Gore Vidal was not just a novelist and essayist; he also ran for Congress in 1960 in upstate New York. In a 1988 interview I asked him whether there was any gay baiting in that campaign.

“Even then it was considered bad karma to fuck around with old Gore,” he told me. “But just to be safe I had something on every politician and publisher in the district. There was one old newspaper publisher up in Columbia County, the most conservative of the five counties. He was making some giggly hints about me, and he was also having an affair with his son’s wife. So after he took one particular swipe at me, I went on the radio in Hudson, the county seat, and I was asked, ‘Are you getting any ideas for any novels while you’re doing this?’

Read the full adapted excerpt in The Huffington Post