Dazzled by brilliance, in the midst of the BS

Gore Vidal is a vicious, hateful nasty old bastard who writes with a rapier and whose views on public life and America are always interesting, usually correct and always incredibly well-written. I recall the 1968 Republican convention when one of the networks -- NBC, I think -- had Vidal and WF Buckley as commentators. No stranger to the sly rhetorical dagger himself, Buckley went all neanderthal on Vidal at one point, threatening to "beat the shit out of you, you little fag."  Vidal raised an eyebrow as I recall...

Vidal was a cousin of Jackie Kennedy and grew up in the elite horsey circles of northern Virginia and DC. And yes, there is a distant relationship somehow between Gore and the Gores...if big Al had used him as a speechwriter in 2000, we'd probably have a slightly different result.

So when Commandante AGI sent out this link in our web conference bitch session, it made my day.
Or, actually by the time I got around to it, evening. In this interview with the Progressive,  Vidal is right on point. Asked how he could have predicted in 2000 that Bush would end up as one of the most unpopular presidents, he replies" know these people. I don’t say that as though I know them personally. I know the types. I was brought up in Washington. When you are brought up in a zoo, you know what’s going on in the monkey house. You see a couple of monkeys loose and one is President and one is Vice President, you know it’s trouble. Monkeys make trouble.

Q: Bush’s ratings have been at personal lows. Cheney has had an 18 percent approval rating.

Vidal: Well, he deserves it.

Q: Yet the wars go on. It’s almost as if the people don’t matter.

Vidal: The people don’t matter to this gang. They pay no attention. They think in totalitarian terms. They’ve got the troops. They’ve got the army. They’ve got Congress. They’ve got the judiciary. Why should they worry? Let the chattering classes chatter. Bush is a thug. I think there is something really wrong with him."

Vidal has written some excellent books -- about a million of them. However, he is a polemicist of the first rate. An elite version of Tom Paine, perhaps; or, maybe the American Saint Simon; in the constitutional monarcho-republic, he's gotten to observe more than one personality in the role of Louis XIV...

If you haven't read Vidal, Burr is an excellent place to start; in paralell to it, his take on Julian the Apostate is a nice counterpoint to HBO's Rome as he describes the triumph of nonsense over...nonsense. But, his essays are the most fun...

Comments

[Montag]

Thanks for posting this. I haven't read enough Vidal, but I enjoyed Inventing a Nation.