Maybe that's one of the things that drew him to this subject.
Posted on 05/17/2008 2:17:25 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
At 82, Gore Vidal has reached an enviable position: he is an influential man of letters, a political activist, a scion of the New World aristocracy and a friend of the powerful and famous, including the Clintons.
So what does he think of Hillary Clinton’s stated intention to fight on to the bitter end for the Democratic presidential nomination? The reply is instant and searing: “I think her strategy is more or less insane.”
He continues: “I’d always rather liked her. She’s a perfectly able lawyer . . . But this long campaign, this daily search for the grail, has driven her crazy.”
In his view Barack Obama has won; and if the nomination is taken away from him, “I fear what our black population might do. There has never been a revolution of blacks – yet”.
During the Clinton administration, Vidal admired Bill’s understanding of the poor and of black people. His devotion to the Clintons has now been laid aside, however. By clinging on to her campaign, waiting for the small chance that Obama will make a terminal mistake, Hillary has crossed a line, he believes.
As for Obama, Vidal has taken time to warm to him. “I liked the idea of him, but he never managed to get my interest. I was brought around by his overall intelligence – specifically when he did his speech on race and religion.”
In Vidal’s opinion, “he’s our best demagogue since Huey Long or Martin Luther King”.
I ask if he thinks Obama has a similar charisma to that of John F Kennedy, whom Vidal got to know because he was related to his wife, Jackie.
“I never believed in Jack’s charisma,” Vidal says shortly. JFK, he believes, was “one of our worst presidents”; Bobby, his brother, was “a phoney, a little Torquemada”; and their father, Joseph, was “a crook – should have been in jail”.
So much for Camelot. “But Jack had great charm,” he adds. “So has Obama. He’s better educated than Jack. And he’s been a working senator. Jack never went to the office – he wanted the presidency and his father bought it for him.”
There’s no guarantee, of course, that the Democrats will triumph later this year, even if Obama does win the nomination. Does he think Obama can beat John McCain?
His views on the man the Democratic candidate will have to beat are even more brutal than his views on Hillary: “ You could beat McCain! I’ve never met anyone in America who has the slightest respect for him. He went to a private school and came bottom of his class. He smashed up his aeroplane and became a prisoner of war, which he is trying to parlay into ‘war hero’.”
In his view, McCain is “a goddamned fool. He was on television talking about mortgages, and it was quite clear he does not know what a mortgage is. His head rattles as he walks”.
However, in Vidal’s eyes, McCain is just a symptom of the real malaise affecting America today: the cynical subversion of the US constitution. “The Bush people”, he says, “have virtually got rid of Magna Carta and habeas corpus. In a normal republic I would probably have raised an army and overthrown them. It will take a hundred years to put it all back.”
By now he has worked himself up to a crisp fury: “Those neocons, lawyers, the big corporations – worse than that, extremists – want to get rid of the great power of oversight of the executive. See what they’ll try to do to Obama. They’re crooks. They’re just gangsters. They are the enemy of the United States. There’s no such thing as a war on terrorism. It’s idiotic. There are slogans. It’s advertising, which is the only art form we’ve invented and developed. It’s lies.”
Vidal has never been less than fully engaged with the politics of his country – but he seems angrier than I have ever seen him before. This may be because he has returned to live in the States only recently, after spending more than 30 years in Italy. He seems revived and refreshed by his furious reengagement with American politics.
For him, the biggest lie has always been to keep quiet; and the best life-enhancer is to provoke, unsettle, rile – in short, to make people face the truth. He remains a rarity.
Gore Vidal: Living Monument to Excrement
Vidal is an idiot and lacks any sort of judgement.
Age has not been kind to Gore Vidal ....
He’s a black guy and the white liberals will drop to their knees to try to get him elected.
Once he’s there, they’ll show their true colors (no pun intended) as Hussein’s puppeteers.
Vidal is a raving nutjob and a flaming homo.
Not exactly a ringing endorsement.
If one was to hire a lawyer would you want one who was "perfectly able" or one who was "good".
I never understood why liberals put JFK on a pedestal. What leftist would idolize an anti-Communist, small government, tax cutter for the rich, war-mongering President? It makes no sense that Democrats even claim JFK as one of their own.
Vidal later in the interview implies that we are like Nazi Germany. So the majority democratic party has to nominate Senator Barack Hussein Obama, or the blacks will revolt? Hoist on their own petard, it would seem.
If Gore Vidal had his way, we’d probably get Aaron Burr for V.P.
He fears? If Obama doesn't get the nod, it appears (from his instigation) Vidal would be hoping for that scenario.
I didn’t know Vidal was still alive. What’s he doing these days when he’s not studying Barack Hussein Obama’s leadership skills?
Better than JFK? That’s damning with faint praise, isn’t it? And the idea that Gore is part of the American aristocracy is a good joke on the American aristocracy.
Vidal is gay.
Sounds like a racist statement to me.
Haha always thought that too!
Sounds like Vidal has been having a series of seizures.
The only reason the Liberals liked John Kennedy is that he screwed around on his wife.
is a distant cousin of Al Gore... ?
Also, JFK was a weak anticommunist at best, who sabotaged the Cuban exiles' invasion of Castros' Cuba (which had actually been planned by the Eisenhower admin.). Some of his anticommunist ventures, like Vietnam, were probably done to deflect criticism from real anticommunists like Goldwater. His wimpiness led directly to the Cuban missile crisis.
Who in the world is interested in what this old, bitter queen has to say?
The "Queens" of England, it would seem! LOL
He never heard of Nat Turner?
Why anyone should pay attention to this ancient queen is beyond me. I guess that now Vidal’s main rival, Norman Mailer, is gone, he is feeling pretty good.
Not all seizures are symptomatic of epilepsy, particularly in end of life situations.
One does imagine Vidal's seizures (rages and such) are driven by some sort of disease he picked up wandering into dock front taverns in foreign ports late at night. Rosemary Kennedy, Teddy Kennedy's older sister, suffered the same sort of rages, and may have had numerous seizures as is her younger brother today.
The thought of the faggot Vidal "raising an army" and overthrowing anything more than a SF bathhouse is laughable.
Maybe Vidal likes b. Hussein Obama because he thinks the young man is an anti-Semite like him.
He does have distant cousins among almost all the Old American families including Richard Nixon's folks). Even William F. Buckley could be counted among them, as can some of the women the Kennedy's married, and I believe even their mother's family.
It gets almost incestuous if you take too close a look.
About the only ones I have not seen linked in are the Fonda family ~ this is the guy no one wants to invite to the family reunion!
I'm not sure who is dumber....Gore Vidal or the writer of this article. Judging from that first sentence, it's somewhere near a tie......
Oh, by the way, as I’m sure both The Times and Gore know, or should, Magna Carta has not been a direct foundational document of American government for some two hundred years. Something about a war of independence.
Frankly, I’ve never heard of this Melvyn Bragg, and I’m pretty sure he’s not invited to any of Gore Vidal’s cousin’s family get togethers.
Gore who?
Vidal was right about JFK: If JFK had served his full term, This Nation would be a fully collectivist Nation by now.
Vidal is a loon.
An angry Bill Buckley once called him a queer and threatened to punch him.
LOL!
Gore Vidal is a fool and a blowhard. He thinks Republicans are evil, and especially Bush and Cheney. If he thinks someone is intelligent, or worthy to be President, than that is as good a reason as any to vote for the other guy (or gal- if Phyllis Schafly were younger).
Both JFK and BHO did drugs. I guess Obama had a better stash.
If they would revolt because he didn’t get the nomination, what would they do if he lost the election by 2-5% margin or got the popular vote but not the electoral majority?
“I never believed in Jack’s charisma,” Vidal says shortly. JFK, he believes, was “one of our worst presidents”; Bobby, his brother, was “a phoney, a little Torquemada”; and their father, Joseph, was “a crook – should have been in jail”.So much for Camelot.
And so he denounced JFK in 1965 right along with his brother RFK? And what of Teddy? Why hold his tongue on the Kennedy that still has power? Is he ok because he compared Obama to his late brother?
So he's been a liar for the past 40 years of Kennedy sainthood?
Well it will be this time. My lib gym friend will vote for Obama BECAUSE blacks are angry.
I guess Anger Management is just for whites.
Gore’s carrying wood for Obama....
Maybe that's one of the things that drew him to this subject.
Gore who?
I read the book right after my parents. They were able to complete a couple of items in the family genealogy.
Yeah, and Gore Vidal is probably good friends with Larry Sinclair........................!!!!!
Alive and well living in his favorite country drinking whine and cheese...
France.
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