GORE VIDAL : UNITED STATES OF AMNESIA at the GFT

Once you get under the veneer of superficial showmanship seeking out publicity and attention in the addiction gallery of TV  with almost a parody of icon worship amply armed with his acerbic,caustic ,heavy-duty  sledgehammer wit  that the later Gore Vidal became , one suddenly finds the deep,reflective , highly perceptive chronicler of the descent of America into Empire with all the ills it brings at home and abroad , which seems  the truer version of the man.

In this documentary we see him discuss a version of Kennedy that rings true from the ideal of cult we have been fed , a leader who had lost the liberal , young and racial minorities support , initiated undermining of democracy in Brazil ,the failed Bay of Pigs in Cuba ,  started the process of sending troops to Vietnam which , according to Gore , would have had him bogged down as much as Johnson was without the advantage of being able to push through the civil rights laws that only a Southerner like Johnson could have managed , and escaped the Cuban Missile crisis by the skin of his teeth when the issue could have been resolved much earlier with less histrionics had he been less cavalier in dealing with Khrushchev in Vienna.



He also calls out Christopher Hitchens as an ideological shape-shifter  , drifting from faux-left to cheerleader for neo-cons and their spurious imperial projects and puts the arrogant , bloated ,pretender in his place.



This review from The Herald gives some taste of the various topics covered in this documentary , some spot on , others perverse and absurd.

"Jay Parini, his literary executor, describes him as "shy". It sounds surprising but one recognises its truth. Often, he was not easy in the company of strangers and seemed discomfited, which could lead him to utter something outrageous. Moreover, his manner was so imperious that it was hard to engage him in debate. Of small talk he had none"

He also was very dismissive of the prospects of genuine change under the Obama Administration , knowing how the Government works he suspected Corporate America would have bought any President ten times over before he got anywhere near the Oval Office.