Gore Vidal's New York Times Obituary Has Some of the Best Corrections Ever
The lengthy obituary of literary titan Gore Vidal that ran in Wednesday's New York Times was updated yesterday to correct three hilarious mistakes.
1) His insult of choice was "crypto-Nazi" not "crypto-Fascist."
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.
2) Although Vidal's first name (actually, one of his middle names) was the same as Al Gore's last name, they were, incredibly, not cousins.
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.
3) He did too have sex.
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.
The New York Times would also like to note that Gore Vidal was not, as initially reported, the grandmother of famed British hair dresser Vidal Sassoon and, though an earlier version of the story claimed he had "kilt him a bar when he was only three," this was later affirmed not to be the case.
