Gore Vidal
"I found that if you speak in a candid way to people, they quite like it. Most politicians are dreadfully boring because they don't dare tell the truth. Telling lies...is not good for character, and in the end, they catch you."--Gore Vidal
“A good deed never goes unpunished.”That famous saying was first uttered by Gore Vidal- an accomplished novelist, playwright, essayist, and most of all an extremely well-respected political commentator. Gore Vidal is best known for being the voice of the New Left of the ‘60s and debating William F. Buckley. Vidal is in a category of his own as he is not only the champion voice of the liberal left and pioneer in literature, but an extremely accomplished novelist, essayist, playwriter, and public intellectual. He wrote a number of successful novels, plays, short stories, books of literary criticism, and essays. His novel, The City and the Pillar, was one of the most controversial works written by American at the time as it was one of the first of its kind to openly and explicitly deal with homosexuality. Vidal was able to display his wide range of knowledge throughout his writings as well as display his unaffected attitudes toward American society.
Gore Vidal was born into the upper crust of American society to a family who was well connected to the political arena. His grandfather was a Senator for the State of Oklahoma and his father was the director of the Commerce Department's Bureau of Air Commerce in the Roosevelt administration. Vidal was formally educated at a chain of private schools in his home town of Washington D.C. where he first realized his passion for literature.
Vidal possesses the talent to be able to incorporate larger problems linked to literature, drama, politics, and society within his essays and novels. Gore Vidal was most well recognized for his controversial third novel, The City and the Pillar, which was noted as one of the first novels that openly discussed homosexuality. Although Vidal was advised against publishing the novel, as his editors believed it could damage both his literary and political prospects, he felt a strong obligation to provide a voice for a homosexual community and published the book.
His controversial novel was not the end of his career. Instead, it served as a springboard for his political career and he ran for Congress he on the Democratic ticket in New York’s highly Republican 29th District. In many of his speeches, he supported many controversial ideas at the time, including the recognition of Red China, shrinking the Pentagon’s budget, and putting more federal money into education. Although he lost the election, he won a great deal of media attention because he boasted about the fact that despite his loss, he still received more votes in his district than John F. Kennedy.
He frequently made appearances on television talk shows. He was asked by ABC to appear as a commentator alongside William F. Buckley Jr., a prominent public intellectual espousing the conservative Republican view, throughout the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The two went at each other in heated debates, constantly arguing back and forth and even resorting to name calling as seen in this famous clip below:
In this clip Vidal refers to Buckley as a “crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley responds by calling Vidal a “queer.” The two commentators continued their bickering in essays they published in Esquire. Later, the verbal abuse continued and spiraled out of control when Buckley decided to sue Vidal and Esquire for libel. The case, however, went on for many years to follow but ended up being settled outside of the courtroom. In this clip, it is evident to the audience that both Gore Vidal and Buckley took their jobs as political commentators very seriously and were not focused on purely gaining camera time and recognition. Vidal cared deeply about the subject matters he heatedly debated, and did not shy away from any type of criticism. He may have taken his debate a step too far, but ultimately showed with each and every comment he made that his viewpoints were not just mere opinions of his, but were backed up by a true knowledge of history and years of real life experiences unlike many of today’s public intellectuals.
In recent years, he continued to argue against those who would attempt to deny people their freedoms in civil rights. In “Shredding the Bill of Rights,” Vidal wrote:
“It has always been a mark of American freedom that unlike countries under constant Napoleonic surveillance, we are not obliged to carry identification to show to curious officials and pushy police. But now, due to Terrorism, every one of us is stopped at airports and obliged to show an ID which must include a mug shot (something, as Allah knows, no terrorist would ever dare fake).”
This comment is a perfect example of Vidal’s uncanny ability to “say what everyone secretly knows and to make it unsettling without worrying about the implications, for himself or his reputation….” Vidal’s is habit has won him many admirers and numerous enemies over the years. Vidal’s “sharp and scolding manner, with a tonal range from the highly formal to the sharply colloquial, became a kind of trademark, separating his incidental prose from that of other writers.” This essay was a perfect example of his unusual gift to comment harshly on American politics and foreign policy while remaining “cool, elegant, and witty.”
Jean Bethke Elshtain points out, “the public intellectual function is criticism…And so if public intellectuals have any role to play in a democracy—and they do—it’s simply to keep the pot boiling. The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about.”
Vidal, at the ripe age of 82, still kept the pot boiling by publishing his new collection of essays. This in many critics eyes confirms his reputation as one of America’s last public intellectuals. Vidal’s talents as an essayist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, actor, and political commentator cannot be denied as they are insightful, sophisticated, urbane, and profound. His educational background in history, controversial life experiences, writings, and personal relationship with many prominent political figures and personalities of the time, and continued involvement in the political arena makes him one of the most influential, highly regarded, and unforgettable commentators of our time.
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