Friday, November 14, 2003

National Progressive Treasure FEATURED ARTICLES - The Last Defender of the American Republic? An interview with Gore Vidal - Gore Vidal Becomes "Blacklisted" When Scribe Replaces Lane in Trumbo - NY Theatre.com review of Trumbo - Bibliography of books and articles by Gore Vidal - Uncensored Gore - The Take-No-Prisoners Social Critic Skewers Bush, Ashcroft and the Whole Damn Lot of Us for Letting Despots Rule QUOTE OF THE DAY "Ours is a totally corrupt society. The presidency is for sale. Whoever raises the most money to buy TV time will probably be the next president. This is corruption on a major scale. Enron was an eye-opener to naive lovers of modern capitalism. Our accounting brotherhood, in its entirety, turned out to be corrupt, on the take. With the government absolutely colluding with them and not giving a damn. Bush's friend, old Kenny Lay, is still at large and could just as well start some new company tomorrow. If he hasn't already. No one is punished for squandering the people's money and their pension funds and for wrecking the economy. So the corruption predicted by Franklin bears its terrible fruit. No one wants to do anything about it. It's not even a campaign issue. Once you have a business community that is so corrupt in a society whose business is business, then what you have is, indeed, despotism." - - Gore Vidal  (From a recent interview which is today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE) KNOW YOUR HISTORY - NOVEMBER 14th 1965 -- The U.S. First Cavalry Division battled with the North Vietnamese Army in the Ia Drang Valley, the first ground combat for American troops 1986 -- White House acknowledges CIA role in secretly shipping weapons to Iran 1997 -- President Clinton signed a bill containing $250 million to buy 7,500 acres in the headwaters forest of northern California. The agreement with Charles Hurwitz was revised in 1998 and protection was tentatively established for 12 of 13 stands of redwoods and Pacific Lumber was to be allowed to log one grove. RHINO HERE: Earlier this week, my wife Irene attended the off Broadway production of "Trumbo" as the guest of "Law & Order SVU" stars Christopher Meloni & Richard Belzer. http://www.uni-television.com/svu/html/episodes/ep_season5.html She's beside herself, raving on how grateful she is to have seen Gore Vidal as blacklisted screenwriter, Dalton Trumbo, and how inspirational Vidal is in the role. He's at it again; firing off a barrage of info missiles in the war of ideas. At 77 years old, Gore Vidal is not content to just write an occasional book and watch his native USA from afar (he lived part time in Italy for several years, but no more) as it grinds its way into economic default & political despotism. He's out & about promoting his new book, "Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson"  & for this week, he stars Off Broadway as Trumbo . If you're in NYC & want to see him, do it this week as he'll be replaced Monday by Richard Dryfuss.  TRUMBO is produced with the assistance of People For the American Way, which will receive a portion of the proceeds in support of its efforts to protect constitutional liberties, including the freedom to dissent. People For the American Way    http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/ Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE is a second interview with Vidal by Marc Cooper, whose first interview  (LA Weekly, July of 2002) was entitled; The Last Defender of the American Republic? An interview with Gore Vidal http://www.laweekly.com/ink/02/33/features-cooper.php The new interview concerns Vidal's new book & his thoughts on the shrub gang coup. But first, a few other pieces on one of our national progressive treasures; Gore Vidal.   Gore Vidal Becomes "Blacklisted" When Scribe Replaces Lane in Trumbo, Sept. 23 By Ernio Hernandez, Playbill, 10 Sep 2003 ... Culled from the letters of the legendary blacklisted screenwriter, Trumbo tells the story of one of the "Hollywood Ten" who went before the House Un-American Activities Committee. After refusing to answer questions about his political affiliations, Trumbo was fired from MGM and imprisoned for a year. Peter Askin ( Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Sexaholix... a love story ) directs. The play's focus, Trumbo, wrote such screenplays as "The Brave One," "Exodus," "Spartacus," "Roman Holiday," and "Papillon" as well as the novel "Johnny Got His Gun....For tickets to the new run of Trumbo, at the Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St., call (212) 239-6200... THIS ARTICLE POSTED AT:   http://www.playbill.com/news/article/81563.html NY Theatre.com review of Trumbo ... It's a kind of profile in courage: Trumbo never backed down from his position that his political opinions and affiliations were private and inalienable. The hardships that resulted-psychological as well as economic-were real, unjust, and-especially when they impacted the lives of his young children-savage: a description of Trumbo's daughter Mitzi's experiences in school after the family returned from Mexico is particularly heart-rending. Near the end of the play, Trumbo uses the occasion of a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Writers Guild to look back on the lessons of the Blacklist. He concludes, sagely, that everybody who lived through that time-victims, perpetrators, and supposedly innocent bystanders alike-had sinned in some way or other to get through it. In such moments, Trumbo becomes a mirror into which we all ought to take a long, hard look ... READ THE ENTIRE REVIEW AT: http://www.nytheatre.com/nytheatre/trumbo.htm Bibliography of books and articles by Gore Vidal,         from The New York Review of Books. http://www.nybooks.com/authors/213 8:09:54 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Uncensored Gore Uncensored Gore The Take-No-Prisoners Social Critic Skewers Bush, Ashcroft         and the Whole Damn Lot of Us for Letting Despots Rule by Marc Cooper, The LA Weekly, 11/13/03 It's lucky for George W. Bush that he wasn't born in an earlier time and somehow stumbled into America's Constitutional Convention. A man with his views, so depreciative of democratic rule, would have certainly been quickly exiled from the freshly liberated United States by the gaggle of incensed Founders. So muses one of our most controversial social critics and prolific writers, Gore Vidal. When we last interviewed Vidal just over a year ago, he set off a mighty chain reaction as he positioned himself as one of the last standing defenders of the ideal of the American Republic. His acerbic comments to L.A. Weekly  about the Bushies were widely reprinted in publications around the world and flashed repeatedly over the World Wide Web. Now Vidal is at it again, giving the Weekly another dose of his dissent, and, with the constant trickle of casualties mounting in Iraq, his comments are no less explosive than they were last year.... ...MARC COOPER: Your new book focuses on Washington, Adams and Jefferson, but it seems from reading closely that it was actually Ben Franklin who turned out to be the most prescient regarding the future of the republic. GORE VIDAL: Franklin understood the American people better than the other three. Washington and Jefferson were nobles - slaveholders and plantation owners. Alexander Hamilton married into a rich and powerful family and joined the upper classes. Benjamin Franklin was pure middle class. In fact, he may have invented it for Americans. Franklin saw danger everywhere. They all did. Not one of them liked the Constitution. James Madison, known as the father of it, was full of complaints about the power of the presidency. But they were in a hurry to get the country going. Hence the great speech, which I quote at length in the book, that Franklin, old and dying, had someone read for him. He said, I am in favor of this Constitution, as flawed as it is, because we need good government and we need it fast. And this, properly enacted, will give us, for a space of years, such government. But then, Franklin said, it will fail, as all such constitutions have in the past, because of the essential corruption of the people. He pointed his finger at all the American people. And when the people become so corrupt, he said, we will find it is not a republic that they want but rather despotism - the only form of government suitable for such a people... READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1113-07.htm "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 6:21:39 AM    comment

© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.