Yellow Peril, Black Peril, Miscegenation. What a funnly old world it is, as Lady Thatcher once so memorably mused. We read Gore Vidal because he instructs and moves us, not because he is infallible. Nip the dragon and likely get singed was my expectation. I am none of the three.
All parties now agree that the charge was false.
Certainly it was meant to injure. But the reaction of American media may well have betrayed their own interests. There was the clear sense that Jefferson had been revealed and brought low. There were comparisons with the misadventures of President Clinton and suggestion that Jefferson's sexuality somehow vindicated Clintonian politics. A sorry spectacle, seasoned with the irony of postmodernists proclaiming historical certitude once they found themselves in this particular laboratory-sanctioned foxhole.