Author Gore Vidal Laments Not Killing George W. Bush
The supposed assassination of a U.S. president is no laughing matter. All Americans of all political persuasions hold sacred the safety of our elected leaders. When baby boomers remember where they were on November 22, 1963, they don’t associate that remorse with a particular Kennedy policy, they merely know the despair and emptiness they felt. This is why it is so ghastly when a figurehead of any political movement advocates for the assassination of a U.S. President and even more revealing when the media excuses it. Liberal icon Gore Vidal, while on the CNN Headline News show, “The Joy Behar Show” on October 22 said of President Bush: “But I couldn’t jump into the screen fast enough to kill him off. That’s one murder that I missed not committing.” Did host Joy Behar ask him to clarify why he wished he had murdered a U.S. president, or tell him how deplorable that statement was? No. She laughed and said: “Well, it’s too late anyway.” Wow.
For background, Gore Vidal is a 9/11 truther who believes America attacked herself on September 11, 2001. He ran for Congress in New York as a Democrat and lost. He ran for Senate in California as a member of the People’s Party, and lost. He was verbally and intellectually outmatched by conservative icon William F. Buckley, Jr. for decades and waited until after Buckley’s death to cowardly wish him an eternity in hell.
What gives liberals like Gore Vidal and Joy Behar the ability to say and excuse such distasteful rhetoric without even a whiff of remorse? It is simply their world view. Earlier in the same clip from CNN Headline News, Gore Vidal states: “We have the worst educated population of any first world country. And I hope you’re listening, and I hope you know that your lack of education is the joke of the world. And it’s not a very nice joke.” Behar responds: “You’re talking to the Americans now?” Vidal says: “Americans, yes.” Behar further explores if Europeans make fun of Americans, and finishes off this exchange by saying: “I think you have a point, he’s [Obama] a little too smart for the country, in a certain way.” See, the problem isn’t that Vidal or Behar are contemptable, but merely that America is stupid.
This theme among elite East Coast liberals like Joy Behar and Gore Vidal, that America is simply dumb, is what feeds their ideology. It is what drives them to think that Washington should control your health care, your use of energy, your education and your paycheck. Nevermind that George W. Bush was a graduate of Yale with an MBA from Harvard. That certificate means nothing to them when you are from of all places, Texas. Those certificates only matter when they distinguish your urban liberal credentials in Chicago, Boston, Washington or New York.
Here we have a video of two liberals simply chatting about “murdering” an ex-President of the United States, and it is high-comedy. President Bush was also the target of a liberal film called “Death of a President” depicting his assasination while he was still in office shortly after Air America radio host Randi Rhodes said he should be killed off like Fredo in “Godfather Part II.” Cindy Sheehan regularly called him a terrorist.
But it is now, when Americans want to genuinely read a health care bill that could transform America as we know it, when they want Washington to at least acknowledge that debts and deficits matter, when they want to keep their taxes low and their jobs safe in a struggling economy; it is now that the rhetoric of the “right” is examined and analyzed as hateful, racist or ignorant.
Gore Vidal wishes he had killed President Bush. Many Americans wish William F. Buckley had socked Vidal in the face when he had the chance.
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is indeed no laughing matter. These days, one cannot even say the word b-o-m-b in an airport without getting in to serious trouble. An attack on POTUS can easily get you killed right away, regardless of either your party affiliation or the party affiliation that POTUS holds. Sure, POTUS may not be liked, but he is still POTUS and we still abide by laws , whether we hate people or not.
People should not be killed just because we hate them, regardless of how bad the people in question might be. Do we give individuals the right to exercise capital punishment when even our own police are forbidden from doing so?
There will always be those that think that others are lesser than they. If any other tv personality wishes to think so, fine. That does not make it so.
why does Joy Behar have a show on CNN? I mean, I know its headline - but still, Joy Behar?
when you're left, you're left.
I think it's clear that Vidal would not have assassinated Bush; this wording is just extreme fashion for describing contempt for what he seems to think was one of our countrie's worst mistakes, lately.
As far as the actual point, America is astonishingly dumb, all things considered. If our economy , education system, and prime time television does not convince of this point, in the face of all we have going for us in the U.S., then consider our consumption to production ratio, the percentage of college students pursuing a science education, the shortsightedness of our energy and ecology policy. And then go watch the prime time television, again.
In small numbers no people I know would choose the fools among them to lead, but in great numbers many Americans bend over backwards to do it.
Bush would not have even gone to college if not for his pedigree, much less have done well (which he did not). It has nothing to do with him being from Texas; it has to do with the fact that that's the best thing he had going for him, other than parentage.
In less then 400 years, this land has gone from a smattering of colonies to the major world power. Is it the world's belief that this was done by morons? Do they honestly assert that they are currently overshadowed economically, technologically and militarily by a group of idiots?
FM radio, the programmable computer, the airplane , magnetic recording, and the internet are all American inventions. Are these achievements the work of morons?
Americans donate around 1.8% of our yearly GDP to charity, the highest percentage in the world. England and Canada are second at around .7%, while France is near the bottom of the list with only .15%. Are we fools for doing this?
Before anyone tries to point out those often quoted PISA test scores that supposedly show US students trailing behind the world in math and science , please do your research. A Brookings Institution study this last February concluded that the test was far too flawed to be used.
On a personal note, I spent my sophomore year of college living abroad with students from all over Asia and Europe. The Europeans were brilliant linguists, as one would expect from a culture that demands one know 3 or more languages, but none of them were spectacular in math or science.
Americans have won, or been on the team that won, 50 out of the 102 Nobel Prizes in Physics since 1901. Overall, Americans have the highest number of Nobel laureates with 320. The UK is second with 116. Not bad for such poor students.
You can argue that former President Bush wouldn't have gotten into Harvard or Yale if it wasn't for his connections, however it's quite difficult to argue with repeated testing for college entrance and military placement firmly established his IQ at 120. He was also the first American president with an MBA. Doesn't sound like a dimwit to me.
It is hard to argue with results, and the results say that if Americans are stupid, the rest of the world is functionally retarded.
For instance, it was Europeans (with the help of slavery and an extreme windfall of resources that was the New World, since the natives were so easily dealt with) that turned the colonies into a Nation. But, I am not sure what the point would be, really, especially 234 years later.
Obviously, especially in the 20th century, the US has a lot of great achievements. So did the Soviet Union. The point is that those people, Atlas if you will, are far from representative, and really garner little respect or deference in modern American society . It's worth mentioning that the US is good for migrating ringers, as far as competition goes, particular those Nobel Laureates who are frequently naturalized, first, or second generation imigrants. Consider this year's NYC Marathon winner.
Those charity numbers are purely a function of tax breaks for corporations and the extreme wealthy. Just looking at CFC numbers I estimate a private charitable effort average of closer to .6% from the military , one of the US last middle class.
Only 5% of graduates pursue a hard science . Primary and secondary education are pretty much "successful" if they can make a service industry employer with some motivation to avoid prison , and our universities are not fairing much better for the majority of students ; it's not like we don't have good schools - it's our best export, actually. That's where this "elitism" complaint is coming from.
Also, having take both types of exams you mention, multiple times, I can tell you that neither has much to say about IQ. I would check sources on such a claim before publishing it.
The point is, if you want to be results oriented, you have to look at the whole picture with a balanced depth. Inventing Peanut Butter does not make up for the fact that most American's never achieve near the lofty heights we might like to hold up as the American standard.
We have a lot to be proud of in the US, for what prides worth. But that's no excuse for the popularized ignorance and disregard for science and academics rampant in the US. And it's not cause to sit on our laurels tooting our horn, while everything falls apart around us.
Calling George Bush a dimwit is an understatement. Not that all of ones worth should be based on intellect, but what else does he offer?