So Gore Vidal will be one of five guests invited to personally witness the death of Timothy McVeigh. Why? Because they’re chums. He and McVeigh “share many ideas in common.” McVeigh was not a callous mass murderer but someone “with an exaggerated sense of justice.” I guess you have to remember that, in Vidal’s view, only Harry Truman was a mass-murderer who deserves condemnation. McVeigh is “very, very bright,” and he’s a “junkie of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” The fact that many, many others can say the same but Vidal is only interested in becoming friends with one who also killed scores without remorse speaks volumes about Vidal’s moral compass. In contrast, Attorney-General Ashcroft is a “nobody” and his decision against face-to-face interviews for McVeigh (Vidal will be forced to conduct his love-in by fax) is worthy of the “Third Reich.” Vidal will publish his ruminations – where else? – but in the most sickening magazine published today, Vanity Fair. In the long run, people reveal their inner selves. Could anyone trash Gore Vidal more successfully than he has now done himself?
NEW KERRY DATA: Apparently, according to Senator John Kerry, quoted in Bill Safire’s solid column today, the United States was replaced by Sudan on the U.N. Human Rights Commission because the world finds “a lack of a sense of honesty” in the new administration. As compared to what, for example? Bill Clinton?
NEW KERREY DATA: I’m not sure what to make of the latest piece of reporting on Bob Kerrey’s night in Thanh Phong. But it’s worth reading closely. What the Washington Post piece demonstrates, however, is one possibility: that there was a genuine reason for Kerrey’s unit to target the village (there were Viet Cong soldiers there) and that this is compatible with civilian atrocities. A young and barely tested leader could easily have panicked under such circumstances before he came across the enemy – or indeed some other soldier might have done the damage before Kerrey even arrived on the scene. At least this version provides some understanding of the strange grouping of civilians in the middle of the village where they were shot dead. We’ll probably never know the full truth – but these details suggest that a real investigation might dig up something important. All the more reason to get on with it.
The Dish 