Tweet
Gore Vidal (Photo: Mark Coggins / Flickr)
I suppose it’s entirely possible that Gore Vidal’s spirit is somewhere laughing at Our Nation’s Premier Newspaper today, but barring that eventuality, I think we should all have a good chuckle on his behalf. Here’s how the New York Times corrected their published obituary of Mr Vidal:
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:Correction: August 1, 2012
An earlier version misstated the term Mr. Vidal called William F. Buckley Jr. in a television appearance during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It was crypto-Nazi, not crypto-fascist. It also described incorrectly Mr. Vidal’s connection with former Vice President Al Gore. Although Mr. Vidal frequently referred jokingly to Mr. Gore as his cousin, they were not related. And Mr. Vidal’s relationship with his longtime live-in companion, Howard Austen, was also described incorrectly. According to Mr. Vidal’s memoir “Palimpsest,” they had sex the night they met, but did not sleep together after they began living together. It was not true that they never had sex.
Somehow, as the last word on Gore Vidal, this correction seems quite fitting.
20 Comments
:-)
Vidal would certainly gotten a good laugh
from that. Thanks.
“The death of my rumors have been…” (heh)
The complete randomness of the three (three!) errors struck me as particularly appropriate for Mr Vidal: getting the about-Buckley quote wrong from a now-on-YouTube-clip that practically everyone has seen in the last 24 hours; being wrong about his actual relationship to Al Gore; and getting the specifics of Vidal’s long-term relationship with Howard Austen (something he spoke and wrote about regularly, with pride) utterly wrong seems so, I don’t know, nowadays New-York-Times-y.
Obituary writers are notoriously low on the staff totem pole, but mistakes like these seem fairly blatant. Maybe sub-conscious sabotage?
Vidal had few kind words ever for the NYT. I believe he described the New York Times Book Review as the “graveyard of prose.”
The writer probably thought at first it was that shampoo guy.
I read an attack article by someone named David Greenberg at slate.com today that sought to disparage Gore Vidal and his contributions to our awareness of the Machine. The author also took the time to take a swipe at Alexander Cockburn, perhaps in an effort to burnish his neocon credentials.
doG, that is hilarious. Are you sure it wasn’t in the Onion?
Thanks, Teddy. He deserves the attention…great memories. Certainly a life to celebrate.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/a-conversation-with-gore-vidal/7767/
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/30-4
File it under “news unfit to print”.
Don’t cha know? It is all the damn teachers unions’ fault that the NYT obits suck. Fire all those teachers and privatize schools.
[end snark]
Their editorial page crows about holding teachers accountable. The same standard doesn’t doesn’t apply for their own paper. The CEO who tanked the share prices got millions in golden parachute on her departure.
There is no one left alive and may never be another who can use the written word in English with his skill. An art form has died with the last artist. RIP
NYTimes, not even worthy for catching dog droppings.
Gore Vidal was a brilliant professor of Truth. He was a Truth-Telling Hero.
The NYT did lead the 1950s reviewers’ boycott of Vidal’s novels after “The City and the Pillar” so it may have been some kind of subtle purposeful error set. But newspapers used to have obits for olds ready to go; you’d think this would be one they’d have down cold.
What I love about the crypto-Nazi part is how it goes against the grain: most newspaper “corrections” of inflammatory statements serve to pull, rather than amplify, the punch.
I’m reminded in all this of Alex Cockburn’s observation that the purpose of the New York Times corrections column is to perpetuate the illusion that everything else the paper publishes is true.
Let’s give Mr. Vidal the last word with this timeless quote of his:
“A writer must always tell the truth, unless he is a journalist.”
Well, that is the first disappointing thing that I learned about Mr. Vidal.
Apparently, Vidal missed an opportunity to note call Buckley a crypto Nazi and a crypto facist.
Come to think of it, by the standards of that time, even “crypto” may have been throwing Buckley a bone.
The second line of my comment should have read,
“Apparently, Vidal missed an opportunity to call Buckley a crypto Nazi and a crypto facist.”