E-mail a friendGore Vidal
airdate May 25, 2004
Gore Vidal has been called one of the great stylists of contemporary American prose. The prolific author was 19 when his first novel debuted and has gone on to great success - 25 novels, seven plays, numerous short stories, more than 200 essays and innumerable television and movie scripts. Often controversial, Vidal deals with a range of subjects from issues of national interest to people he's known. At age 81, his newest book is Point to Point Navigation, a follow-up to his '95 memoir Palimpsest.
Gore Vidal
Tavis: Gore Vidal is an American literary icon with more than 22 novels, 5 plays, numerous screenplays, and over 200 essays to his name. Next week will see the publication of his latest book, an attack on how the right wing views America's place in the 21st century. The book, 'Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia. I like that, Mr. Vidal. Nice to see you.
Gore Vidal: I can't say I like the amnesia part, but anyway, that's where we live.
Tavis: I like the phraseology: the United States of Amnesia. How'd you come up with that one?
Vidal: I live in it.
Tavis: Give me an example of what we are--or have, as it were, forgotten, that you find troubling, since we are living in this place of amnesia.
Vidal: Well, the Bill of Rights, for one thing. The Constitution is something else that we forgot. It happened so quickly. You know, you read about... I'm old enough to remember when Hitler came in, and it was very quick. You know, he was around, and nobody paid much attention to him. Not as charming, naturally, as W. Bush... And then suddenly, bum-bum-bum-bum, you have the USA Patriot Act. You have people being arrested because the attorney general thinks that they might be terrorists, held without a lawyer, and all of this is contrary to the American way. And I said, 'Well, when's Congress gonna be heard?' Forget Congress. The Supreme Court--forget them. New York Times--the New York Times will occasionally do a good story, but it's always on Saturday. It's the one edition no one reads.
Tavis:
Vidal: So you can get, you know--you know the second that you get a huge story about yourself on Saturday that you're dead.
Tavis: Now, I laugh at your reference to the Saturday edition of the New York Times. What many people will not find laughable--and I suspect if I didn't at least follow up on this, I'd get a lot of hate mail for not even asking the question. And it's not lost on me that about 45 seconds ago, you mentioned Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush in the same sentence. And one could suggest further that you made a comparative analysis between Adolf Hitler and George W. Bush. Did you mean to do that?
Vidal: Well, I said Hitler lacked Bush's charm. I did say that.
Tavis: That was a compliment, huh?
Vidal: Yes, you know. People could find that offensive. Part of the United States of Amnesia is that here we have freedom of speech, but we're really not allowed to say much about it, at least in the public media. That, you asked me, changes, and that happened so fast. And suddenly you look at the poor Democrats in Congress, and I don't know what they're scared of. Most of them fought in the--I fought in the Second--well, 'I fought.' I was in the Second World War. And most of them served.
But Bush didn't, Cheney didn't, Wolfowitz and the gang at the Pentagon didn't. But you can't bring that up without being called unpatriotic. I've never heard this before: criticize the president--one thing which from the beginning the media should have picked up on...
Well, somebody should tell him, 'Shut up.' This isn't a war. A war is against a country. War on terror. Terror is an abstract noun. It's like a war on dandruff. Well, you can fight a real war on dandruff, but it's not war. Why does he call it a war? Because he can get powers for himself the way Roosevelt and Lincoln and other real wartime presidents got for themselves. And that's what he wanted, and that's what he got. And that's what we gave him.
Tavis: Since you have mentioned Bush, I wrote this quote down, because I was absolutely fascinated by this particular writing of yours--as I am by much of your wonderful work-- but this one really got my attention. You write in this wonderful new book, and I quote,
'The secret core to each presidential election is who can express his hatred of the African Americans most subtly, to which today can be added Latinos and elite liberals, a fantasy category associated with working film actors who won Academy Awards, and, of course, this season, the so-called marriage-minded gays.'
That's a strong...
Vidal: Well, it's a strong--ha ha.
Tavis: Indictment.
Vidal: It's a strong list of hatreds that they've got going for them on their side--politically. It's the right wing. But it's been an American thing all along. You remember--I think--the code is always different. It's cultural wars now. That's supposed to take care of the gays. You remember welfare mothers had always meant black ladies trying to raise a family somewhere. And they were getting food stamps, and they were buying vodka with it. And that story just spread the country.
Nixon was the great expert at this. When he was running against Kennedy, he said, 'I don't think that religion should ever figure in a political campaign. Unless he has no religion. No, I don't think that at all. The fact that President Kennedy is a Catholic, I don't think that has anything to do with his ability to be president. As a Catholic, naturally, he will have other loyalties. But I wouldn't accuse him. And I would be very angry at anybody who's working for me who said that he was a Catholic.'
Tavis: Ha ha ha!
Vidal: He did it about 20 times. And finally Jack got the Catholic vote, which he was in danger of losing because the bishops never liked him.
Tavis: What do you make of-- this story that I just read in the last 48 hours that in Florida they are purging the voter rolls again. This time they say they are purging the voter rolls to get rid of felons. This story sound familiar, 4 years ago in Florida, this thing?
Vidal: 2000, yes. Well, that exquisite secretary of state whose costumes fascinated America with her long earrings--
Tavis: And the eyelashes.
Vidal: And eyelashes. Yeah.
Tavis: Patricia Harris.
Vidal: Patricia Harris. I guess her image is seared on your heart as it is on mine.
Tavis: She's a congresswoman now.
Vidal: She's a congresswoman. But at least they got her away from running for Senate. No, they're back at it again. 'Felons' is being used to keep most blacks from voting. Or anybody else they feel like calling a felon--which is generally a misdemeanor if it's anything at all other than somebody having the same name. And felons in Texas. Now, Florida is not Texas. The two brothers were governors of the states, so I guess they exchange records.
Well, what's even worse happening now is happening right here in California-- has happened--is with a company called Diebold. Makes touch balloting so you just go in, and you touch. It's electronic. It's the easiest thing on earth to hack, as the kids say. When we had the recall election here and Dr. Schwarzenegger got elected and Gray Davis was gone, 7,000 votes in Orange County didn't get counted, or were counted wrong because they had these new machines which are meant to be played with.
Unfortunately, incompetence may save us. Apparently those people who might--you know, if you vote for Kerry, you've ensured a vote for Bush, because when they count the vote, which is not as it used to be in the polling station, it's in 34th street in New York, which is the headquarters of a number of these firms. And there's no record. So if they say, 'Well, there's a miscount,' there is no record that the voter ever voted. It's what they call the paper trail. So at the moment, the secretary of state of the state of California has got cracking on it. And it looks like this firm called Diebold is up for investigation.
Tavis: One could look at this book coming out next week, 'Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia,' and suggest, if they disagree with your politics, that you're ranting, that you're an old curmudgeon, that you're grinding an ax, that it's what Gore Vidal has always done. What I tend to hear and read when I see your work is that somewhere along the way somehow you got convinced to use your gift, to use your skill, whatever it might be, to Represent for those who are socially, politically, and economically, even culturally disenfranchised. If I'm right about that, where did you develop that passion? Where'd that come from? You don't look like me. You don't have to care about the least among us. Where'd that come from?
Vidal: The halls of Congress. I was brought up by my grandfather, who was a very powerful senator from Oklahoma--not exactly the most liberal American state-- but he was a fascinating man and loved the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Don't think he liked his fellow man very much, but then most top politicians don't. It was through him and through being brought up--he was blind, and up until I was about 14, I used to lead him onto the floor of the Senate. And I was a quick reader, and so I read. I was the only 10-year-old who understood bimetallism, because he was on the finance committee. So I'd be reading all this stuff--
Tavis: I'm 39, and I still don't know what it means.
Vidal: I'll act it out for you.
Tavis: Ha ha ha ha!
Vidal: We'll do it later. You give me a quarter, I'll make change, and you'll see what bimetallism turns out to be.
Tavis: Ha ha ha. All right.
Vidal: And he was the party of the people, sometimes known as populists. And he was part of the old--the last time we attempted democracy in the United States through the polls was William Jennings Bryan, and that was the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century. And the Gore family--one of them became vice president not long ago--by and large, we were party of the people. We were populists. We represented the poor farmers.
My grandfather made alliances with African Americans--this was in Mississippi. And he really lost that election, so he fled to the Indian Territories, which he then brought into the union as the state of Oklahoma. He wrote their first constitution, became their first senator. I was brought up in the middle of all that. I was brought up in the middle of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal. Later, when I ran for congress, my political mentor was Eleanor Roosevelt. So you see how I'm well-trained.
Tavis: As a matter of fact, that reminds me of another quote I wrote down. You write in this book, as I close our conversation, unfortunately, 'Every now and then, usually while shaving, I realize that I've lived through nearly 1/3 of the history of the United States, which proves not how old I am, but how young the republic is.' We are a young republic, aren't we?
Vidal: Yes. I felt I had to strike one optimistic note.
Tavis: I'm glad you came on. It's an optimistic note anytime you show up, Mr. Vidal.
Vidal: Thank you.
Tavis: Nice to see you.
Vidal: Good to see you.
Tavis: And will you sign this for me before you leave here?
Vidal: With great pleasure.
Tavis: The book by Gore Vidal is 'Imperial America', out in bookstores next week. Up next on this program, hip-hop artist Talib Kweli. Stay with us.
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