"wish I'd said that"

Many articles around, about Gore Vidal, because of his passing -- even one hatchet-job, which seems weird, but I guess there are people who "beat up on" someone even if they're dead. 
One Commenter added this:
When Norman Mailer decked Gore Vidal at a party for a bad review, Vidal got up and said, “Once again, words fail Norman Mailer.” ...

A piece in Huff Post Politics written by Michael Winship gives some illumination....
Mr. Winship recalls an interview where he asked Gore Vidal for a reading list to "get people through the Reagan years"...Hmmmh.
QUOTE, Winship article:
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The books he chose? The Federalist Papers, because with Reagan in office, he said, all of us should have a better understanding of the Constitution and the lengths of thought and debate that had gone into it.


… The other book he recommended was Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, the ancient Greek historian's chronicle of the fight between Sparta and Athens in the 5th century, BC. Reagan's America was dangerously like Sparta, Vidal said, ruled by an elite, bound by tradition, xenophobic, not a democracy but a "militarized republic" too eager for confrontation.

Thucydides wrote, "We Greeks believe that a man who takes no part in public affairs is not merely lazy, but good for nothing," …


In his writing and commentary, including his plays and movie scripts, he [Gore Vidal, not Thucydides] was fully engaged in America's public affairs, even running for office twice. His knowledge of history, overall erudition and outspoken, contrarian and often outrageous, opinions -- frequently mean but only slightly mean --

were an asset to the national discourse

whether you agreed with him or not.

He held an interest in politics and government from childhood, the descendant of a uniquely American style of aristocracy, gone now, that for good or ill, saw commitment to the general welfare as essential to its noblesse oblige philosophy.

Wealth and privilege no longer mean obligation but are simply the motives for more wealth and privilege.

Ten years ago, in The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, Vidal wrote -- presciently -- "Any individual who is able to raise [enough money] to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent... whatever moneyed entities are paying for him... Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress." A message that transcends time and party affiliation.

He was smart, acerbic, funny and astoundingly prolific. Once I was in attendance at a studio from which a short-lived attempt at a weekly, public TV quiz show was being broadcast; Gore Vidal was one of the guests. The moderator had asked the panel to identify the source of an especially pithy and eloquent quote. Each was dumbfounded until the host came to Vidal, who thought a moment, then said, "Was it me?"

It wasn't. But it could have been.

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