Gore Vidal: ‘The Most Interesting Man in the World’

[Myra Bronstein]

A national treasure.

Remember the right-wing campaign to depict the Kennedys as harbouring a distinctly dynastic ambition? Guess who threw his elegant weight behind it?

C'mon, Myra, snap out of it: hero-worship is for fools and the personally ambitious. You're neither!

The Washington Daily News, 7 March 1963, p.27

Bobby Kennedy in ‘68

By Richard Starnes

I am obliged to Gore Vidal, a playwright of considerable talent, a politician of some passing competence, and a philosopher of no account at all, for brushing aside the shadows that obscure the political future and, of course, by extension the future of us all.

Writing in this month’s Esquire, Mr. Vidal quickly disposes of 1964. President Kennedy is home free in ’64 and thus the election next year isn’t worth one of Dr. Gallup’s worn-out clip boards.

But 1968 – now there is a magazine-length essay that is another shade of green. What the ordained soothsayer can descry in that year can scarce bear repeating in the presence of nursing mums, particularly nursing mums.
Mr. Vidal (himself a liberal, altho not lactescent at this time) finds that the Democratic nominee will be Bobby Kennedy. He finds further that the candidacy of Bobby seems doomed to succeed. He isn’t happy about the prospect, altho he appears to believe Mr. Kennedy I (the first) is/was/will be counted a good President. I am inclined to agree with him on that score, just as I tend to share his view that Bobby would be a disaster in the job.

What troubles me, however, is Mr. Vidal’s certitude. He concedes that it is always possible a winter-book candidate might have the poor judgment to die between now and 1968, a misfortune that would probably disqualify anyone. He also suggests the possibility there might be no election in 1968 if, say, all of us let Mr. Kennedy – no, no, not THAT one, THIS one – down and lost a war. But otherwise, if I read Mr. Vidal correctly, Bobby is all but fated to succeed his big brother in the White House.

Mr. Vidal writes, as all good essayists write, in a forceful, not to say headlong, style that admits to no uneasy doubts in the reader’s mind. The trick is to write something like, “in six years Hubert Humphrey will be 57” – a sentence which surely proves the author a man of integrity and some ability to foresee the future – and then to follow it with some assumptions too broad for leaping except by the most sure-footed.

The biggest flaw in Mr. Vidal’s argument is his assumption that John Kennedy will exercise his vast power to install Bobby as his successor.

It is at least debatable. Mr. Vidal cites frailties in Bobby Kennedy that might well disqualify him for the job he seeks (come to think of it, there’s another broad jump; Vidal just THINKS Bobby wants to be top banana).

It is only reasonable to assume that John knows a lot more about Bobby than even Gore Vidal knows. Is he going to risk the place in history he will by then have earned (don’t worry, if we’re still alive, he’ll have earned it) by handing the job on to his pushy kid brother?

If he does, he’ll qualify himself in the history books as a man more interested in creating a family dynasty than in keeping alive our frail experiment in self-government. And there is nothing in his record to date that suggests he is such a person.

Interesting blurb Paul, thanks for posting it. But anyone who knows Vidal probably knows he has long hated Bobby Kennedy with the red hot intensity of a thousand suns. They had a notorious falling out in the White House and supposedly Bobby booted Gore out and Gore has spent every subsequent decade trashing Bobby. Therefore the subject of the Kennedy's is one on which that he can't entirely be trusted because his wounded ego is in the way.

I even mentioned that very fact a while back in this thread: http://www.deeppoliticsforum.com/forums/...ore+vidal: "Gore is Jackie's cousin and consequently the subject of the Kennedys is the only one that I take with a grain of salt with Gore, because he hates Bobby so much for an altercation they had. I think it keeps him from being as open minded as he normally is on the subject of President Kennedy--his worth and his legacy."

Gore is only human and sometimes his feelings taint his perception. That is not the same as being intellectually dishonest or corrupt or evil. If you go back and read that other thread however you'll see that Gore does not let his hatred of Bobby cloud his vision of the JFK conspiracy:


"But let’s return to the F.B.I. conspiracy to cover up its crimes at Waco. Senator Danforth is an honorable man, but then, so was Chief Justice Earl Warren, and the findings of his eponymous commission on the events at Dallas did not, it is said, ever entirely convince even him."

...In March 1993, McVeigh drove from Arizona to Waco, Texas, in order to observe firsthand the federal siege. Along with other protesters, he was duly photographed by the F.B.I. During the siege the cultists were entertained with 24-hour ear-shattering tapes (Nancy Sinatra: "These boots are made for walkin’/And that’s just what they’ll do/One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you") as well as the recorded shrieks of dying rabbits, reminiscent of the first George Bush’s undeclared war on Panama, which after several similar concerts outside the Vatican Embassy yielded up the master drug criminal (and former C.I.A. agent) Noriega, who had taken refuge there. Like the TV networks, once our government has a hit it will be repeated over and over again. Oswald? Conspiracy? Studio laughter.

TV-watcher have no doubt noted so often that they are no longer aware of how often the interchangeable TV hosts handle anyone who tries to explain why something happened. "Are you suggesting that there was a conspiracy?" A twinkle starts in a pair of bright contact lenses. No matter what the answer, there is a wriggling of the body, followed by a tiny snort and a significant glance into the camera to show that the guest has just been delivered to the studio by flying saucer. This is one way for the public never to understand what actual conspirators – whether in the F.B.I. or on the Supreme Court or toiling for Big Tobacco – are up to. It is also a sure way of keeping information from the public. The function, alas, of Corporate Media."
http://www.geocities.com/gorevidal3000/tim.htm


However, I find the ongoing talk of the Kennedy "dynasty" infuriating, and it's interesting to see that Gore had a role in the genesis of it even if he is just being catty. That dynasty crap is classic propaganda. Do we ever hear it said about the Bush Klan? I don't. Yet they steal election after election year after year.

Regarding hero worship, that's an interesting subject because it's such a human tendency, yet such a juvenile one. And worst of all it's one that is so often manipulated by the evil types who know psychology and know that the people crave a savior. So while it's very human it's also a flaw to exploit.

Still Gore Vidal remains my hero. He's a deserving hero. He's made a career out of discovering and spreading the truth, he's entertaining as hell, and he called CIA hack William F. Buckley a "crypto-fascist" to his smarmy bloated little face on national TV. Those are bona fide hero qualifications.