Hooray Hooray

...the first of May:

Outdoor sex begins today!


Gore Vidal and friend

The dearest things I know are what you are

A double whammy of sad news today - that master of the acerbic waspish put-downs, intelligent political analyst, cynic and author, one of my icons Gore Vidal is dead at 86.

I adored the man - and featured him here, here and here.

The world of entertainment has also suffered another sad loss, as the great crooner (former Mr Cyd Charisse and former Mr Alice Faye) Tony Martin has passed away, aged 98.

Two long-lived and exceptionally talented men, whose loss is massive.

Here is Mr Martin singing a most appropriate number for this sad occasion (and one of my favourite Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein songs), All The Things You Are:

Tony Martin - All The Things You Are

RIP.

Twice.

Tony Martin on Wikipedia

I don't want to be respectable

"I don't want anything. I don't want a job. I don't want to be respectable. I don't want prizes. I turned down the National Institute of Arts and Letters when I was elected to it in 1976 on the grounds that I already belonged to the Diners Club."
Gore Vidal

A selection of photographs by Hedi Slimane of the great writer, orator, political pundit and wit Gore Vidal has been published.

















I have the deepest admiration for this man, and have written about him before - here and here.

These photos are stunning, and thanks to the lovely people over at The Pandorian for alerting me to them...

"Everybody with an IQ above room temperature is on to the con act of our media"

On the occasion of his 84th birthday, I feel it is important to once more celebrate the absolute genius that is Gore Vidal.

At a recent performance of the acclaimed West End play Mother Courage, Mr Vidal apparently stood and addressed the audience with an anti-war speech. His ascerbic analysis of the state of the Western world, and American society in particular, its wars, the duplicity and corruption of its politicians, and the lies peddled by the media, is legendary.

Read my blog on the wit and wisdom of Gore Vidal last year.

On the state of journalism today, he says:

"Everybody with an IQ above room temperature is on to the con act of our media. They are obeying bigger, richer interests than informing the public - which is the last thing that corporate America has ever been interested in doing."

When asked how he thought President Barack Obama is doing:

“Dreadfully. I was hopeful. He was the most intelligent person we’ve had in that position for a long time. But he’s inexperienced. He has a total inability to understand military matters. He’s acting as if Afghanistan is the magic talisman: solve that and you solve terrorism.”

"America has no intellectual class and is rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is."

On the Republicans:

"Obama believes the Republican Party is a party when in fact it’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth, based on hatred - religious hatred, racial hatred. When you foreigners hear the word ‘conservative’ you think of kindly old men hunting foxes. They’re not, they’re fascists.”

Read this fascinating interview with the great man in The Times

Here is the man himself, doing what he does best - excoriating the lies of the media:

Gore Vidal in the media

Gore Vidal's partner of 53 years Howard Austen, who died in 2003, took myriad portrait photographs during their life together, from the handsome young Vidal to the older "man of letters".

His book Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare is available from Amazon

Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn

Happy 82nd birthday to the wonderful Gore Vidal, man of letters, ardent critic of the Reagan and Bush administrations of America, and elegant wit.

Born into a socialite family, Gore Vidal was destined to mix in the most erudite of circles, his early relationships included Anais Nin, and he was good friends with the Kennedy family. His ground-breaking homosexual-themed novel The City and the Pillar caused controversy in late 1940s America, and his later Myra Breckenridge (a transgender satire) was later made into a cult film starring Raquel Welch and Mae West.

His TV clash with right-wing writer William Buckley was notorious for its evident hatred between the debaters, and on Buckley's death Vidal said "hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred". Ouch!

Some more examples of this deadly waspish wit:

• A good deed never goes unpunished.
• A narcissist is someone better looking than you are.
• Andy Warhol is the only genius I've ever known with an I.Q. of 60.
• Any American who is prepared to run for president should automatically, by definition, be disqualified from ever doing so.
• Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
• As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.
• By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.
• Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
• Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.
• I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
• I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.
• It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
• Never have children, only grandchildren.
• Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
• Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself.
• Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
• Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn.
• The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.
• Today's public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can't read them either.
• We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
• What other culture could have produced someone like Hemingway and not seen the joke?
• Write something, even if it's just a suicide note.

Happy birthday to the original classy bitch!

Gore Vidal biography