Gore Vidal
Aug. 1st, 2003 05:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
swestrupIs a character that I only know of from caricatures in the cartoon section at the back of Penthouse magazine in the mid seventies; a time at which I was still early enough into my puberty that I turned to the cartoon section first... Last night my sweetie and I were up very late and it was partially due to a fascinating biography of Gore Vidal. This is a man who grew up a senator's grandson in Washington, someone who was groomed for power at an early age and given an introduction to how things really work in the American Government. He was taken to congress and shown how most of the negotiations took place in the cloak rooms of congress not on the floor of the house. He was able to witness what Senators said in confidence to his grandfather vs what they said to the public. He thought long and hard about going into politics (and even made a stab at it in later years) but he decided to be a writer instead.
His first book "The City and Pillar" was the first mainstream novel to ever show a positive homosexual relationship (involving the main protagonist, no less) and was published in 1948 at a time when even heterosexual intercourse between unmarried adults was taboo. He has since gone on to produce many, many controversial novels, many of which are historical. According to the various historians that were interviewed during the biography, Vidal is uncannily good at piecing together historical documents and drawing conclusions that fit the facts better than traditional historical narratives, especially of things American. It was Gore who first published the evidence that Thomas Jefferson bore a number of illegitimate children from one or more of his black slaves, that Benjamin Franklin was driven by a desire for power as much as a desire to do good, and that Arron Burr (a mostly forgotten founding father) pulled many of the strings behind the scenes while the constitution was being drafted.
He's still writing things as controversially and unabashedly true as when he started out. At one point in the show he read the following quote from his book "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" about September 9/11:
"...fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."
I think I'm going to go out and get me a few books by this guy...
His first book "The City and Pillar" was the first mainstream novel to ever show a positive homosexual relationship (involving the main protagonist, no less) and was published in 1948 at a time when even heterosexual intercourse between unmarried adults was taboo. He has since gone on to produce many, many controversial novels, many of which are historical. According to the various historians that were interviewed during the biography, Vidal is uncannily good at piecing together historical documents and drawing conclusions that fit the facts better than traditional historical narratives, especially of things American. It was Gore who first published the evidence that Thomas Jefferson bore a number of illegitimate children from one or more of his black slaves, that Benjamin Franklin was driven by a desire for power as much as a desire to do good, and that Arron Burr (a mostly forgotten founding father) pulled many of the strings behind the scenes while the constitution was being drafted.
He's still writing things as controversially and unabashedly true as when he started out. At one point in the show he read the following quote from his book "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace" about September 9/11:
"...fifty years ago, Harry Truman replaced the old republic with a national-security state whose sole purpose is to wage perpetual wars, hot, cold, and tepid. Exact date of replacement? February 27, 1947. Place: The White House Cabinet Room. Cast: Truman, Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson, a handful of congressional leaders. Republican senator Arthur Vandenberg told Truman that he could have his militarized economy only IF he first "scared the hell out of the American people" that the Russians were coming. Truman obliged. The perpetual war began. Representative government of, by, and for the people is now a faded memory. Only corporate America enjoys representation by the Congress and presidents that it pays for in an arrangement where no one is entirely accountable because those who have bought the government also own the media. Now, with the revolt of the Praetorian Guard at the Pentagon, we are entering a new and dangerous phase. Although we regularly stigmatize other societies as rogue states, we ourselves have become the largest rogue state of all. We honor no treaties. We spurn international courts. We strike unilaterally wherever we choose. We give orders to the United Nations but do not pay our dues...we bomb, invade, subvert other states. Although We the People of the United States are the sole source of legitimate authority in this land, we are no longer represented in Congress Assembled. Our Congress has been hijacked by corporate America and its enforcer, the imperial military machine..."
I think I'm going to go out and get me a few books by this guy...
