Gore Vidal in conversation with Melvyn Bragg
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- čas přidán 5. 08. 2012
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From 2008: Gore Vidal in conversation with Melvyn Bragg. Filmed at the Royal Geographical Society.
For more Intelligence Squared debates and talks, visit www.intelligencesquared.com
Gore Vidal, as your last year 2012 comes to an end, the New Year will be a little darker without you. I miss you, the world will miss you. It was a better place with your logic and straight talking. - Nobody else can compare, or even come close, to your ability, wealth of knowledge, wit and experience, you are an irreplaceable loss.
R.I.P.
I always thought Buckley whipped his ass.
@@JimDocker you thought wrong. Forgive my late entry into this but I just discovered this video.
It's so outrageous that every interviewer asks Vidal the same questions. It's such a pity. Vidal was such an extremely intelligent and interersting man and more than that: Vidal was an iconoclast. In this age where everything is "iconic" Vidal was smashing icons - we need him back.
Admirably put, notail. I've not watched the Dick Cavett interviews or Vidal's appearance on The South Bank Show. Both venues tended to kill less brain cells than others. Cheers!
He and Hunter Thompson
CZcams has got plenty of other examples of his experience and humanity !
Well, we have his books.
I saw him at a festival around the same time, interviewed by Andrew Marr whose weedy interview technique he simply batted out of the way and got on with what he wanted to say. This was a very old man; how many people criticising him will have half his wits in the unlikely event of their surviving into their 80s? Of course the anecdotes are well-worn by now and the second volume of his autobiography is the work of a tired and unwell man, but read "Palimpsest" if you want an insight into his extraordinary life. His fiction has seldom grabbed me but the essays and criticism remain the best testament to his talent. An honest man in the City on the Plain.
Pan oRoya your lucky that you saw him. I'm too young to be able to have seen him
'Myra Breckinrige' is a masterpiece. The rest? Nah.
I love how Melvynn Bragg asks Vidal about himseld and Vidal goes into the war in Iraq and education.
Have heard Gore do a lot of impressions, but never expected him to mimic Buckley.
You should hear him in the old Buckley vs Vidal debates from the 60's, they both sounded like they were trying to outdo each others accent. Interestingly enough I saw a video of this guy from 2002 and he had no transatlantic accent at all, he actually sounded American. Now fast forward to this 2008 video and not only has the transatlantic returned, it's almost as though he's trying to do an English accent. Buckley never changed his accent, this guy goes back and forth.
Imagine... even in advanced old age, he was still the smartest, most informed, wittiest and most articulate man in the room. And if some of his prognostications were dark- look at us now.
And your comment above still holds true (in 2021).
@@MickHuerta even more so!
@@indigoviperlondon8838 Why do I feel I could come back to this thread in five years and still be, "and...even more so now...?"
@@Conscious_Pilot Ditto.
He said both party's are the same, 40 years ago!!!!!! Not even today do prominent people repeat that truth.
The cat was a pure visionary... a total genius.
Not true. Where they are both the same is campaign contributions.
norman duke That’s “why” they are both the same.
Karl Marx made that observation.
They are both the same because of money. Isn’t absurd that most of the people in the country are not rich and who represents us? Millionaires and billionaires?? It’s politics so the have less get further pushed behind and then told, without irony that it’s our fault. It is absurd. What gives me comfort is continued knowledge and understanding. That is what is so great about Vidal. There is so much power and control with hard earned wisdom.
Great to see the master at work
One thing's for sure, the old man has an international-standard ability to grab the attention by the balls and hold it prone with nothing more than well placed language and the kind of gentle, grandfatherly gravitas earned through decades of experience at the highest levels of intellect.
That's eloquently put.
vidal was never gentle or grandfatherly....it is ridiculous to say so
@Bruno56 vidal was open about his sexuality....but that really isnt your point....you just are a very immature child...who projects their homosexuality onto others in a negative way to alleviate your feelings of guilt....it is always a clear give away...and you fool no one....no one BUT a latent homosexual..like you are would even think of making such a comment...
@Bruno56 Mr. Vidal lived in Europe for decades, he had a life partner and if you know something about him being a pedophile you should have some credible evidence, without it it is a slander on your part.
Also, he can remember everything he's read.
My intellectual hero. Thanks for posting.
He and Hunter Thompson.
Vidal was brilliant he was right about lying it’s pure evil and causes untold misery
The The Orange One never lies . . . . . never.
@@higgsmerino3925 "Politicians lie in the way that birds sing." -Gore Vidal
this discussion could be a template for understanding wisdom, without the forceful direction.
Gore Vidal changed my view of history along with Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky I will love them tell my last day in this world.
You should also give Christopher Hitchens a try, unless you're one of the crackpot anti-Hitchens/'Hitchens was a Neo Con' types.
Christopher Hitchens to me was a man with merit once but he sold out to power as the majority of supposed "Intellectuals" have throughout recorded history. I cannot forgive his Feb. 2010 slander against Vidal who is as careful with the facts as a person can be.
he was great for a period but it really is futile to dispute his embrace of Wolfowitz toward the end of his life oddly
Jeremy Reagan please explain I would like to know more on why you said that?
chris bennett Vidal mentions Hitchens’ transition in United States of Amnesia, but not in detail.
thanks so much for this upload. He was old and infirm but at his sententious best. The way his weltanschauung revealed itself in short sentences was almost breathtaking.
bbbartolo why say “worldview” or “outlook” when one can say the magnificent “weltanschauung”......?
@@mediolanumhibernicus3353 I misspelled. Shoulda been capitalized.
@@mediolanumhibernicus3353 Not wishing to stray from these uploads about Vidal, I don't know what these German looking words means. Help please !
@@corryjookit7818 See synonyms above, i.e. worldview
@@mediolanumhibernicus3353 Thank you so much. Yes it's a great word, joyful to ponder and then to speak.
We still use mercenaries. So embarrassing what America really is.
a nation built on slavery and genocide isn't enough?
@@JosephORourke Actually it is.
Also very talented and gifted in voices.....a brilliant imitator
Yes, I'd never realized how good an impressionist he was. What convinced me was his impression of Eisenhower! LOLLOLLOL! I'd never heard anyone do Ike!
Great memory too ..
You think there's a connection . . . between his brilliance and his ability to do impressions?
If only he was around now, my god what would he think?
i had a friend who knew vidal in italy...he told me gore would enter sit in HIS chair and proceed to hold court
i so miss our midnight walks down by the lake...may ur spirit thrive up yonder on the special cloud for men of wit and class...
Thankyou for uploading this. Any Gore is absolute gold, nevermind Gore being interviewed by Melvin Bragg.
Loving this man's perspective.
"Well, he's not gonna like hell" America, now more than ever, needs more young people to step up and carry his torch!!!
" I guess I'm not looking at it" at the 54:00 mark... ha ha! He has a remarkable sense of humor.
Can you just imagine how horrified he would be in 2021!!
He wouldn't be surprised. He saw it coming a long way off.
I've tended to think of Gore Vidal in conjunction with William F Buckley, both verbal masters but different in how they applied words. Buckley trotted out words as ornaments. Vidal used words to speak.
+Charles Ashurst Nicely put.
+Dennis Diderot Although I love Gore Vidal I tend to agree with this. I guess a public debate may not be about whether an idea is true or not though. It's more about performance and Gore was ridiculously good at that.
+Charles Ashurst They hated each other in real life!
Buckley trotted out words as subtle insults. I think he was ashamed of being from West Virginia. While Vidal was actually a gentleman of the south who knew a politician when he saw one. Buckley was a typical status quo politician who really took his politics seriously, while Vidal being well schooled by his maternal grandfather knew better than to take politics too seriously. Vidal wouldn't be corralled by Buckleys sound bites, and Buckley took it personally.
He was quite amazing . A good writer as well ...
Gore Vidal was and is the greatest historian dramatist political commentator and critic.
Hes less than one in a million... I don't think there are more than 7,000 people like him in the world.
Correction: There are/were only two.....Gore Vidal and myself....now unfortunately only one: me.
0:50:20 - Q & A
0:51:35 - Q1 :
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0:53:48 - Q2 :
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1:00:28 - Q8 :
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1:04:08 - Q9 :
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1:11:56 - Q14 : no mic
1:13:49 - Q15 :
1:15:15 - Q16 :
1:16:46 - Q17 :
1:18:00 - Thank you very much, indeed.
He was brilliant.
Spoke truthfully, too
This is priceless. Gold. Wonderful stuff.
What an absolutely wonderful talk.
He is a wonderful man. Sad that he is aging. They are startiing to destroy his writings and memory.
Sorry to inform you, but Vidal died years ago. 😥
What the hell are you talking about? You sound like a Russian Disinformation Troll.
He was a patriot (not a populist nationalist).......
Boomerang Chronicle he called patriotism the last bastion of phonies or cowards.
"Never underestimate white guilt". "We found other ways to enslave people".... I wish I could remember every word he says....
"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That mankind does not learn very well from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history." - Aldous Huxley -
Ironically, died as Kennedy was being assassinated . . . great quote btw
great clarity
Sorely missed in today’s USA 🇺🇸 a skeptic, an historian, an anti-war advocate, an anti-Israel American but sad to say having little or none at all faith! ♥️✝️♥️
David Ream The philosophical flaws were cynicism, the religion of unbelief, and bitterness. I would say he had a certain faith in a virtuous Republic based upon truth. But he also had a deeply realistic view of human nature, not an idealistic one. In a Country that no longer longer believes in the truth- a deep unifier in former times, or Virtue, or teaches, generally, the virtues that flow therefrom, Gore probably would now be comparing us to Rome in decline, and quoting Gibbon.
Good thing he did not live to see Trump.
Just my thought ...he would have died of SHAME TO BE STILL ALIVE ,IN A TWISTED AMERICA ,WITH A TRUMP IN THE HOUSE !!
Yeah Trump is just the symptom. But he would have shuddered seeing Trump strong arm the silly ass U.S. embassy into Jerusalem. Makes you wonder what are they ever going to do with the one in Baghdad.
But his thoughts, brilliant intellect ate sorely missed, right?
"Lies will damage your immortal soul"
This man takes 5 minutes to answer a simple question and every second of every minute of it is entertaining. A true intellectual.
And he takes 5 seconds to answer complex ones.
mr vidal ur an absolute darling!
To me it seemed like a reaction to dull and loaded questions. I do think he lost a certain fire about him, and wasn't so easily piqued, I would attribute that to some of his more bland answers rather than mental decline.
No More War
Who could forget Bierce?
Wow - Vidal is really speaking to us today ... he wld have been SCATHING @ Trump and Americans having elected him...
Always great to hear GV, but how did MB get away with it all these years?
stealth, ambition and treachery... just like most TV execs
Gore's sexuality was ambidexterous?!? There goes any consolation I awarded myself when thinking of my own hetero conquest scorecard! I heard him remark that the person he loved most was not his partner he died with (who also spent the most years 'with' him.) Hitchens also remarks in his book "Hitch 22" that Gore was notorious for denying his counterpart in sex any pleasure. His ability to utilize mystique equiponderate to confrontation I believe did wonders for his writing and sex life.
I heard someone say one time that he had spent most of his life dealing with an irrational fear of being gored to death by a bull. But that fear had now changed to being bulled to death by a gore.
or bored to death by a gull
reading one of his autobiographys....awesome
Would it be to much to expect that the audio people have any audio problems sorted out and rectified before the program commences, precisely to avoid the unpleasant squeals and grunts audible at the start of this event? Not to have the audio working perfectly seems to me to be an insult to the two formidable intellects here.
Gore is witty, brilliant, funny and quite the raconteur. He is the supreme speaker. Honest, candid and outspoken, fearless. Literary giant. When asked why he left the United States to live in Italy, he replied: "Americans live in constant guilt and fear and he wanted no part of it." God bless him. I miss him terribly. Thank you for posting this extraordinary episode.
An American actor should adapt this as a One Man Show for theatre, and take it on national tour: Gore Vidal sharing his thoughts about America. Perhaps the show could use a little bit of 'poetic licence' and speculate on what Vidal might have said about Trump's presidency.
Anybody viewing this in May 2020 (Covid-19)
No
I bought a ticket for this event, then bought train tickets. Then on the day i went to the train station I realised that the even occured the day previously and I had bought train tickets for the wrong day. I still went to London, but was devastated I never got to see the man.
One of the best conversations, If not the best ever. As time passes and ignorance sweeps this country, what do we do??????? We can now understand what civilizations thought as the dark ages have sweep across the land. We maybe heading for the second dark ages. This was the fear that this man felt in his last days. How sad of state we find our country.
I had to read gore vidal's Julian novel in college western civ. It was pretty awesome, the first third that I got thru, at least.
"We've become a country of lies. Everyone knows it and the politicians know we know but they don't care." America hasn't changed course since this discussion.
vidal is brilliant here...intent on cutting right to the point....with nothing but truth....the interviewer does his part...keeping gore away from the simple and easy laughs
Bragg's retorts on the religion argument were pathetic deflection, Vidal is beyond him in so many ways here.
Bragg the Establishment lackey can't hold Vidal back .
My God what would he make of the current monstrosity in the White House
Daniel Carry He would marshal his not inconsiderable intellect and razor wit, and the English language, and call him out as a fraud and a con. Might've called him something like Roy Cohn's Charlie McCarthy. Your suggestions a la Gore?
People cough when he's on to something
HE said nobody did anything for vets? Didn't lincoln dish out a bunch of veterans' pensions?
Totally fascinating, his sharp mind is contagious.
Geniius
it is hard to hear. whre are the microphones~?~
His disgust for liars must have him spinning in his grave in the age of trump.
My god, this man put on so much. He had this perfect transatlantic accent in the 60's. Fast forwarded to a 2002 video of him and he had lost that accent. Now here he has tried to adopt an old world English accent. What was with this man and accents?
His accent is hardly english by any stretch of the imagination. His enunciation is simply excellent and educated.
Transatlantic is not what you call "English" accent.
The affectation is very similar to FDR's. Compare them. But, truly, fuck that stupid distraction: the content of his commentary is the thing. Dork.
I think Mr Vidal adapted his accent to suit whatever country or maybe even whatever mood he was in!....even in American interviews he rarely spoke with the same cadences and inflections in any two successive interviews. He was the mythological 'left handed gun' of both the American political and literary establishments.
Same went for Buckley and Mailer.
Yes. After a couple of sentences he gets back to the same topics.
An intellectual American, which he was and a shining icon etched in the American literary history. Today when we say intellectual American, one feels strangely uncomfortable, as if, he has uttered an oxymoronic expression. Times changed
Never underestimate White guilt." ~ Gore Vidal
czcams.com/video/KMui1QZB5yw/video.html
Time stamp?
Fantastic and admirable!
It's necessary to acknowledge the concept of the perceptions and labels in terms of "god", but remain agnostic in the conception of Actuality, and without anthropomorphic projections.
I love Gore.
This Man was a treasure. American intelligence is in decline with every passing of the few
Look up H L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock if you liked Gore Vidal...
The RGS couldn't afford a competent audio engineer?
Was he at the stage of "wet brain" where he claimed there were Somali pirates in his pool?
His liking Hilary is very strange since she is a complete self server on the side of Wall Street. The Third Way personified.
+Dennis Diderot. Very quick of you. Gore is in his dotage so perhaps being a bit daffy is ok. I had forgotten all about this video. Hilary is the consummate self serving liar. Both Clintons are very bad for the Democrats.
Not about corruption but her competence. She was a competent bureaucrat (esp compared to the Trump circus train) but a mediocre candidate.
"The Dead Centre" as Gore memorably called it.
He's a one off. Hilarious. Who willreplace him? Jordan?
You must be joking. i hope you are.
Don't rest in peace, Gore. Make the welkin ring with cakes and ale. Let the cherubim and seraphim enjoy the off-the-cuff flashes of your jeu d'esprit.
Prof Sattar Basra Voltaire smiled. Jesus wept. Gore coined a zinger. Even God smiled, briefly.
Thank you, Gore Vidal...
Speaking truth to a one time Republic that became Empire and wears no clothes
Chris Greene And it's emperor, lately giving on air medical advice. Gore would have pegged him as a self confident ignoramus, a know nothing disguised as a know it all.
I miss Mr Vidal; it seems I grew up watching him on television.
The Vidals come from Catalunya
What a loss. Does anyone know of anyone in 2021 that's as open, logical, informative as Gore Vidal? Let's say, a successor if you will.
This wisdom has gone forever. No guts no more.
A bit extreme on your part, no?
I get your main point, though.
All of us get old. And if people want to pay you to keep speaking, then you go. I saw him in 2003 at Harvard Univ. He was brilliant as always but was over weight and had trouble walking. He lasted almost 10 more yrs after that. He outlived Mailer & Buckley.
(a good thing for the last word) He was very critical of JFK, RFK and Bill Clinton for that matter but I still admire him greatly becasue he didn't "pull punches"
Wonder what he would say about the Trump hatred
36:31-39:03 ...
31:10 gore is right here
Kennedy was unable to locate the Japanese ships as it was pitch black out so he shut off his engines as they tried to hear them. Great idea but soon after his ship was struck.
The sound needs improvement. Is to low!
I find I'm fast forwarding past the interviewer, Melvyn Bragg. His inarticulate questions and stumbling familiarity are of less than no interest. Vidal uses his interruptions as mere jumping-off points for more important matters.
We need more men (and) women of this type of intellect and humour ...
I've never been a fan of Bragg... He adds so little to the conversation and brings less with him.
Thats it Gore Vidal is on my Xmas list!!
If you wish to let "hitler" park rent free in your mind have at but give the rest of us a brake and keep it to yourself?
True Genius!