What's so enjoyable about Vidal is the range of reference from the classics to popular culture, from the serious to the mocking, and the capacity to make you think again about the things you thought you knew
What a show! Gore is entertaining, eloquent, honest, glib and profound. I could listen to him for hours. What a magnificent and articulate historian and philosopher and artist he is
I don't think respect is the right word. I think he deserved his books to have been read more. I'm sure it added to him being upset at the end of his life other than alcohol. He was upset how interest in books in general faded away and that the population did not smarten up by reading his literature, hence making the same mistakes.
I've heard some great lectures IRL and on RU-vid but I think this is the very best I've come across. It's said that Gore Vidal "loved to piss on his enemies, but from a great height." Leave it to Vidal to rip Abraham Lincoln to shreds while lecturing at Harvard University all the way back in 1991, not to shock and boos but rapturous applause. This was a herculean feat of persuasion and he pulled it off with astounding eloquence.
What a wonderful find! I've watched just about everything on YT featuring Gore Vidal and thought I'd seen everything, but this was new to me and such a boon!
Vidal was a force unto himself. A reporter once asked his father what he thought of some of the things Gore was saying, writing. His father replied, "Well, one thing I can tell you is that it has nothing to do with courage; Gore doesn't give a damn what anyone thinks about him."
About ten years or so ago, I knew two people both in their 50's and college educated, who had never heard of Joseph Stalin. "Are you kidding me?", I asked. They weren't, and one of them got very defensive when I suggested they read a book on Stalin. Vidal is so right about studying history of the world in the schools.
There is a political reason Joe Stalin is not so well known and everyone knows who Hitler was. Though Stalin was an even greater killer than Hitler (which took a lot of killing) he was an ally of the west during WWll and communism was largely given a pass by many in intellectual and academic circles. Eventually Khrushchev tore the veil from Stalin's crimes, but they are not as widely spread as Hitler's crimes.
I once was invited to lunch by a good friend to meet her visiting father, an accomplished man of about 60 at the time (about 20 yrs ago) and an accomplished commercial pilot. He didn’t know the US was involved in WW1 and that 2M American soldiers fought in that war among 4M drafted. 113,000 Americans died in that war. He couldn’t believe it.
@@cindymaceda2999 That's more incredible than my story. I would have thought he would have had a relative or family member (father, perhaps?) that served in WWI.
As a former teacher, I must heartily agree with his revolutionary scrapping of the current educational system. I am Canadian, and therefore was taught something of other counties' histories. The poor Americans know very little of other nations, save that they won the war for the Allies...still trotted out in RU-vid comments ad nauseum.
When Americans study other countries it's often times used to weaponize and politicize events going on in our own country. You'll hear both Democrats and Republicans accuse of eachother of being fascists or just like the Nazis etc. It's a pity
But...this isn't true. I'm an American, and we learned more than just American history through the eyes of America. Thanks God you're a "former" teacher.
Toni...Thank you! Oh, for the truth you tell so well to be told to the Americans...and that they would wake up before they are dead. My god, what a warmongering, dominating, fascist conglomeration we have had since T. Roosevelt (surely even before that.) Our history books are full of lies and our murdering our leaders and good men, known by a small number who care to read & investigate...the rest of America is asleep a long time. We will fall as a nation before we wake up.
Unfortunately, Gore Vidal died four months before the release of Spielberg's Lincoln, one wonders what he would have thought of the film and Daniel Day-Lewis' portrayal.
Well, I love them both(Lincoln & Gore), or their work, I should say. But I’m 2/3 in, and this is looooong on Gore, and not simply short on Lincoln, but positively bereft of any real substantive engagement. It’d be interesting to know what the stipulations were on his invitation to speak here….🤔
Vidal's profound and hilarious sense of irony is lost on his Harvard audience just as his lecture comes on point. I find this to be a troubling and ironic blind spot at Harvard; the Oxford Union, on the other hand, would have chortled at the irony of it all...
The purpose of the president during Grover Cleveland's day was to stand astride the Constitution and protect the state as best he could from the muddled misunderstanding and onslaught by the people.
Jefferson and Washington are probably two of the biggest Hippocrites on Mount Rushmore they preached against slavery but they had slaves and Roosevelt was a racist
