Gore Vidal: Hillary Would've Been the Better Prez

Gore Vidal is 83 and uses a wheelchair now, but the legendary American writer hasn't lost any of his strong opinions—not least on Barack Obama, who is doing "dreadfully" and has "f---ed up" health reform. Vidal supported Obama after originally backing Hillary Clinton, but now thinks she'd be the better president: "Hillary knows more about the world and what to do with the generals." Vidal foresees a GOP victory in 2012, but that's nothing compared to the "military dictatorship we'll have fairly soon."

In an interview with the Times of London, Vidal also offers a campy impression of Katharine Hepburn—who he insists had Parkinson's disease and "shook like a leper in the wind." Yet the man who once said he'd slept with 1,000 men by age 25 also says he doesn't believe in homosexuality at all, and as for gay marriage, he "couldn't care less." What is Vidal proudest of? Not his novels: "Really I am most proud that, despite enormous temptation, I have never killed anybody." (More Gore Vidal stories.)