Gore Vidal in conversation with Melvyn Bragg

ladies and gentlemen a very warm welcome to you all we're absolutely delighted this evening to have for you gore Vidal who needs no introduction it's tremendous privilege to have him here and great thanks to him for coming and also for Melvyn Bragg who will be interviewing him I'd like to remind you in case any of you have got into the habit of expecting to vote that you will not be tearing up your ticket to vote for either Melvin or Gore this is it's not one of those occasions it is however one of those occasions which we will be having more of in the next half of this year and henceforth intelligence squared are now going to run a parallel series of interviews of this sort with illustrious and eminent writers and figures being interviewed so I hope you keep your ears and eyes open for that for the next season meanwhile have a very pleasant evening and I'll hand you over to Melvin thank you very much with our assortments of mics what Gore and I decided to do is to talk to each other but straight ahead at the same time it's called what do you say was conversation thank you welcome welcome to this conversation with gore Vidal a few remarks for those of you who might not have been in the country on the planet in the last few decades gore Vidal cape came out of the second world war absurdly young with a novel today of that eminent group of literary American world World War two veterans who all came out at the same time the war mailer Vonnegut hella he's the sole survivor he has covered the waterfront and patrols it fiercely for more than thirty years he lived in Italy where I thought of him as America's president in exile with his State of the Union messages often on television usually attacking all those of whatever persuasion who he thought were betraying the American Republic he was he called America rather ironically freedom's land or sometimes the United States of amnesia and above all he was ferocious and still is about the poverty and the lack of opportunities for young people in American education he's written a series of historical novels he became of course I like my country said I'm its current biographer and move as a president of presence over the last couple of hundred years the novels of a kind of fantasy a fantastical reality they're been screenplays television plays stage plays all of which have been successful rather maddeningly and many many essays on politics literature and society he manages to epitomize in my view the patrician and the radical the wit and the sage the mischief maker and the sane voice of politics he's now resident in Hollywood were interviewed him in January when American since we're an American politics have changed so just to get up-to-date from then I surprised at the success of the farmer because you thought Hillary would win didn't you know I wanted to her to win any woman who said she should she found out when she was running for a Senate in New York state that she was most hated by one group middle-aged men white men of property she said well on earth have I done to them and I said you it's for you to tell us what you think you've done to it I didn't see her for another year I said you ever find out why you have this group that doesn't much care for you she said yes it has been explained to me that I remind them of their first wife they have a witty lady in the white house was being a relief but anyway does it surprise you because he started so far behind he started 16% pygmy that Obama has surged to this almost clinching position as we speak tonight in the way has done well you can tell by the intensity of I think we ought to say at the very beginning we don't have political parties in the United States which is not supposed to we have factions john adams our second president was an enemy of faction so they you know they create nothing but quarrels they are bad for the state so we have a faction ears and we have the republican party is permanent minority in the country this is not partisanship and always just a fact and I don't think they understand why they are nobody likes them they really are the enemy and everybody and sooner or later you know they start to take it personally and they came out there's a fool call not attack who is a neoconservative and can be relied on to be used by the New York Times to smear anybody on the other side and he went after Obama now I can you know whatever is your strong point it was Machiavelli who advises us not Karl Rove Machiavelli said whatever is a candidate strongest point that is where you hit him we had a genuine hero war hero Senator Kerry was running they said he was a coward and lied about his war record this is from a president you know who dared not join the Boy Scouts and the vice-president you know she'd been put in a box somewhere and here they were you know complaining about the caries lack of patriotism the lessons have been well learned and we've all understood the lesson and it's not done us any good anyway they started to give the business to Obama which turned me into a partisan for him they said and there's all in those reverential whispered tones for the right wing really afternoon and they said he is an apostate I'm authority on Julian the apostate I didn't know what he was apostate in from he said the worst thing that if no Hamilton can do is to renounce Islam in favor of Christianity now we had a picture of blood running in the streets of Washington as a new president was being guarded by the Secret Service to keep him safe from murderers and terrorists I thought this risk sort of inspired you rather say that he's an apostate from his own religion and he's never been as far as anybody knows a Muslim or an Islamist or whatever adjective you can use there it's all invented but it's to smear and repeat and repeat and repeat I've never seen an ugly election in this one and we've had quite a few in my lifetime why do you think why do you think that he's won through that and I you surprised standing surprised that a black candidate has got so far given the state of America that you described well never underestimate white guilt that means we do not behave terribly well for several hundred years and I can remember I was brought up in Washington and I was all-black City and they were third-rate citizens they were not allowed to go anywhere do anything they had their own toilets and places to reap water it was nasty with appetite and I thought well it's guilt being expunged at the ballot and although Hillary did not appeal to one group of white men she I thought was a worthy candidate she you know politics is it's a business like any other you have to learn it and then your husband's shop you learn quite a lot I suspect not always to your joy should-should Bahama should bring up Obama take the take the candidacy do you think that McCain will give me much trouble as an opponent you remember mr. Magoo and those cartoons well George I just don't know what's happening here I felt that there was a bridge over to your side of the water and there's a wet well mr. Magoo is back in town you know no matter what the subject he doesn't get it and he's arguing over who was a Sunni and who's Aronian who's a decision of that he and just puzzled I don't know I can remember when Jack Kennedy got back from the Pacific he had lost his ship due to his own negligence to a lousy skipper and he lost the ship and he expertly expected to be court-martialed by the Navy just for having lost it and no explanation he just ran it in front of a battleship it was put in two pieces it is not the way a triumphant general crime and I can't imagine Alexander the Great kept returning in Athens field and he expected he knows meanwhile his father had contacted to use an ancient verb hey mister John Hersey who wrote popular novels and said would you like to write about my boy John F Kennedy great here on the Pacific just come back wounded one of his men was drowning he saved his life my Boy Scouts do that and the jack minute cuz he thought he was going to be court-martialed but next thing he knew is being run for president by his father so if you aren't Joe Kennedy's son you know you'll have a more difficult time of it and I think that well we've got unfinished business in the Republic and that is has been the question of slavery and we've had we found new ways of enslaving people financially otherwise and I think it's a general expiation for the master race as we were briefly and I shall make you know and exchange you know to say we know what it was like and to watch the crowds across the country maneuver african-americans who never thought they'd see this day let him still can't believe it has happened I didn't think we'd let go so easily but we did and I think we're all better for it there is my Pollyanna sign you will not see that again this afternoon you you said that McCain's head rattles when he walks and you were you and then you were quite rude to him about him after that the let's talk not so much about the Republican Party find it but about the state of the Republic now you have been a defender of the state of Republic and unexplained at the state Republic can you and as you said earlier when were we talking about new look a lot of people in this country are very interested in medical politics but they don't necessarily know a great deal about it what are the essential things about the American Republic that you think have been lost mainly by the Republican Party what was essential to it it's been lost well it had a good beginning it got Abraham Lincoln who was tired of being away because he was losing you know elections something it becomes a new party is called publican and he edges it towards anti-slavery house divided against itself cannot stand and that was a new voice in the United States and so we hadn't what purported to be a new political party but it needed wasn't it was the same old mess that you got all the time and along with where we've come along quite a ways since then I don't think we've learned much of anything and injustice still flourishes as it does in every country you know we don't have a corner on that at times it looks like I never thought I'd be ashamed of being an American and Apple great what are you going to tell anybody about this oh I didn't know what was going on I sound like you know a good German and we know what they sounded like pretty tinny and we've let all these things happen because what happened after 9/11 there conspiracy theorists who like to think that george w bush did it you know that he blew up part of New York and so on one thing about 9/11 it was strategically superb it worked perfectly nothing bush and company has done has been any good at all failure is just their daily business whether it's Katrina or something and it was used as they've been waiting the one thing that matters the most to them and I will Prescott Bush father to the first President Bush he was a senator from the far right who hated Franklin Roosevelt and this is the major thing the Republicans have going below just sheer hatred of somebody who gave us a Social Security who gave us the GI Bill of Rights nobody had ever done anything for ex-soldiers before I was one of thirteen million of them who were mustered out in 1945 and 46 in everybody was sent to school change the whole class system of the country or the better and I thought to know their war is on mr. Roosevelt and mrs. Roosevelt they hated her because she was a do-gooder apparently if they like do batters and they have quite a few and hitting their ranks and so this war goes on and American people have no it is the United States of amnesia I did not intend to spend my life explaining the country to everybody I quote more things I wanted to do laughing and romping on the green sward than that but you have an obligation to do what it is that you think you can do and if teach is teaching American history and I will fill in but I wish others were doing it okay would it be fair to say that this stemmed from your parents burger you were brought up largely or to a great extent by your grandfather a senator blind senator an extraordinary man in so many ways you live with him you read aloud to him he was a most tremendous influence on your life can you give us two or three of his characteristics that you think frankly formed your political opinions in your opinion about what America should be well he was a glorious misanthrope if there was any race other than the human race I'd go join it that was his basic law he brought for his sins he put together some Indian territories in the southwest the Comanche tribes and the Kiowa and he invented a new state called Oklahoma which of that sort has always run in our family you didn't know what to do with it except tell them to you know vote for him for Senate every six years which they did immediately he didn't much care for them and he was an atheist in a Bible Belt State you know very daring unlike the people in public office today that generation they didn't they did not like to tell lies obviously they had to from time to time but they didn't do it very much and he never did and he I don't know how it was they asked him and Mike about my grandmother and himself and he was a blind boy and she was a young woman for half of Texas and she was Anglican and he was a Methodist they said how do you resolve these are serious questions in the South the religious differences between you and mrs. Gore well he said we've solved it one Sunday we don't go to my church the next Sunday we don't go to her he was always really keyed in a landslide the business patent the business of teen before you to never lie this one other thing about him he said that there was no war worth going to which would lose an American life as I think no foreign war or war well he met World War one and he was not very much in favor or entering World War two either he thought Europe was getting what it wrought rather deserved by these wars internally and on your content and we had enough to do to fill up the continent to bustle around and business which we proved to be very good at I don't know why and leave Europe to the Europeans it was original isolationist and all the Liberals in the United States what we now call liberals they were isolationist and everybody pretended they were reactionaries well they weren't reactionaries they were all the progressives in the United States pretty much isolationist against Foreign Wars and they were very popular and they got elected and elected and elected he was elected and I think 20 times of the said and he felt that we had enough to do at home we had a broad mandate big fuel and of course I do a broad mandate given us by the Constitution itself what we could do should do must do perfect a society take it seriously you know we got rid of a few months ago Magna Carta well that is the nicest present England ever left us when it was we were very grateful to have it but out of that came due process of law which is the very beginning of our judicial code we lost that I'm work time president and wartime president says the battery little fellow he isn't wartime president the Constitution requires you have a war before you can act as commander-in-chief and throw your weight around well somebody had told him how Lincoln and some of the others Roosevelt we're wartime presidents and they had unusual powers and he said I want them to she got a crazy little Attorney General called Gonzales who seemed to think he was living in Mexico with you know who's going to see to it that he could get around anything any law of Congress he could pass they found a funny little thing in the Constitution that sort of whispering right is that the president signs the bill making it law of land you could say I'm not going to a night part three that he wasn't now this is you know this is a higher insanity but we've come to that now mr. Gonzales has vanished you know into the vortex of time not to be recalled any of any further by me but there we were with a crazed Attorney General and a little president who'd stayed out of all of our Wars had not had any sense of honor about these things you know I was a congressional child and went to school with a lot of place called st. Albans and it never occurred to us that we would be draft dodgers that we'd stay out the family wouldn't talk to us I don't say we went gladly but we went and then I look at these people now and I think of the money after the vice president is making out of Halliburton tons of money is coming in he's of mercenaries that we're hiring instead of using the American army because of our vast interests in the Middle East well we know about those anyway it sir can we move on to him to your writing and I was good to talk about your father gene who was an extrordinary glamorous figure and was one of the people with who started the American aircraft industry and along the way he introduced you to the notion which you seized with both hands of being the youngest person ever to fly an aeroplane and your mother on whom you were very harsh and you talked to her for the last whatever it was 10 20 years of her life do you mind if I quote you said about it because it links in with one of the key things that I think is going on in your thinking at the moment you called her an alcoholic liar and you hid the last word very hard well I can but I can't tolerate almost any amount of alcohol any amount of lying I can't take it and now we've got a country dedicated to telling lies everything that we get out of Washington is going to be untrue and every American knows it and the politicians know that we know it and they don't care they hold office now and it will tell us lies about what we're doing what they think they're doing and what they wants to believe you know Montaigne said something fascinating about you says you know once you let the tongue get to that habit of telling lies it cannot stop well it sure is true in our case anyway you you you you what you refer to read and go back to Montaigne several times I copied this down because I knew you'd bring up Monty good and this is a this is a quotation you've used many times lying is an accursed advice it is only our words that bind us together and make us human lying is more worthy of the stake than other crimes and he chided parents for going after children for being untidy and letting them tell lies which will damage their immortal souls Montaigne was always were you one of the things about you I was looking for thieves and one theme that comes out is that you're I mean I I know you're quite stiff up a little about this I mean you're in ways in the sense your own Brit I'm sure you'll take that as a compliment and but you are fearless for instance you came out of the wall you had this first novel just very nice well received your aim at 20 or 21 and golden at that time as other young writers from the war were and you sailed in and wrote the city in the pillar which was not only about homosexuality which caused alarm and fury you know but it was not about effete persons at the edge of society it was about the all-american boys it was about what you'd observed in the Navy and so on and then you disassociated yourself instantly for being icon of the so he went that way and then that way and um why did you want as it were take them on because all hell broke loose the New York Times wouldn't even read your books and they didn't review the next eight novels then you had you up to the pseudonym and their of your des novels or so well I see some faces here that are reflective of the Anglo Irish tradition I'm bloody-minded and I like to fight this is not a nice trade I never claimed it was but there are times that you Leonardo you must speak out you must bear witness and the country that believes so many stupid things as the US does I mean it's so tempting to remind everybody what you're saying is dumber than the last thing you said did you realize that this that a I've asked this before all hell break but B would make you a sort of an outcast that people in all sorts of litter establishment let's take New York Times would turn so ferociously against you I mean we have writer you were even about 24 then when that came out in 48 25 well I knew where their treasures were kept and I gave just as disagreeable a time to the New York Times as ever they gave to me I still do it I go into the advertising revenues that are dropping dropping dropping with each passing year as they get more and more gaga mr. Litvak was published about here's the one the New York ton you know I don't care who he is I don't know anything about it but he felt obliged to tell us about the apostate Muslim look like we're gonna elect a president and well I don't care what he is but I certainly mind the New York Times is trying to smear him justice is becoming quite clear he's going to be elected and they want to be the first in to slam him it's bad to have a national newspaper like that you have no experience of it here Paquin one of the things that the city and the pillow showed at that time as did a clutch of bubbles then and certainly before and certainly in generations and centuries before and massively in this country in the nineteenth even the 18th in the early 20th century was that writers write as a literary fiction literary popular fiction well could be big voices they were big voices they were listened to they're effective and things happen because what they write they wrote sorry and that was happening then in the late 4th early 50s you matter or um do you think that's gone now nope but of course it's gone TV is as it's now common opinion that it is replaced literature pretty much the schools are so desperately down I used to go around when I was a working politician upstate New York and there I had groups you know parents and so on I was always so you know I've never met a boring six-year-old and I've never seen a interesting sixteen-year-old what have you done I get many nervous and answers to that one I think the schools by learning everything by rote which has been going on quite a while now and worse you check a box for a correct answer out of multiple of five boxes and come on that's no way to learn anything and it's it's lazy teaching but where is the curiosity that you know drove me to read you know a hundred books by the time I was 17 and all the Shakespeare cream symbaloo hangings on me like a Ancient Mariner where is the idea that if education should be opening up you're going to learn things you didn't know before that you want to learn when I published a book called burr which is about one of the founders of the United States front father a bright woman that I've known for years but she was very bright and she said what's it about it's about Ehrenberg third vice president United States I said are you are you gonna read it so I send you a copy she said no how can i I don't know who he is and yet give her a truth serum and she could give you every husband an Elizabeth Taylor on the other hand one thing you did say and I would said it in the other fifties but something I would bring it I don't exist to be green as a contesting remark is the day there are a great number of novels and a lot of fiction being written especially in this country and you could say that one of the things that novelists have done is to go into the interior not leave the exterior to you say television but let's use that as a metaphor leave it out there and I've got it in interior and there's plenty to find out there thus plenty of news and there's plenty to be moved about inside there well it's a goal firmly I don't know how useful the interior is is not none of us has ever been there we can guess about it so I like to invent things from Duluth which doesn't exist anywhere on earth Sinclair Lewis would have given you all the best restaurants and cilium Duluth up in Minnesota I don't give you anything except a lot of people behaving in a crazy way then I forget who was who wrote that people often complain I only write about the power people well they're much more interesting than those without power and I think we should know more about them because they have more influence over they get us into the wars suddenly you're in the army then one day you're dead I think we ought you see we like to pretend we have no class system well we have an intricate one and God forbid if you ever try to take it on you will be criticized you know a lineup even though you've written many novels open this series of that narratives of American history fiction and history combined as a melded together you're lying you line up very much behind the essay the voice of the essays let's stick to Montaigne because everybody knows about one time his great influence on Shakespeare on and on and on and on what is it that about the essayist and particularly Montaigne it's the best illustration that strikes you as being more significant more resonant than the storyteller the fiction writer you hear the voice of the dead they are talk still talking and they want to be heard and I think that to me is irresistible interesting and once you hear them Union you know you know where you are who you are they're not irrelevant and they're not really gone they are sitting there waiting to be listened to and I'm happy somebody thought to invent it but in what lies there secure and let's leave Shakespeare out of it because it has confuses everything by his genius really but what for what what is more significant about them than than poets I say fairly recent what Oh Auden and the things that he says and or or playwrights or or in fiction we told start he says and some what I'm trying to sell nail it what is really that you've said the voice maybe that's it maybe I'll stop there but the other said voice is that our voices in the poetry the plays and the under novels well it's between feeling and knowing it's feeling I mean after years of pretending that I had read all of Aristotle I finally did and may I say his politics is just as good to read today in the 21st century as it was the fifth or whatever it was that he was a rather lousy tutor to Alexander the Great and what he does he reviews every democracy in the course of the section of the book or politics every form trying to figure out why they all failed one by one whether it was Crete whether it was Athens whether it's Liberec Lee in theory it's brilliant stuff you can't read it unmoved because it takes its our life - and we're very much part of it we had a wise old bird called Benjamin Franklin who's always caused much distress among the other founders because he was immoral he kept a mistress in Paris he was coming out of the Hall in Philadelphia where the Constitution - being put together as a 1789 and in old lady who's a friend of his said well Ben what are you going to give us he said we're going to give you a republic if you can keep it then a bunch of young men had been hired by the governors of the Constitutional Convention they didn't trust Franklin as he talked to quite a lot and he was brothers sour and these kids just came out behind Benjamin Franklin in the streets said Ben mr. Franklin why are you so down on this constitution he said well I'm not down on it you were very up on it I can see but he said you know every Constitution devised by man I failed well it said listen that a little bit sadistic why couldn't it succeed why does it fail he said it fails because of the corruption of the people and he did not exempt any of us from that in the golden age you quote Herbert Hoover saying what America needs now is a great poem it's the wisest thing he ever said he was most uninspiring man that ever lived and he was thinking about poetry instead of the economy and it would have helped it we had a great poll what would he do this great Oh I mean I'm fascinated about who what would it be about IVD idea what would he do would it say well it wouldn't be jingle bells I think it would be about the shortness of life about a mercantile Republic no better than it should be trying to survive in a world of phantoms we had developed a positively a nautical terror of the Indians that we were displacing and we were behaving in a totally irrational way about the indigenous population of the country who were far more interesting than most of us Europeans who come wandering in it was I get wisdom to write it you were in good form I don't see him as being a good Democrat or a good Republican but anyway he was perverse enough to understand our people you talked about Aristotle looking at democracies and the Greeks are much concerned as you know with the good life what constituted the good now what do you think console would constitute the good life and you think it's at all given your views on America and by extension other places and I presume even more trenchant views on what's happening in China and so what is the good life as you see it and in the present political State is it at all attainable or that is that gone now we're just drifting or you were one of the very earliest to talk about climate change corrupting the world and so and so is it drifting away and we just we are particular viruses on the outer well the thing that the knowledge of death gave us that everything does died including societies nations there comes the Turk moment of terminus and we have premonitions of this some of the great awards the great weapons so on I think the apprehension at all times to just could just go and we will it I find it restful what others don't I'm going to sorry to persist a bit covered if you could prescribe a good life what would it be would it be would we all would it be whatever it we all think it is or do you have things to say that we don't know it it well I think the good life is not thinking about it that's the mistake that it's a formula that you can attach to yourself every day in every way better and better at madam Kawai or whoever it was it's been the aim of every state to achieve it for as much as many as possible of their citizens and every state is failed though gives us something to live for many are negative but actually live a lot of persons towards and he saw halfway through sure the glory screws begin to think of an afterlife or posterity do you have your thought to dwell on astral I'm not bloody minded no I think there is nothing but silence at the end and good luck but the idea that you can turn it into an afterlife there was a woman in Rome just now where I have been we're both on the same television program and she talks to angels since she's gotten in with God too and she's quite candid about what she thinks of the angels in God and I just couldn't resist telling her and Eleanor Roosevelt story as is Roosevelt invited from the Royal Dutch were up in Canada time World War two miss Roosevelt decided ask Queen Wilhelmina to come down to Hyde Park and Queen Wilhelmina turned out to be a religious nut and mrs. Roosevelt was nothing but practical for now I really I'm more interested in feeding the people and telling them stories and she would be very tough and we were meanest ever don't you want to talk to your dead uncle President Theodore Roosevelt you were very fond of him and I can arrange it she said she had this crazy medium from Antwerp mrs. Roosevelt said you know dear we're going to be dead such a long time ourselves I see no reason to get in touch with any of them before you read few years ago at palimpsest your first book of memoirs and and now point-to-point more isn't the point-to-point navigation your second book of memoirs and what what prompted you to write these books well I suppose I thought it was time to make a record that so on and so I did but as I keep saying I'm not my own subjects and God knows I don't do it very well and it's fill in blank places I suppose roads not taken that's always fun did you have fun did you have fun remembering or trying to remember what had happened what had been ill behold in your life yes I also discovered something from a neurologist what we think is our memory if you broke your leg when you were 10 years old you want to recall what it felt like and what happened you can't do it all you will recall is the last time you remembered which is not terribly satisfactory if you really want to recreate your past most people I don't think really do I know and one knows it's there that's about it but it's not like a movie film as you couldn't press a button and you can rewind you can't do that with it it just will come back in its own way the way it was from last youth ornament very unglamorous this is becoming dangerously easeful and quite elegant you're still hanging about so many things why are you so angry about the sky gods never saw one I liked they're all over there cluttering up the sky why do you think that they as responsible and in some cases you almost give you professional unique responsible for the the bad things that happen no I'm more specific than that I think that we've the sky guards just take up too much time with us and far too much room in our thinking for the good that they do us and so I mean I I wrote somewhere other that I thought that what's the word for it monotheism was the greatest disaster to befall the West I preferred philosophy obviously I'd rather spend a little time with Aristotle even if he was a bad tutor rather than evoked Zeus or the kindly gods of love but wise monotheism so uniquely bad I I didn't suppose Hitler or Stalin or Mao on one of those and they did an awful lot of damage in the 20th century think how much more they would have done a live-in mafia they would have had a challenger there it's a brilliant answer but it's unreal and it's probably not right everything is unprovable I don't know I can't quite get why there I can understand why you take answer my question and what Lachlan has another but I don't understand your insistence of the uniqueness of the wickedness they've brought to the planet I just don't get it when you see so many other peoples of different of no gods and so on so forth doing just as much or much much worse in the 20th century much much much worse it's it's clearly the world war two letters that were exchanged between the ex-president Thomas Jefferson and the President John Adams Adams was a very conventional New Englander went church Jefferson didn't and out of the blue Adams wrote Jefferson they're both very old men by that he said the more I read and think I wonder how marvelous the world would be if there was no religion in it Jefferson quite agreed and there were our second and third presidents opposed to organized religion among other things or to giving up the concepts man as man's man and nature's nature you adhere to it as best you can and don't expect any favors from nature otherwise you'll have bad sciatica which I have I would like to carry on that line but I'll drop it and because there are things to be said the other side you've been talking now for nearly fifty minutes we have microphones in the audience and then we can but I think before we go to the microphones in the audience I'm sure you want to show the beginnings of appreciation for gore Vidal now then sir with you you could help us well me cuz I've got to do this enormously if you stick up your hands and to get a mic and a mics around and I collect two or three questions while those are going stick up your hands keep them up and they'll take the microphone from person spoken and give it to the spare hand that kind of thing it's easy to get the hang off so who wants to will the microphone persons come to hear that right is there somebody ready to go well let's go then it used for terribly useful if you stand up for the rest of you because people don't know other sounds coming from thank you anyways getting to the cost of Israel the taxpayers nobody in this country and in America ever discusses the cost and I'm talking about the taxpayer cost of Israel which amounts to about twenty thousand dollars for a family of four in Israel that's what Americans and British people also contribute particularly now with the war in Iraq and as you know the same people who lobbied for the war are the same people who lobby for the aid that goes to and it's been going on for 60 years now it's never discussed it's taboo if you discuss it or as you know when Bill the Fulbright brought that up he got kicked out and this is something nobody wants to touch well you've just given the reason it's quite simple I think what you say is absolutely true and nobody dares touch it because you're called an anti-semite and they go on and on and on oh no about that and that is no way to run the foreign policy of any country even one as deluded as ours I think it said you've taken on you have been accused been anti-semite which given it is just more than ridiculous it's it's it's an affront to everything they he'll partner for many years as a I don't I don't even respond it and you're the great friend zone it's demeaning to explain it but you are have been accused of that what you've objected to is not the study of Israel but the state of the presence of the State of Israel inside American politics and in South America well it's very solid and enormous amounts of money go to prove that there was once a land with other people and the people without land that is a major lie right who's got a microphone anybody got a micro and jump up I'd rather up to than none hello that's right yeah mr. Vidal um you live for many years in Ravello and I think you described Lord Grimm's Thorpe's House of he was an obscure and Lord English Lord he had the best view in the world overlooking the Mediterranean but you've moved now to Los Angeles and could you let us know what you think is for America and for the world the best view in the world right now thank you I guess I'm not looking at I was exchanging the best new in the world from row hello to perhaps the worst of the smog over Los Angeles but to each his art form you're very critical of American education you feel English education is as bad now as American education well I've never been educated in England except inadvertently the Sun that's it I'm afraid personal question I wonder if you would share with us your reaction if any when you learned of the recent death of William F Buckley lol he's not going to like hell he was simply awful I think I gonna have to speed up to keep up I dream who's got the might just stand a bit forget the mic please I am you sir mr. Adel we were you surprised by the way and our past Prime Minister was over enamored by george w bush and joined him in their role in Iraq I think it's for you to tell me I don't know what what what hormonal rippling 'he's there were I think there's no in political life here there's a certain Churchill Envy and have a big war go to the White House watch Roosevelt divide the world mr. Roosevelt deliberately got rid of the colonial European colonial powers starting with French and he told the Prime Minister you were going to have to let India go when this war was ending in Europe and Japan and there was a great Rao over this because mr. Churchill knew it could not be done like that and it was done like that it was very bloody affair but imprisoned not like other people and he saw himself as Augustus the world was his and would do as he said that's why history's interesting who would say he you were talking about then he's not like other people he thought himself we tell my cousin Delano Roosevelt Roosevelt yeah sorry just me being a bit slow and who's got the microphone right open about the Meuse be mr. Badal at the beginning of the evening you mentioned your new shame at being American this is something I can relate to I was wondering what alternatives you could suggest I can think of lots my family I'm ashamed to say James the United States and 1848 the B dolls from Switzerland I'm not going to go around boasting about Switzerland I think we were unwise to have left it but you go worth the tides take you and 1848 was a good year to get out of Europe lots of trouble going on but those who want to go to Canada I know some Americans who do some who want to go to New Zealand don't think it's for us I don't think they'd let us in anyway another question like that is hello mr. Vidal um I found a lot of the things you said sounded quite pessimistic and I just wanted to know where do you look for for hope in your life and how do you find joy in life I do know um is the aim of life to be joy I thought utility was better than I'm an old-fashioned Puritan that to extend something is useful it is worthwhile and you get never you never get tired of trying to be useful because you never really succeed we must learn modesty what of your views on I mean memories on Jack and Jacqueline Kennedy Oh annual he was genuinely witty which does not run in our presidents and I was talking earlier you know he firmly expected to be court-martialed for having lost pt-109 when he got back by the Navy and next thing he knows he's a world national hero because his father has bought a writer called John Hersey who writes about this brave young man who did so much for the Republic I see I did nothing but lose the [ __ ] patience peculiar but I miss him you know he was somebody there days and I find something that I find funny and I want to tell him about it there not many people you ever feel that way about and he got he got that he got the point to the jokes even the jokes about his own family whom he did not Revere as much as so many of the Kennedy i'ts did they were quite Craven around the president Amos he didn't think of them as hallowed by any means I remember some lady journalist was asking him about his father's ambitions for his children and so on and wasn't wonderful that now that he was president many of those would have been fulfilled Teddy had a seat in the Senate and Bobby was Attorney General and how he always thought of his family first to this poor woman and Jack said yes it was here vanity so much for that to have a realist as president of quite a rare thing with us but despite the fact of being so close that when you wrote about them you were very very harsh no I wasn't very harsh well you did say Kennedy was one of the worst presidents ever and Bobby was a phony and his father should be in Devon should be put in jail though no I suppose it could have been I think you I think you've added to the text much down here they have lawyers too now his uh father was not an admirable man he wanted England too good to sink to the bottom of the sea that we should throw in our lot with Hitler which was not a kind thing to do and otherwise I don't realize the invasion of Cuba as being a great activity it just strikes me as an American why am i doing Ronald Reagan now I suppose I'm turning into rock great-great heart whose guy a microphone now yeah so it's quite difficult to see cuz it's in the dark if you helped up yep mr. Wiesel if any book which inspired you to co-writer any book what if any book which inspired you to become a writer the Arabian Nights in the lane translation I was not allowed to earlier ones to my regret real education would have started much earlier no as soon as I read a book I liked I'd sit down and write try to write one it's a bad habit what do you think you found in Arabian Nights - I did with young magic world needs more of it fatalism it's really very it's very cold a roof the poor cobbler and the Djinn comes up to meet him in the desert I I used to be able to visualize things I was reading even Homer I worked out for the the tents of the Greeks on the shore were black and I've asked an expert one-tenth I think they were - its I have one of those weird sort of memories that I can start to visualize almost anything correctly or incorrectly doesn't matter it's just there it adds to the joy and hope madam hope brasses god of mine then mr. Vidal I'm wondering about your skepticism about American involvement in World War two given the Japanese had launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor what do you think should have been done as an Australian we're very grateful for that involvement and have been prostituting ourselves to u.s. pauran policy ever since now their gratitude how do you know Pearl Harbor was a surprise to President Roosevelt he expected it and he had been provoking them and he served on his own record several times as saying this to people like Robert Sherwood quite a good writer who mates wrote speeches for him in the White House and he said look this cannot be Roosevelt's war it will not be popular with the American people they must strike the first blow and there was their fleet heading toward Pearl Harbor and a cousin of mine Admiral Richards was in charge of the fleet which was sunk to the bottom Roosevelt wouldn't let them go to their home port which was San Diego they just sat there and sank this is one of those things was this cause beneficial in its effect in the long run God gets gets rid of ever takes a lot of evil out of the world but it may be adding some more so the causal events in history are not easy to grasp but certainly I remember mr. Roosevelt saying as does the White House is like a more because everybody knew this blow was coming and president knew it and he wasn't going to take take any prophylactic action and who is that the back yes I may come back to the present Barack Obama is elected president United States he's promising change great enthusiasm across the country what does he have to do in order to make you less sad to be an American I'll be very sad when he's shot I don't want us going back to old Nomad methods I would say he was in considerable danger history just really doesn't teach much you know any money yes over that that one hello why do you think Al Gore has been so quiet in this election who Elvis yep maybe he felt he had nothing to add to the discourse he saved the planet for us once to know bells would look greedy yes sir hello wherever you are would you have a mic on you stand up and ask questions gore uring hello yes go you're in charge over here doesn't matter I'll keep on talking go you're in China last year and you talked about the passing of the mantle of heaven and the decline of empire of the Americans and the rise of the Chinese your thoughts on that please well I very much was convinced particularly the vitality of Shanghai and I've just looked around and looked around and looked around and I said to myself being a good Confucian and said well it was clear to me as I see the banner of heaven has gone back to China where it belongs they're back in business is this a good thing for us probably not but it'll quiet them down for a while but we certainly made a mess of the Mandate of Heaven you were when you stood in late fifties early sixties what your policy land was all your policies were radically unfashionable but one was to recognize Red China you are very strong about that then I thought since they had most of the population of the earth we should have good relations just occurred to me it might be some wisdom in that as it was a new thought to the line and William F Buckley who wanted us to bomb them immediately without any excuse just bomb their nuclear capacity exploded God he was a gutsy guy I need more questions before I ask one or two to run yes well nothing stuck I trust you've brought out a little book to torture the children with in schools of selected essays which finally publishers realize that you could inflict this on classes around the country once they saw that opening it was green-lighted greenlit and I'm also working on a one of my historical things on the our war against Mexico which was deliberately fought in order to grab California by that great war monger James K Polk and that started us on the Empire business I remember a British reviewers since this video is insane we have an empire all they've got is Guam I said there are other things in the icebox you know don't go overboard because insulin will because we used to be done yes for a long time yes questions later here prying together what do you want to do have the past eight years been more Dick Cheney's administration and George Bush's well what do you want hell Organa it's the same to those of us roasting it anyway no it's the vice president's unnatural affection for human torturers disturb me and I think the men in white should probably come and take them away and examine them to see if they're exactly know that they're clinically sane and wartime president wartime president not a wartime president for God's sake but he wants wartime powers doesn't know what to do with them except subvert the constitution of the country document he's not read and the agony on his face you know when he has to read one of those speeches I don't think I feel sorry for him but I do realize I feel relief when he's you know going to go away finally like your grandfather I'm an atheist I want to know if you can see a time when a declared a theist will be elected president of the United States well we've had a couple but they didn't call themselves that I mean mr. Jefferson certainly qualifies as an atheist well like oh there is no meantime they call themselves deists which meant they acknowledged the concept of God that was about it and they certainly weren't going to worry about detailed or afterlife and I think we trotted along pretty well without going overboard on the subject we had a pretty bad beginning you know up there in Salem and other undesirable New England towns I think we got enough guard up there right I think I'll ask your noise could please ask this follow-up question sir I can't hear you up you're gonna be good Mike nobody can hear you so it's not much better we have the now I have the greatest disparity in incomes not seen since the 1930s in both United States and in Britain do you think communism will make a comeback well it didn't do tell me well first time around I mean you know there were fun aspects of it I don't know why I always think of Mary Baker Eddy communism is mentioned sure there's a devoted Christian Scientist yet like the late Lady Ashton she will help campaigning once down in Plymouth she said I would rather commit adultery and to let a sip of wine pass my lips the working-class man said well who wouldn't total that one on ourselves and I think you you've given us an awful lot you talk for a very long time and thank you very much indeed go thank you

Channel: Intelligence Squared

Views: 201,111

Rating: 4.7685237 out of 5

Keywords: Gore Vidal, Melvyn Bragg, Intelligence Squared, IQ2

Id: KMui1QZB5yw

Length: 78min 48sec (4728 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2012