Whose America Now? Not Gore Vidal's
I recently interviewed Gore Vidal, one of the last old-school aristocrats left in this country, and asked him how he felt about the state of the American republic -- the subject that has fired his political radicalism and a large portion of his literary output over the past half-century.
Vidal, now 83 and in indifferent health, bemoaned the lack of a transcendent figure to match the political skills of a Franklin Roosevelt or the oratory of a General MacArthur. When I asked him about Barack Obama, with his formidable rhetoric and cool temperament, he gave me a look of pure contempt and uttered perhaps the most reactionary single comment of this election season.
"Slaves have a hard time making poetry," he said, relishing the shock factor, "unless it's got a beat."
Vidal, like many of his generation and social standing, clearly cannot fathom how the son of a single mother from Kansas and a Kenyan father could presume to occupy the Oval Office. And while he expressed his distaste with an extraordinary degree of frankness, not to mention racial venom, he is far from the only one.
We've had Republicans on the campaign trail talk about the "pro-American" parts of the country -- as though Obama and his cause were somehow antithetical to what America stands for. In the presidential debates, John McCain seemed to marvel at his opponent's presumptuousness, when he could look at him at all. During the primaries, Hillary Clinton betrayed a similar sense of indignation at this improbable novice upending her carefully laid plans.
In truth, next Tuesday's presidential election is not just about Obama beating McCain, or the Democrats retaking the White House. In a deeper sense, it is about who gets to run this country.
For too long, both major parties have worked from an assumption of entitlement. Between them, they formed a tight-knit little club which alone decided who could be part of the establishment and who could not. Between them, they courted the 50-something per cent of the electorate they felt they could count on, and roundly ignored the rest. For the most part, of course, running the executive branch has been a rich white man's game.
Obama alone won't change everything, but he is transforming the rules quite spectacularly. In the South, black voters are no longer the political dead weight the Democrats have so often taken for granted, and that the Republicans have managed to trounce at the polls time after time. Now they are spearheading a new Democratic coalition in which the divisive politics of race have, at last, taken a back seat to the broader cause of progressive ideas. Across the country, young people are being energized into political activism in ways unseen since the Vietnam War and -- in contrast to the counter-cultural movement of 40 years ago -- given real reason to suppose the future belongs to them.
There is, of course, a backlash. Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann are far from the first political figures to suggest that "their" America -- the parts of the country that subscribe to their political ideology and conform to their idea of how society should function -- is the "real" America. And it is no accident that Republicans desperate to find solace in the electoral disaster that awaits them are crying foul about the non-existent scourge of individual voter fraud -- essentially, casting aspersions on the legitimacy of hundreds of thousands of newly registered voters whom the old guard barely recognizes as part of America's political process at all.
Vidal's reactionary bile is part of a clear historical pattern that has, at different times, condoned the slavery he alludes to; espoused open prejudice against immigrants, Catholics, Jews, and the industrial working class; and embraced the notion that democracy is somehow too precious to be entrusted to more than a small fraction of the people governed.
We can be glad, though, his brand of entitled snobbery no longer holds sway. A new America is being born.
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My Hero of liberal progressive thoughts said what??
It must be the meds they probably have him on? Another icon bites the dust.
Obama/Biden
Hooray for Gore Vidal!
Just as we remember Hannah Arendt less for her philosophy than for her courageous anti-Zionist politics, so will we remember Gore Vidal, not so much for his novels as for his tireless campaign against the slavery of America's two-party duopoly.
Slavery has a legal meaning in the United States. If this is Mr. Vidal's point, this man of letters had other choices of language. There is no comparison between its legal meaning -- and the analogy you claim he has/is trying to make. The brutality of legalized slavery and all it entailed -- is no comparison to Americans being bound to a two Party system.
Interesting column! I definitely hope a 'new' America is being born! It's time to acknowledge that America is a 'melting pot' of many races and ideas! It's time to recognize that the government needs to be representative of all its citizens not just the 'chosen' few.
I do not give a damn whether Vidal thinks himself racist; or whether you commenters think that he is, There is ABSOLUTELY NO CONTEXT in which that vile remark can or may be excused.
Vidal is hereafter banished to the depths of the Racist Hell of Limbaugh, Hannity, McCain, Palin and the rest of the vermin of this World!!
You're probably right - very disappointing then to have a good decade of admiring the man's writing dissipate in an instant. I'll admit though that I'm open to better understanding the context - because it's so contradictory to everything the man's ever stood for.
Tell us how you really feel, its ok.
Agreed. One's "status" as a writer and a thinker do not give one license to say incomprehensibly vile and repugnant things and get away with it by explaining that you don't understand the "nuance". What he said was deplorable in ANY context.
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Nonsense. Intelligent people know exactly what he meant and realize it's not offensive. The poorly read and anti-intellectuals will always misinterpret things and make rash dismissals and froth at the mouth with self-righteous indignation over thoughts and words that are beyond them.
This is the excuse for slaveholders themselves. ANYTHING can be justified by those who consider themselves our betters -- for a time. America has no nobility, per se. And, fortunately - the time for making analogies between legalized SLAVERY (3/5 human) and all it entailed -- cannot be compared to the perceived bondage of America's two Party political system. To continue to justify this analogy is to deliberately (forgive the pun) white-wash legalized human bondage and the HORRORS it meant to relatives of some of us still living. The details of those horrors are invisible to you, because American historians (and intellectuals?) have worked very hard to erase them. Nevertheless, some boomers and older Americans had relevatives who REMEMBERED their history just as the Irish, Italians, American Indians, Asians, etc. did. From what my great-grandmother told me/my sister -- the analogy Mr. Vidal carelessly makes -- is a crime itself.
To paraphrase Billy Shakespeare, "Thou doth protest too much, methinks."
I find it interesting how arguments used here in defense of Vidal's unquestionably racist remark are -- quite sadly -- little different from those used to defend comedian Michael Richards: "Blah-blah isn't a racist."
Really, all this wasted energy put toward whether or not the person is a racist. And how quickly made is that rush to defense -- as if that the possibility is somehow an indictment against the person who likes Gore Vidal (or Michael Richards).
Frankly, the focus should be on what was said. Was it racist?
I leave each person to answer that question for themselves (though one can already be found in the maddening dash to defend).
Ah, and that argument made about whether or not Obama's black ancestry has any connection with slavery is just just as misguided. Vidal's comment (as a few others have observed) was a disdainful swipe against not only the intellectual prowess of Barack Obama, but black people in general.
And as a descendant of African slaves in America who indeed writes poetry -- not rap music lyrics -- the insult is clearly understood.
As an AA descendant of slaves, who remembers my great-grandmothers stories about her memories of the experience from her own grandparents -- I find the statement inhumane and unworthy of an American man of letters in the 21st Century. It is statements like this that divides us and will hold us back this Century.
I will continue to read Vidal's writings but I will never completely respect him or his opinions.
" Oratory of General MacArthur ? " * snicker *
What, you mean ' I Shall Return ' ?
The one he lied with before letting the Japanese rip what's essentially an
AMERICAN colony apart in favor of fellow whitebread country they have no
official responsibilities to ?
Not that I'd want the likes of him running ANYTHING.
Not a fan of Macarthur, but get the history right: he was ordered to leave on the theory that he was too vauable to get killed.
As a long time admirer of Vidal's work, and his piercing intellect, I can only hope that it is simply my own limited intelligence that makes it impossible for me to see something truly deep and meaningful in his statement.
I find it incredibly difficult to accept that such a racist comment from this literary giant is not some kind of amazing revelation that is simply evading our understanding. Perhaps it is some form of sarcasm so advanced, that I have yet to grasp it at a conceptual level.
If I'm wrong, and I might well be, then I am truly disappointed in this statement, which is so unimaginatively racist and carries not the least bit of sarcastic humor.
I believe Andrew Gumbel is just using this forum to work out a personal grudge against Gore Vidal. Nothing Gumbel wrote about Gore Vidal is credible, IMHO. The quotation is very much inconsistent with everything I have heard or read by Gore Vidal. It is either a deliberate misquote, a quotation taken entirely out of context, or even more likely, made up out of whole cloth. In fact, I read an interview with Vidal within the past week in which he expressed ardent support for Barack Obama.
He will be forgiven for this and remembered for his books. As it should be.
Before long.....V
What's most interesting about the responses is the difficulty so many have in accepting the possibility that Gore Vidal said and meant every ugly word quoted here. Or if they accept it, making excuses for the man, or simply dismissing the significance of his slur. These repsonses look like unwitting attempts to invalidate the blatant racism of what Vidal said, apparently to support an image of the man that may not be accurate. This reflex is part of what's discouraged honest conversation about racism and all hatred based on difference, and protected the "good citizen" image of awful bigots. Ironically, it's usually proffered by people who are decent and couldn't imagine saying or even thinking such things themselves.
Vidal has always been a highly provocative figure, and is certainly capable of making completely inappropriate statements. What I cannot accept here is Gumbel's sloppiness. Is he referring to a published interview? If so, he would have the ethical standard of a particular publisher behind him. The Huffington post is a blog (albeit a very, very good one.) As it stands, his piece is neither journalism nor opinion, and has to be called into question because it condemns someone without referring to an acceptable record. That someone happens to be a historically important voice in the American political discourse, one who has consistently challenged the status quo in support of individualism. His is a dissident voice, albeit one that arises from an antiquated and elite caste system (unlike Obama.) I'm willing to accept that Vidal made a racist remark, but I need to know a lot more about it before I throw him into the category of racist, right-wing reactionaries. He will be assessed, in the long run, by the entirety of his work, for better and for worse.
Supreme smart-ass thumbing his nose at the punditocracy: anyone remember S. I. Hayakawa's napping in the Senate?
Now that's funny, coming from a liberal, too.
Perhaps Mr. Vidal meant that the American electorate are like slaves, and that they have a hard time "making poetry"- or effecting change and uniting under soaring political rhetoric- without someone to give them the direction and inspiration to do so.
Without a once-in-a-
Otherwise, it certainly seems to me that Mr. Vidal should have immediately been asked, "Why, Gore, whatever do you mean?!"
Is it too late to ask him?
...but, comparing legalized repatriation via "middle passage" and human slavery for centuries -- and all that it meant to human beings, which we won't go into here so we don't get sick -- to the two Party political system, is careless, inaccurate to the extreme and disrespectful of those who endured, survived, contributed all their had including their very bodies as currency/c
This is the final slap. Not even their MEMORY is respected by our man of letters -- and those making excuses for his flawed and inhuman analogies.
This may be very cute for our elites, but -- for some of us who are of AA descent, there is nothing cute about this (further) diminishment of the MEMORY and SACRIFICES made by ancestors whose arrival and service pre-dates the majority of Americans living today.
By the way, some AAs are fans of Mr. Vidals -- and, intellectuals ourselves -- and so our intelligence, history, etc. should not be disrespected as who/what we are in the 21st Century. Our ancestors paid serious dues with ALL they had -- for my daughter to stand proud and know her place is anywhere she wants it to be on these shores. I expect American intellectuals to honor that history and not (excuse the pun) white-wash or diminish it.
Having read Gore Vidal for years, I'm surprised by this comment - and perhaps even skeptical about what the context might have been. If Vidal is indeed now an embittered old bigot, then he should be condemned - but I find it very hard to believe.
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