter word is intended to cover masochists." [Page Six]
  
  
• Are you an Elvis fan with cash to burn? Well, you can bid on a lock of the singer's hair at an auction. It's expected to sell for at least $8,000. [Reuters]
  
  
• Can you believe it? A Los Angeles doorman didn't recognize Whitney Port and she had to wait in line for a half-hour until someone set him straight. Oh, the indignity! [Page Six]

So you can just read the whole thing here. It is actually a pretty standard conservative fantasy: heroic, tough military men in beautiful, well-pressed uniforms will helpfully right what the stupid American voters made wrong, for the good of the country.

But openly advocating for a coup d'etat is apparently just a bit extreme for Newsmax. Sure, they ran the column initially, but now you can't find it anywhere on their site.

Not that Perry was advocating a coup! He just thinks it is pretty much inevitable and also it would be a wonderful thing.

Will the day come when patriotic general and flag officers sit down with the president, or with those who control him, and work out the national equivalent of a "family intervention," with some form of limited, shared responsibility?

Imagine a bloodless coup to restore and defend the Constitution through an interim administration that would do the serious business of governing and defending the nation. Skilled, military-trained, nation-builders would replace accountability-challenged, radical-left commissars. Having bonded with his twin teleprompters, the president would be detailed for ceremonial speech-making.

Military intervention is what Obama's exponentially accelerating agenda for "fundamental change" toward a Marxist state is inviting upon America. A coup is not an ideal option, but Obama's radical ideal is not acceptable or reversible.

Unthinkable? Then think up an alternative, non-violent solution to the Obama problem. Just don't shrug and say, "We can always worry about that later."

Does that sound like advocacy to you? Of course not. He is just saying it would be patriotic and necessary.

Hey, let's read some passages from a John L. Perry column from 2004, for fun!

Think, also, what license the dyslexic rent-a-crowd poster-scribblers will have with Barack Obama's moniker. Seemingly endless permutations off the letters spelling Obama are good for many a quality-time family-values game of "Anagrams."

Top of the Charts

Already you can hear rappers ranting out best-seller CDs without once repeating themselves:

"Obama, Boama, Amabo, Maboa.

"Oamba, Bamoa, Abamo, Maoba.

"Oabam, Baoma, Amoba, Moaba.

"Obaam, Bamao, Aobma, Mboaa.

"Obmaa, Bomaa, Aobam, Maaob."

Captures the very heart and soul of America, doesn't it?.

Everybody Sing Now

"We're Barack Obama bound!

"There'll be no heebie-jeebies hanging 'round.

"All aboard Barack's Express!"

This man is a national treasure.

(In other news: genuine national treasure Gore Vidal once again predicted, as he's been predicting for 20 years, that the US is headed toward military dictatorship.)

Publisher Abrams calls the book "a scrapbook of Vidal’s considerable library of mementos, documents, photos, and records" that will take readers through "six decades of American social history," and has scheduled it for release in November of 2009. Vidal's already published two memoirs on his favorite subject, but with the wealth of photos out there, we don't have to wait that long for the illustrated version.

Vidal was born in 1925 at West Point, where he was christened by the headmaster of St. Albans. After three weeks, he looked pretty much like this.

What a beautiful baby boy! He came from eminent parentage: his mother would marry the man destined to be Jackie Kennedy's stepfather, and often recalled the many times she hooked up with Clark Gable. The great love of his father's life was Amelia Earhart. Dad's on the left.

Vidal was raised in D.C., where he attended St. Alban's. He fell in love with a blond guy named Jimmie Trimble, who would later die at Iwo Jima. He walked the halls of the senate with his blind grandfather, T.P. Gore. After graduating from Exeter, he joined the Army and served in the Aleutian Islands during the Second World War. The Army didn't really suit him, as he found pleasure in other things. In his 20s he published The City and the Pillar, which enticed the NYT to not review his next five books because of the explicit homosexuality therein

In 1959, Vidal made his Hollywood debut by almost nabbing a partial screenwriting credit for Ben-Hur, inserting a gay subtext for Charlton Heston. He also appeared in Fellini's Roma. Though he's gay, Vidal was briefly engaged to Joanne Woodward, and had a relationship with Anais Nin. In 1950, he settled down with his lifelong companion, Howard Austen. "Our relationship was what it was. A sexual relationship was the last thing I wanted. When I was 17 or 18 it was different; I used to become besotted with people. But by then I felt past all that," Vidal said. The two never had sex.

Vidal's feuds were legendary. He'd fight with friends, enemies, partners — whoever earned his ire. When ABC hired both Vidal and conservative luminary William F. Buckley to comment on the 1968 election, a memorable fight ensued. After Buckley died, the ever gracious Vidal said, "I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred." Nice.

He also had a falling out with Truman Capote, who he once called "a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices." Here's Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Gore together.

Vidal was never shy about squeezing his way into a photograph.

Tennessee and Gore were friends, though, for a time, as this picture of them in Rome in 1948 attests. He called the playwright "The Glorious Bird."

The photo's from a visit Williams and Vidal made to the Kennedys before they became the First Couple, which he later described in the New York Review of Books:

While Jackie flitted about, taking Polaroid shots of us, the Bird banged away at the target. ... At one point, while Jack was shooting, the Bird muttered in my ear, 'Get that ass!' I said, 'Bird, you can't cruise our next president.' The bird chuckled ominously: 'They'll never elect those two. They are much too attractive for the American people.' Later, I told Jack that the Bird had commented favorably on his ass. He beamed. 'Now, that's very exciting,' he said."

After publishing a series of critically acclaimed books, most of them concerned with American history, Vidal turned his attention to politics. He ran against Jerry Brown in the Democratic Party and finished second. Here he is during the campaign.

Despite pondering a second Senate run in the early 80s, as he got older Vidal preferred to fade from public eye, as he recalled in this amazing 1995 Andrew Solomon profile. He did make an appearance on The Simpsons with Michael Chabon, Jonathan Franzen, and Tom Wolfe.

Vidal's now confined to a wheelchair because of a fall he took in an accident. Though he's still respected at the age of 83, he'll end up being more well known for his life than his literary talent. We leave you with this sterling image.

As Vidal himself put it: ''I'm not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don't. Move on and move out.''

His previous thoughts on McCain include, "He is extremely stupid and he's a slow study—you can't teach him anything."

He doesn't seem to be a big fan of Obama, either, mystifyingly referring to "the United States of America, as Mr. Obama likes to call it."

On George W. Bush? "Bush is a thug."

On George H.W. Bush:

"...yes, [George W.] is very dumb, but his father's dumber. Poppy. When I was at Exeter, Poppy was at Andover, and Poppy's son George W. also went to Andover, where he was a cheerleader. A very distinguished cheerleader.

What about Reagan? Vidal once called him "a triumph of the embalmer's art." He also used to refer to Reagan as "the acting president," which is pretty funny.

On one of the nation's founding fathers, John Adams? He "waddled into history."

• "There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it."
• "My general response to boarding school was: anything to get away from that fucking mother of mine. She was a monster."
• "When I was young, I was bored shitless with being desired by others. I don’t look in the mirror anymore."
• "I lived with Howard for fifty years, but what we had was certainly not romantic love, not passionate love. And it certainly was nonsexual. Try and explain that to the fags."
• "Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country."
• "When she was running for the Senate, Hillary’s psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately — I heard she said, “I remind them of their first wife.” [Esquire via Hollywood-Elsewhere]

We're glad these two didn't die like Jefferson and Adams, on the same day, long having made up with each other. The other nice thing is that now that Buckley's dead, he can't sue Vidal for libel anymore, as he did when Esquire published Vidal's prose account of their most famous televised battle. ("Esquire cravenly agreed to settle with him for a few paragraphs worth of free advertising for his weird little magazine," Vidal reports.)

(That battle took place on ABC during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a scene of civil disobedience and gross police brutality as Mayor Daley's cops beat the shit out of the yippies and hippies assembled to witness the party's coronation of miserable old Hubert Humphrey. The violence escalated, Buckley and Vidal's arguments became more heated. Buckley defended the cops, someone compared the demonstrators to Nazis, and Vidal said that the only crypto-Nazi he knew of in the room was Buckley. Over the cross-talk, Buckley called Vidal a "queer" and threatened to punch Vidal in the "goddamn face." The video is readily available.)

Vidal has, it seems not forgiven Buckley; either for the insults or for his role in ushering in the 20th century's conservative ascendancy. The accusations pile up: "Although Buckley was often drunk and out of control, he was always a spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude." That's how you remember the dead.

Vidal is unsatisfied with Newsweek's characterization of that television event, in which he is painted as one in a series of "bullies" that Buckley would not suffer. The offending passage, with Vidal's annotations in brackets:

Buckley bridled at bullies [we are assured]. But one of the rare times he lost his temper was debating Gore Vidal, who "got under his skin," says son Chris. When Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi," Buckley responded, "Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." But usually his public manners were genteel [I think they mean gentile]. With "Firing Line" guests who seemed nervous or over their heads, Buckley was gentle. Behind the scenes, he could show remarkable kindness. In 1980, a rising conservative star, Congressman Bob Bauman, was soliciting a 16-year-old [male] for oral sex. Bauman had been a gay-basher, and he instantly became a pariah. The next day, knowing what lay ahead for the disgraced congressman, Buckley quietly gave him an envelope containing $10,000. "He was a knightly man," says Chris.

And Vidal's response:

Next, the loyal son, suspecting that the pejorative use of "queer" is politically incorrect in mag-land, Christopher rambles into a story about his father's kindness to a Mr. Bauman who had lost his seat in Congress after the congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male (note how prurient Newsweek's prose is, in describing undesirable people). Chris weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, "He was a knightly man": Who was—the cocksucker recipient of Buckley's charity? Or his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?—Bauman was very right wing, it is said. RIP WFB—in hell.

"RIP WFB—in hell." Not quite epigrammatic, but decidedly economical.

If you're thirsting for more, the Vidal article that got Esquire sued is, naturally, available on the internet, despite being wiped from the Esquire archives. (The portion that led to the libel suit is when Vidal accuses a young Buckley of vandalizing a church as payback for the minister allowing Jews to move into their neighborhood.) It's chock-full of quality zingers, such as this, from when Vidal recounts how Buckley accused him of being a degenerate due to the outrageous content of Vidal's Myra Breckenridge: "Simply to go by their books, Agatha Christie is a mass murderess, while William Buckley is a practicing Christian."

Hah. It's too bad all of Vidal's enemies are now dead. President Bush is scarcely a worthy adversary. It's a shame how he seems to get along with Christopher Hitchens.

Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead [TruthDig]

Buckley was born in New York City, to a wealthy Irish Catholic and a Southerner. The family moved to Connecticut, he was schooled in Paris and London, and he attended Yale—the perfect resume for a man who'd become a caricature of condescending East Coast snobbishness before that was turned into a Liberal trait. It was a caricature Buckley happily lived up to, dropping ten-dollar words into his prose with obvious obnoxious glee, tempting lesser writers to imitate his parody-of-erudition style at their peril. It's a perilous task because few can match his skill with a biting quip:

Ten years ago [Gore Vidal] wrote in The Nation an essay denouncing pro-Israeli activity in the United States as divided loyalty. The article and its implications were denounced by Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, as "the most blatantly anti-Semitic outburst to have appeared in a respectable American periodical since World War II." Mr. Vidal retorted by questioning the patriotism of Mr. Podhoretz and his wife, the author Midge Decter, and reacted to another critic of his article, a rabbi, with the sigh, "Luckily, I am used to being lied about." I commented at the time that anyone who lies about Mr. Vidal is doing him a kindness.

ZING, Gore!

Buckley zinged liberal-leaning author/essayist/blue-blooded creep Gore Vidal many times in his lengthy career, though not always with such class. In what is still arguably the greatest live TV moment ever, Buckley and Vidal got into a heated exchange on ABC news in 1968 that quickly turned personal (and AWESOME):

Listen to that dueling received pronunciation! In case you missed the meat of the debate in the crosstalk, Vidal called Buckley a "cypto-Nazi" (which Vidal later, accurately, corrected to "crypto-fascist"), and Buckley responded with, "listen you queer ['quee-ah'], stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll pop you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."

Buckley and Vidal later repeatedly sued and counter-sued each other for libel and such, which was the style at the time.

Buckley founded The National Review in 1955, when the New Deal and World War II had basically made "true" conservativism temporarily obsolete in American letters and thought. He championed the candidacy of MAVERICK ARIZONA SENATOR Barry Goldwater, a dangerous nut who lost in a landslide, but whose followers and ideas would eventually come to dominate the nation's political scene.

The National Review still exists, Goldwater Republicans are still enjoying the fruits of their eventual success, and the conservative movement as a whole has seized upon the culture wars with such fervor that a high-falutin' fancy-talkin' New York college boy like Buckley would never, ever achieve such prominence in the movement he nurtured, should he come around today. Because he'd obviously be a big stupid quee-ah.

So fuck him for foisting upon us this anti-intellectual bullshit mess of a nation we've become, but we're glad that his followers helped destroy the intellectual heart of his ideology.

Buckley is survived by his hip satirical novelist son Christopher, his pale imitation of its former self magazine, and George Will's wardrobe and middle initial.

William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead At 82 [NYT]

"I got there about 7:30 and the front hall of the Natural History Museum was packed. First sighting: Tina Brown talking to Steve Kroft from 60 minutes. They were in a group of 4-5 people, but I didn't recognize any of the others. I couldn't really hear what they were talking about, but when I walked by to get past them Kroft was making a joke about someone needing media training. Tina looked good—she was in older-fancy-lady chic: the pseudo men's white shirt with a stiff pulled up collar, and an ankle length slim black skirt. I saw at least two other ladies wearing a similar outfit (how embarrassing). Jhumpa Lahiri, one of PEN's VP's, was also there and looking lovely in a little black dress. Saw Lloyd Grove (I'm pretty sure it was him) towering over some lady. Fran Leibowitz walked past—she looked really bored. Tim Russert was gabbing away, looking jovial and ruddy-faced (He was the event emcee). David Remnick was also in attendance, wearing a suit, not a tux. Alex Kuczynski had a gorgeous flowy dress. It was black with red details on top, and patterned on the bottom. Her body was bangin' but her face looked cryptkeeperish. I saw her again later when I went down to the dinner. She was rearranging the place cards at her table before the other guests got there." (Bad manners!)

"Tina Brown, as one of the Gala Chairs, started off the event. She made some joke about Scooter Libby which nobody laughed at because they were too busy completely ignoring her. Seriously, people were so rude this year, like even ruder than usual. They talked throughout almost the entire thing. They stopped talking only twice. The first time was to listen to Gore Vidal, who won, from what I could gather, a Lifetime Achievement type award. He looked pretty dapper in his shiny wheelchair, and gave a rambling speech that befits his age and station. He got a laugh when he described the current administration as "leprous." He got a collective muted gasp when he said "The New Yorker was a good magazine when Tina Brown was heading it..." But then went on to say "And now (insert incredibly long pregnant pause) it's even better." It was a real Tina Brown love-fest for Gore, though. He called her "the best editor to hit this little island." And also said, "If I had the money I'd buy her a mag." (He said mag, I'm not just being a lazy typist). Kissing up, huh. Wonder what Gore's last advance was?"

"I will get this part out really quickly cause I know it'll be boring to you soulless fucks, but I was really moved by the story of the Freedom to Write award recipient, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, who couldn't be in attendance because he was IN JAIL IN CUBA. Seriously. His crime was writing articles criticizing the Cuban government. His mom came instead, and she got a standing ovation. (Her speech was the second instance of the crowd shutting up). It was really cool that PEN was honoring this man, but it would have been even cooler if they had used the thousands of dollars they undoubtedly spent on the "gala" towards maybe getting proper legal help to this guy (or something more useful). They did raise $1 million dollars, though. Wonder if that's before or after party expenses? Also the food was gross (some really nasty cold green creamy soup that tasted minty, with what was essentially two potato chips and a little caviar to start; filet mignon, corn, and some unidentified light yellow mush underneath. It wasn't mashed potatoes. Not sure exactly what it was.) I left before dessert."

Along came in the '20s a bunch of near-illiterates, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who couldn't spell. Max Perkins, his hack editor at Scribner, would help him turn his prose into recognizable English. Somehow in the world of hackdom it's got out that every writer needs a stern person as teacher behind him, who will tell him 'i before e except after c.' I've never known a good writer who needed an editor. Many of them have been destroyed by good editors. Luckily, no one knows how to edit anymore either, so I think that phase is over.

[The Reading Experience via Maud Newton]