We’ve Lost One Of The Bravest Writers Of Our Times

“The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country – and we haven’t seen them since.” —  American writer Gore Vidal

From Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper 

Five years ago we lost Norman Mailer. Earlier this year we lost Christopher Hitchens, and now Gore Vidal.

American writer Gore Vidal

It may not matter to all of those people who can’t read or think past a tweet or a two-sentence note from a “friend” on Facebook, talking about the nice pair of shoes they bought, but it may mean something to any of you who are left out there who appreciate the value of having a few writers around who have some real thoughtful gravity to them, whether you agree with their views on not.

It is that kind of probing, searing, kick-out-the-jams-and-go-for-it gravity that our troubled world has lost once again with the death this July 31 of American writer Gore Vidal at age 86.

Interestingly enough, Vidal was born in to wealth or what he often called the “ruling class” which made all of his many attacks on that class (what many now refer to as the 1%) and the corporate America that morphed out of it all the more powerful. “The genius of our ruling class,” he once said, “is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return. 

Those of us over the age of 50 may remember that Vidal, like Mailer, was a regular guest on a number of American talk shows – venues as light in so many other ways as the Merv Griffin and Mike Douglas Shows – where he would rail against the War in Vietnam, weapons manufacturers, the corruption of the Nixon administration, etc. But as time went on and shares in the major television networks were bought up by every more petro-chemical companies, arms dealers and other  corporations involved in shipping American manufacturing jobs to sweatshops overseas, voices like Vidal’s, Mailer’ and others of their ilk were marginalized and you rarely saw them being interviewed on mainstream television any more.

Vidal once observed that more and more often, the major networks and cable news shows put on talking heads representing the two mainstream parties – ‘tweedle dee and tweedle dum’ – whose comments to any question they are asked consist of carefully scripted talking points that are totally predictable to anyone who took a little time away from watching ‘The Price Is Right’ to follow what is going on. He came to believe that there is no longer any substantive difference  between the Democratic and Republican Parties because both have been bought off with the monies from the in the U.S. He felt both parties had sold out to big money a long time ago.

In one of the last interviews I saw Vidal do on mainstream television – it happened to be The Today Show on NBC in 2001 – he started to point out that the major American networks no longer had the courage to challenge the powers-that-be because they are owned by the powers-that-be. As he started naming some of the corporate owners like Westinghouse, a manufacturer of weapons parts and an owner of NBC, and other companies controlling the broadcast media, the image on the screen began to break up and a host said to Vidal, who was being interviewed from a residence in southern Italy, that it looked like they were losing their satellite feed. As I recall, Vidal’s last words, spoken rather sarcastically were; ‘How fortunate for you,’ before the image went snow white and the network quickly switched to a deodorant commercial.

A few years later, Public Television in the U.S. would show the courage and presence of mind to do Gore Vidal up right in a two-hour special edition of the American Masters series – honoring him for the great essayist and writer of books like Lincoln, 1876, Empire and Burr that made him one of the last in a line of great celebrity authors in the country, including Mailer and Truman Capote, and stretching back to Mark Twain and Ernest Hemmingway.

In some of his final years, Vidal wrote even tougher stuff on the country he seemed to have such a lover’s quarrel with. Those writings included a book of essays called; ‘Dreaming War – Blood For Oil And The Cheney-Bush Junta.

I will leave you here with a brief excerpt from that book from a decade ago, less than a year after the 9/11 attacks.

“I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the ‘long war’ proclaimed. Iraq, Iran, North Korea were fingered immediately as enemies to be clobbered because they might or might not be harbouring terrorists who might or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us.

“’Odd,’ said a fellow veteran of World War II, ‘that Bush and Cheney are so delighted to put us at war when, during Vietnam, they were both what we used to call draft dodgers.’ But then we agreed that in our politics the sissies are always cheerleading the real guys on to give their lives. Real Soldiers like Colin Powell are less gung ho. 

“Thus, we declared war on terrorism – an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all, as you need a country for that. Of course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was leveled from a great height, but then what’s collateral damage – like an entire country – when you’re targeting the personification of evil.” 

Mr. Vidal, thank you for leaving us with a rich body of essays and books we can read and re-read over and over again for the value they will continue to offer for years to come to our collective discourse around war and peace, real democracy and fake democracy, social justice and the arts. In a world that is dangerous and crazy, and where the media is more often interested in how many tweets the latest costume warn by Lady Gaga received, we need voices like yours more than ever, and I miss you already.

(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post, remembering that NAL only posts comments by individuals who are also willing to share their first and last name.)