http://www.blogger.com/template-edit.g?blogID=27684744 ARTYFACTS: Day 18 - Gore Vidal

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Day 18 - Gore Vidal

It's like sitting at dinner hearing a very erudite guest hold court. His main target was Bush and the US, one a cretin, the other a busted flush (broke). Vidal has been alive for one third of the history of the US, knew or knows may of the main players. His take on them:

Hilary Clinton - witty but reminds men of their first wife
Macain - lost his plane, captured, empty vessel
Woodrow Wilson - terrible
Truman - truly awful
Bush - idiot
Vice president - takes an was - unnatural interest in torture
Roosevelt - best ever president
Blair - taking an unnatural interest in Catholicism
Mandelson - awful
Gore - OK, but didn't like his slideshow

No one who believes in the afterlife should be allowed to become President. The cinema, he regards as a low art form, as it has no 'brain'. It is the essay, not fiction that he sees as his legacy, that whisper from the past - Montaigne, Aristotle. There is only Republican TV in the US. Bad news when they stopped teaching geography. If he were to write about the UK, who and when - Scottish Enlightenment - Hume/Hobbes.

His final note, in response to a question by my friend Tessa, 'Which TV series do you prefer - West Wing or The Sopranos?' he replied' I've see neither'. He gets his news these days from the Internet. This was refreshing as I've spent most of this Festival listening to sceptics and Baby Boomers slam the internet as a medium.

Witty and uplifting.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey you forgot about the French dude with a super model wife. Boy he rocks! Nicholas something Sarkozy whatever. This all is hardly art, art is naturally elevating this is all too much effort to imitate art! Today I discovered this blog too. You must be wondering how this much time? Actually when there is work there is no time, due to recession in the US work flow has stopped so this dull phase. I read the learning blogs as I am new to all this just nine months. I was freelancing as a writer and researcher but Instructional Designing is new to me. Please do not mind the spellings I have this habit of typing very fast to race with the thoughts and then, to never read what I write. Niceblogs!

12:22 pm  

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