Approaching Gore Vidal: Part 2, 'Selected Writings'

Gore Vidal's politics are probably the most intriguing thing about the man. An odd kind of Democrat, he has vehemently opposed America's intervention in all wars including WWII, correctly regards the US an empire, and believes in the legalisation of all drugs. When his personal life is factored in, it is impossible to believe that he was a friend of the Kennedys and Clintons, and a congressional candidate. But, class counts in the States, despite the lunatic pronouncements of pro-Americans on the subject of the American Dream, which is, and has always been a dream.

'Selected Writings', never less than entertaining, collects Gore's writings on books and politics, largely sidestepping Gore's name-dropping, aristocratic side. Of course, these are more than one side of the man (probably nearer 2/3rds), and they creep in - an eyewitness account of 50s Egypt is by turns a travelogue of the kind popularised (?) by Michael Winner and a breathtakingly detailed exposition of superpower rivalry, coming to the then radical conclusion that money, not politics, was the determining factor. A brilliant, before-its-time (1981!) attack on the homophobia and racism of one of the original neo-cons, Norman Podhoretz, 'Pink Triangle and Yellow Star' (exerpt here), is marred by Vidal's compulsion to mock Podhoretz and his wife, Midge Decter, for being nouveau riche, of 'the new class' - not Mayflower originals like the Grand Old Gores.

Vidal's radicalism is absurdly wide-ranging, ranging from attacks on what he calls The Family to ending an essay on 9/11 with a simple, and gigantic, table of US interventions in the 10 years preceeding the attacks. In the same essay, the pre-9/11 Bush is compared to Hitler. Reading Gore's more recent work, the motivation behind his surreal election night face-off with David Dimbleby becomes blindingly clear.

Vidal has bitten off a large chunk of extreme libertarian thought - during the Clinton years, he famously associated with the survivalist convicted of the Oklahoma Bombings. He therefore expresses his anti-imperialism in the tones of one who accepts the Israel Lobby thesis, with touches of New World Order 'theory'. Added to this a fierce (and inexplicable) support for the Democrats, Bush became, to Gore, a fascist dictator, clamping down on dissent, launching criminal wars. While Bush undoubtably did this, Gore saw Bush and the Republican party as cancers on America, and not a logical outgrowth. When the Republicans were defeated at the polls, all the totalitarianism that had been determined by Gore - the theft of the 2000/2004 elections by Republican 'criminals' vanished into smoke. A fascist party that gets peacefully replaced by its rivals, isn't a fascist party.