Gore Vidal (1925-2012): who was out when bias was explicit

Is it better when bias goes underground?

Gore’s account of one prolonged bad consequence:

Despite the world-weary tone of a brutal review in the New York Times, which suggested that it [Gore’S third novel] added nothing new to the “groaning shelf” of homosexual literature, a story with an unashamedly gay protagonist unleashed a storm of protest in a country where sodomy was still illegal. Inspired by Vidal’s great love, a school friend called Jimmy Trimble who died at the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, it became an instant bestseller, catapulting the author to national celebrity, and almost finishing him as a writer. According to Vidal, the New York Times waged a campaign throughout the 1950s to obliterate him as a novelist by refusing to review his work. “If you didn’t get a daily review in the New York Times you didn’t exist as a novelist,” he said. “It meant that everybody else, Time, Newsweek and all the other papers, would follow suit. You were out.”

Unfortunately, this post can lead us to worry that, at least in some parts of academia, things aren’t much better.