Gore Vidal: Proposals to Improve the U.S. Government (1/4) (1988)

March 19, 1988 http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.... Watch the full program: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/10/gore-vidal-proposals-to-improve-u...

Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (born October 3, 1925) is an American author, playwright, essayist, screenwriter and political activist. Early in his career he wrote The City and the Pillar (1948), which outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality. He subsequently emerged as one of America's more important literary figures due to the enormous quantity and quality of work produced over the course of his career, including novels, essays, plays, and short stories covering a wide variety of topics and eras. He also ran for political office twice and served as a longtime political critic.

Besides his politician grandfather, Vidal has other connections with the Democratic Party: his mother, Nina, married Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr., who later was stepfather of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. Gore Vidal is a fifth cousin of Jimmy Carter. Vidal may be a distant cousin of Al Gore, but no link has been found by a Gore family historian.

As a political activist, in 1960, Gore Vidal was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress , losing an election in New York's 29th congressional district, a traditionally Republican district on the Hudson River, encompassing all of Columbia, Dutchess, Greene, Schoharie, and Ulster Counties to J. Ernest Wharton, by a margin of 57% to 43%. Campaigning with a slogan of "You'll get more with Gore", he received the most votes any Democrat in 50 years received in that district. Among his supporters were Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Newman, and Joanne Woodward; the latter two, longtime friends of Vidal's, campaigned for him and spoke on his behalf.

On the December 15, 1971 taping of The Dick Cavett Show, with Janet Flanner, it was alleged that Norman Mailer had headbutted Vidal during an altercation in which there were mutual insults and name calling between the two before both went on air. Mailer moved his chair away from the other guests (Gore Vidal and Janet Flanner), and Cavett joked that "perhaps you'd like two more chairs to contain your giant intellect?" Mailer replied "I'll take the two chairs if you'll all accept finger-bowls." Mailer later said to Cavett "Why don't you look at your question sheet and ask your question?", to which Cavett replied "Why don't you fold it five ways and put it where the moon don't shine?" A long laugh ensued, after which Mailer asked Cavett if he had come up with that line and Cavett replied "I have to tell you a quote from Tolstoy?"

From 1970 to 1972, Vidal was one of the chairmen of the People's Party.

In 1982 he campaigned against incumbent Governor Jerry Brown for the Democratic primary election to the United States Senate from California and this was documented in the film, Gore Vidal: The Man Who Said No directed by Gary Conklin. Vidal lost to Brown in the primary election.

Vidal has said "I think of myself as a conservative." Vidal has a protective, almost proprietary attitude toward his native land and its politics: "My family helped start [this country]", he has written, "and we've been in political life... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country."

He has suggested that President Roosevelt deliberately provoked the Japanese to attack the U.S. at Pearl Harbor to facilitate American entry to the war, and believes FDR had advance knowledge of the attack. During an interview in the 2005 documentary Why We Fight, Vidal asserts that during the final months of World War II, the Japanese had tried to surrender to the United States, to no avail. He said, "They were trying to surrender all that summer, but Truman wouldn't listen, because Truman wanted to drop the bombs." When the interviewer asked why, Vidal replied, "To show off. To frighten Stalin. To change the balance of power in the world. To declare war on communism. Perhaps we were starting a pre-emptive world war."

During domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh's imprisonment, Vidal corresponded with McVeigh and concluded that he bombed the federal building as retribution for the FBI's role in the 1993 Branch Davidian Compound massacre in Waco, Texas.

Vidal was a member of the advisory board of the World Can't Wait organization, a left-wing organization seeking to repudiate the Bush administration's program, and advocating the impeachment of George W. Bush for war crimes.

In 1997, Vidal was one of 34 celebrities to sign an open letter to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, published as a newspaper advertisement in the International Herald Tribune, which protested the treatment of Scientologists in Germany.

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[xtrmsprts]

Gore kicks ass! crypto-nazi ass!

[hmvanwijk]

Thank you very much for posting this. I adore his style and, of course, all his ideas!.

[TemplarLeonem]

Not funny ha-ha...

Funny queer

[jcostello117]

Its so sad that this has been out in plain sight for so long and nobody pays any attention to it. Everybody is so damned distracted and high that they'll believe anything theyre told and not care the least when found out that they had been lied to. I wonder what would happen if you showed a crowd of people in 1910 an episode of jersey shore, they would probably voluntarily sterilize the world I would. Hell I would voluntarily blow my head off if it could prevent a world that produces that.

[beradification]

he is also a very funny guy

[brenter55]

a brilliant historian and wit writer