wit and dazzle

     Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer both wrote content, at some point, for Playboy magazine -- since people were "reading it for the articles."


Playboy, January 1979
"Sex Is Politics"
Gore Vidal

--------------------- The sexual attitudes of any given society are the result of political decisions.

     Although our notions about what constitutes correct sexual behavior are usually based on religious texts, those texts are invariably interpreted by the rulers in order to keep control over the ruled.  

Any sexual or intellectual or recreational or political activity that might decrease the amount of coal mined, the number of pyramids built, the quantity of junk food confected will be proscribed through laws that, in turn, are based on divine revelations handed down by whatever god or gods happen to be in fashion at the moment.  Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around....


     At any given moment in a society's life, there are certain hot buttons that a politician can push in order to get a predictably hot response....  It is good politics to talk against sin -- and don't worry about non sequiturs.  In fact, it is positively un-American...to discuss a real issue such as unemployment or who is stealing all that money at the Pentagon.



     To divert the electorate, the unscrupulous American politician will go after those groups not regarded benignly by Old or New Testament....

     Today Americans are in a state of terminal hysteria on the subject of sex in general and of homosexuality in particular because the owners of the country (buttressed by a religion that they have shrewdly adapted to their own ends) regard the family as their last means of control over those who work and consume....In the Symposium, Plato defined the problem:

"In Ionia and other places, and generally in countries which are subject to the barbarians [Plato is referring to the Persians, who were the masters of the Jews at the time Leviticus was written], the custom [homosexuality] is held to be dishonorable; loves of youths share the evil repute in which philosophy and gymnastics are held, because they are inimical to tyranny; the interests of the rulers require that their subjects should be poor in spirit and that there should be no strong bond of friendship or society among them, which love, above all other motives, is likely to inspire, as our Athenian tyrants learned by experience; for the love of Aristogeiton and the constancy of Harmodius had a strength which undid their power."

This last refers to a pair of lovers who helped overthrow the tyrants at Athens.

Copyright © by Gore Vidal


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1975 saw the publication of Norman Mailer's The Fight, a book about  the boxing title fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman known as "Rumble in the Jungle."  The book was serialized in Playboy magazine.

---------------------- [excerpt] ------------- There is always a shock in seeing him again.  Not live as in television but standing before you, looking his best....If Ali never opened his mouth to quiver the jellies of public opinion, he would still inspire love and hate.  For he is the Prince of Heaven -- so says the silence around his body when he is luminous....

     There was an art to watching him train and you acquired it over the years.  Other champions picked sparring partners who could imitate the style of their next opponent and, when they could afford it, added a fighter who was congenial:  someone they could hit at will, someone fun to box.  Ali did this also, but reversed the order.  

For the second fight with Sonny Liston, his favorite had been Jimmy Ellis, an intricate artist who had nothing in common with Sonny.  As boxers, Ellis and Liston had such different moves one could not pass a bowl of soup to the other without spilling it.  



Of course, Ali had other sparring partners for that fight.  Shotgun Sheldon comes to mind.  Ali would lie on the ropes while Sheldon hit him a hundred punches to the belly -- that was Ali conditioning stomach and ribs to take Liston's pounding.  In that direction lay his duty, but his pleasure was by way of sparring with Ellis as if Ali had no need to study Sonny's style when he could elaborate the wit and dazzle of his own.


     Fighters generally use a training period to build confidence in their reflexes, even as an average skier, after a week of work on his parallel, can begin to think he will yet look like an expert.  In later years, however, Ali would concentrate less on building his own speed and more on how to take punches.  

Now, part of his art was to reduce the force of each blow he received to the head and then fraction it further.  Every fighter does that, indeed a young boxer will not last long if his neck fails to swivel at the instant he is hit, but it was as if Ali were teaching his nervous system to transmit shock faster than other men could. --------- [end, excerpt]


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------------------ After watching the Mailer-Vidal-Flanner dust-up referenced here April 17th, instead of The Fight about the "Rumble in the Jungle," I want to write a book called The Conversation, describing the "Rumble On The Dick Cavett Show" -- ha.

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