Vidal on Polanski & Hollywood

John Meroney spent a couple of days with Gore Vidal at his Hollywood home and files his dispatch for The Atlantic. Vidal says, among other things, that concerns about Barack Obama's inexperience have proven to be "well-founded." Some other excerpts from the online Q&A, starting with his assertion that the 13-year-old victim of Roman Polanski way back when was "a young hooker:"

I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

What do you mean?

The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.

During the 1970s, Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and producer Robert Evans were celebrated for lifestyles of sexual extravagance.

Well, they’re all virgins, every last one of them. I can testify to that. And the last one you mentioned, he’s a super virgin.

It really goes off the deep end from there, though Meroney says, "At age 83, Gore Vidal remains a sharp provocateur, as irascible and irreverent as ever."