On the day after the day Gore Vidal died, when I was compiling my 19 Gore Vidal quotes of the day--which led regular reader, Biblical Studies scholar, and frequent Happy Hour comrade Uncle Vinny to complain “What part of 'of the day' don't you understand?”--one of my Vidal books, “Rocking the Boat,” was on loan to a friend, so I couldn't go through it to search what I'd underlined and present it, wah-lah, here. Now I've got it back. On with the countdown.

Number 20!

“When John Crosby of The New York Herald Tribune went on vacation in the summer, he asked me to write a column for him. I wrote about The Unamericans. Well, sir, the Radical Right really hit the fan. The counterattack began. From ultra-foolish Fulton Lewis Jr. to the Committee's chairman, Francis Walter, the attack was suspiciously the same. The book should be completely discredited because Donner had been a Communist. None of the charges made against HUAC were answered. The smear-tactic, second nature to these patriots, is always the same: get your critic on some other ground; never answer a charge; never defend, attack!”

--Gore Vidal in “HUAC Revisited,” December 1961, from his book of essays, “Rocking the Boat.”

Plus ca change...

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