This week in National Press Club history: Gore Vidal takes swipe at politics

December 9, 2011: Theresa Werner becomes the first free-lance journalist elected president of the National Press Club. She becomes the tenth woman to serve as Club president since 1982, when Vivian Vahlberg of the Daily Oklahoman makes history as the first woman elected to that position.

December 10, 1991: Gore Vidal, writer of novels, screenplays, essays and Broadway plays, takes his usual iconoclastic swipe at American politics and institutions in an appearance before a National Press Club luncheon (i.e., the press goes along with “mindless” political campaigns; the country, hampered by a cumbersome centralized political system, would be better off broken up into more natural regions such as the old South, New England, “a super Scandinavia,” Southern California with parts of Arizona and Texas.)

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-long history through lobby displays, events, panel discussions, and oral history interviews with notable Club members.

To learn more about the activities of the Committee, or to join it, contact Gilbert Klein at [email protected].