The Mob had done so much to get Kennedy elected
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Q2 Playboy: Did you see Primary Colors and Wag the Dog? Were their releases serendipitous?
Vidal: Primary Colors--the film is as funny as you might expect Nichols and May to be. The plot was taken from my play and later film, The Best Man. I noticed this at the time of the book but said nothing. I am often ripped off and I suppose it is a compliment. Mr. Anonymous took my plot: Will candidate use dirt on opponent and win or refuse and drop out? My character (Henry Fonda) did not. His (Travolta) did. Wag the Dog was farce--this is just guessing--when something a bit more realistic would have been a lot funnier and more harrowing.
Q3 Playboy: Last spring, Senate GOP leaders were considering including tobacco tax revenue in the Medicare Trust Fund. Is this plausible?
Vidal: Hardly. Helms, et al. need that tobacco money to pay for their elections. The original Clinton proposal would have been sufficient to place us among civilized nations such as Canada, Germany and so on. Reflex from corporate America: They are all going bankrupt because of the frills. Bullshit, of course. We rank something like 20 or 21 in The Economist's quality-of-life survey. Denmark is number one. Everyone wants to come to America, howls corporate America, staring at the Rio Grande. No European does except to get cheap sex and drugs. We're a second-world nation as far as 80 percent of our people go. Twenty percent do wonderfully well, working for the one percent that owns most of the wealth.
Q4 Playboy: Woodrow Wilson once said, "Secrets mean impropriety." Do you agree?
Vidal: When anyone says to me, "Can you keep a secret?" I say, "Why should I, if you can't?"
Q5 Playboy: You've said that Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a great president. Why?
Vidal: Energy. Knowledge of issues. And I favored her health care proposal, the most important notion since FDR's Social Security Act of 1935.
Q6 Playboy: Deborah Tannen laments that American society frames most public discourse in polarities. "Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention--an argument culture. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as both sides. Nearly everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern." Is that an exaggeration?
Q2 Playboy: Did you see Primary Colors and Wag the Dog? Were their releases serendipitous?
Vidal: Primary Colors--the film is as funny as you might expect Nichols and May to be. The plot was taken from my play and later film, The Best Man. I noticed this at the time of the book but said nothing. I am often ripped off and I suppose it is a compliment. Mr. Anonymous took my plot: Will candidate use dirt on opponent and win or refuse and drop out? My character (Henry Fonda) did not. His (Travolta) did. Wag the Dog was farce--this is just guessing--when something a bit more realistic would have been a lot funnier and more harrowing.
Q3 Playboy: Last spring, Senate GOP leaders were considering including tobacco tax revenue in the Medicare Trust Fund. Is this plausible?
Vidal: Hardly. Helms, et al. need that tobacco money to pay for their elections. The original Clinton proposal would have been sufficient to place us among civilized nations such as Canada, Germany and so on. Reflex from corporate America: They are all going bankrupt because of the frills. Bullshit, of course. We rank something like 20 or 21 in The Economist's quality-of-life survey. Denmark is number one. Everyone wants to come to America, howls corporate America, staring at the Rio Grande. No European does except to get cheap sex and drugs. We're a second-world nation as far as 80 percent of our people go. Twenty percent do wonderfully well, working for the one percent that owns most of the wealth.
Q4 Playboy: Woodrow Wilson once said, "Secrets mean impropriety." Do you agree?
Vidal: When anyone says to me, "Can you keep a secret?" I say, "Why should I, if you can't?"
Q5 Playboy: You've said that Hillary Rodham Clinton would make a great president. Why?
Vidal: Energy. Knowledge of issues. And I favored her health care proposal, the most important notion since FDR's Social Security Act of 1935.
Q6 Playboy: Deborah Tannen laments that American society frames most public discourse in polarities. "Our spirits are corroded by living in an atmosphere of unrelenting contention--an argument culture. It rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate; the best way to cover news is to find spokespeople who express the most extreme, polarized views and present them as both sides. Nearly everything is framed as a battle or game in which winning or losing is the main concern." Is that an exaggeration?
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