printThe excerpt is from “Maddow, McVeigh And The Militia,” now on WND.COM:
“Rachel Maddow’s gayness (and goggles) is the most interesting thing about her. What I’m trying to say here is that the MSNBC TV host has a mundane mind, which, rest assured, will insert and assert itself during an upcoming special presentation, “The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of an American Terrorist.” ….
A far more interesting choice for presenter of the forthcoming MSNBC feature on McVeigh would have been the brilliant belletrist Gore Vidal.
Like Maddow, Vidal (aged 83) is a gay leftist. Unlike Maddow, he manages to dazzle with his original insights. (Unfashionably, Vidal has also poked fun at assorted anal activists and at all manner of “vulgar fagism.”)
Vidal “became a supportive correspondent of Timothy McVeigh,” and considers McVeigh “a true patriot, a Constitution man.”
Gore Vidal is rare in recognizing the legitimate federal insults to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that motivated McVeigh to commit his crime. He is also unique, on the Left and Right, in acknowledging that McVeigh was not a rube, but a thoughtful man who had fought for his country and was familiar with its foundational principles and documents.
As the most able counsel for the defense (McVeigh’s), the iconoclastic octogenarian would have given his viewers something to mull over; mundane Maddow will not. …
The complete column is “Maddow, McVeigh And The Militia.” Read it on WND.COM.
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Update (April 16): Inferring motivation, or psychologizing about the reason Vidal respected some of McVeigh’s arguments are species of ad hominem. I avoid them, for the most; I don’t take them seriously when others make them. In fact, that’s MSNBC’s stock-in-trade; impute motivation (“racism” always) to your foe and attack him based on assumptions about his inner workings, rather than deal with the facts and merits of his argument.
So, our (much-welcomed) commenter claims Vidal had a homoerotic fixation with McVeigh, and therefore everything he claimed to respect in McVeigh is not credible. That line of reasoning is illogical.
A quote from McVeigh:
I think it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We’ve gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that’s where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced.
I agree with that. And if a “stormtrooper” agrees with the above statement, then consider that a stormtrooper, McVeigh and I agree about the statement. Other than to argue in circles, so what?!
Gore Vidal at the height of his powers showing the original insights of a Huffington Post blogger. I consider this youtube clip Vidal’s Steven Weber period:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O2ke-AuJkQ
MSNBC is doing special investigative reports now? A change-up from the usual prison n’ pedophile-predator pieces? (I wonder if her sudden interest in half-baked documentaries is tied to Glenn Beck’s noble industriousness in the same genre?)
When should we expect her groundbreaking documentary on washing our hands with soap? Will she be able to draw a specious link between Tea Party activists and the rise in nosocomial infections?
The week of the next G8 Summit while undergrads make their masks and pipe bombs, I don’t suspect we’ll be seeing a Maddow special on Bill Ayers’ greatest bombings to warn us of “violence against government institutions and people.”
McVeigh was a bright, thoughtful, articulate man. So are half the commenters on stormfront.org and I imagine Vidal would get tumescent over them as well.
Vidal is not a constitution man, near as I can tell. So what to make of his support for McVeigh? Could it be a Capote-like affection for the masculine hetero prisoner? “He was a Constitution man!” Yes, yes, Vidal, that’s why you were into McVeigh… *eye roll
Maddow used a principled (and sick) militia-man to tie him around the necks of the Tea Party. Vidal, I propose, was drawn to McVeigh for something aside from his being a “true patriot” (as if Vidal ever really gave a damn about patriots). Either way, I suspect the nuances of liberty, freedom, and the modern American militia would have been lost on Jeffrey Immelt’s watch.
I cannot see any positives about McVeigh – no matter how “noble” his words about the Constitution, his motivation, etc., etc., – he killed 168 people of all ages who, for all he knew, had similar views as he supposedly did about the Constitution.
Am I missing something here? Are we glorifying Tim McVeigh? Seems to me he got off lightly. I would prefer to see people who kill innocents suffer in the same way as did their victims.
The interview between Maddow and Stewart was interesting for all the wrong reasons.
Stewart bemoans the fact that because a pair of nuts threw something off an overpass, all overpasses now have to have a fifteen foot fence, but in almost the same paragraph they both laugh about how it is their bread and butter to report on the weird and outrageous. Not realizing that it is their own over-emphasis on the unusual that caused the fifteen foot fences. The destruction of the USS Maine, was never really solved but, the newspaper’s hysterics caused the US to go to war with Spain. They think their power to influence is a joke instead of a responsibility.
I suspect that Maddow’s (probably highly) editing of the McVeigh tapes will give a far different picture of the man and his politics than he really was. I don’t know who McVeigh felt was responsible enough to receive the tapes in the first place, but obviously they were responsible enough not to release the information in the manner she portends to.
Vidal, much like Christopher Hitchens, and others, are a maddening bunch – precise, unambiguous, and articulate in one arena and glibly superficial provocateurs in another. It’s charmingly eccentric, or would be, were they to come by it naturally; it’s less than that and more discrediting when they go way out of their way to be outré. [Excellent summary of this type of persona.]
About the concept of MILITIA: I am rather skeptical of any self-anointed collection of 3 to 20 guys with guns proclaiming themselves to be a militia. Of course, under the original understanding of our multiple SOVEREIGN state republics, local communities would be organized into militias consisting of the armed MEN (ooops – political incorrectness!). They could act in the events of tornadoes, floods, Indian raids, forest fires, border crossings, or hurricane Katrinas etc. They would NOT be shipped off to support UN resolutions or to hunt down the “bad guy” Afghan drug warlords to support the “good guy” Afghan drug warlords.
About Rachel: She brings back memories of when a hetero girl friend (regrettably platonic and more regrettably murdered) and I ate at Moroccan restaurant and watched a bunch of lesbians next to us getting all excited about the belly dancer. Ms Maddow has that nice deep-throated macho lesbian persona as opposed to the high pitched ditzy-giggly-girly feminine persona. It might be fun to discuss politics with her while watching dancers at a strip joint! Unless. of course, it is Keith Olbermann cross-dressing on stage!
About WND: Prelutsky and Ringer have interesting columns about Romney-Huck Republicans.
I agree with your assessment of McVeigh. I don’t understand why the feds in USA are so paranoid re militias without understanding the free spirit USA represents as a core identity(never mind obama/pelosi I think they are aliens)
Your point re research on militias is similar to South Africa and here media is worse: anti and IGNORANT. self preservation under world governments in 21st century is putting rational people under pressure
ON VIDAL: I loved the insight as he is a masterfully deep thinker who cuts to the chase and MOST DEFINITELY has nothing to do with sexuality: not of any kind; it’s about individual freedom and being left in peace and also protecting your property and loved ones!!
In south Africa : Eugene Terreblanche is a similar modern anti hero of a freedom seeking people : whom the media and left are incapable of understanding and normally arrogantly don’t even bother to check the raw facts of any case.tragically some of these “militia”rugged authentic freethinkers are killed or kill.
There are militias and there are militias. There are groups and organizations who do not follow the accepted PC line of thinking and are called militias. Anybody who doesn’t blindly follow the “rules” of activities, attitudes and beliefs of those in political power and those with the typewriters are lumped together as “militias”. The accepted and obligatory description is angry, white, racist, homophobe, anti-government and radical. I used to shake my head at the lack of understanding from politicians and witers until I long ago figured out that they probably did understand but choose to portray the opposition in the harshest light. After all, they have the pulpit. Remember, don’t heckle a bad comedian in a night club because he has the microphone.
Ms. Mercer is correct and I apologize. My statement was an ad hominem against Gore Vidal. I’ve always considered him an overrated and childish oaf (much like myself). I’ve never been impressed by his words, his writing, or his “panache” in the slightest. He really is a big hot mess. Bill Maher with an upgraded vocabulary so far as I’m concerned.
(Ironic to complain about ad hominems in matters regarding Vidal, no?)
My only point was that perhaps you could have provided a slightly more interesting stand-in for Maddow. The talent is limited, so I’ll forego anyone who has parallel traits to Maddow and take a liquored up Hitchens. The buffoonish Vidal, even with his affection for McVeigh, is no more credible to me than Maddow herself.
My point with the stormtrooper crack is that I can only defend McVeigh and his words to a degree. Correct words in a sick mind has its limits. At least Obama’s ghostwriter had the decency to go after empty buildings.
(By the way, I was merely suggesting Gore had a homoerotic fascination with McVeigh. And, not that it matters, but someone else wrote an entire play with the same premise.)
Mercer, I would like to sound as wise and sophisticated as your other contributors but I don’t know who Gore Vidal is/was.
Dear Ms. Mercer,
You have given a unique and valuable insight on the reality of most of those who either are militia, or would be if the time calls for it. No one I’ve known has so accurately called the whole of McVeigh’s driving thoughts and principles in public, with no apology, and no attempt to justify.
As a two decade Marine veteran, I know well the feelings and the pressure McVeigh was feeling and had to overcome, and the pressure he felt about His Country, and what had been done to it, and to those who delivered it intact, to those who have been instrumental in destroying its foundation and principles.
Sincerely,
John McClain
GySgt, USMC, ret.
Vanceboro, NC