This is the best laugh I’ve had all week – from Gore Vidal. One advantage of growing old is the freedom to say what you think. It’s not going to affect your income, and your freinds are either dead or senile or they are your friends through think and thin.
Megan Carpentier was nonplused at Gore Vidal’s take on the Roman Polanski affair. She trotted out the old words that feminists use whenever someone says something they don’t like … she chose “misogynist” and “despicable”. Those are good words, I’ll grant you, as they condemn without specifics, throwing a blanket over further inquiry.
Anyway, read and enjoy.
Question: So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?
Vidal: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?
Q: I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.
Vidal: First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.
Q: What do you mean?
Vidal: The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.
By the way, Vidal’s photograph at the above link virtually defines the word “sardonic”.
Piece of Mindful 