Am I misinterpreting a sentence about Gore Vidal? I mean, is there any other way to read it?
Here is the relevant part of a September 30th interview he gave to The London Times about his regret in switching his support from Hillary to Obama the way everyone else did:
Barack Obama is failing as President and the US is in danger of sliding into a military dictatorship, says Gore Vidal, the American essayist and intellectual.
In an exclusive interview with The Times, Vidal, 83, reveals that he regrets switching his allegiance from Hillary Clinton to Mr Obama during last year’s campaign to secure the Democratic presidential nomination.
…
America should leave Afghanistan, Vidal said. “We’ve failed in every other aspect of our effort of conquering the Middle East or whatever you want to call it.” Vidal, a friend of President John F. Kennedy, became an Obama backer because he [Vidal] “grew up in a black city” (Washington) and was impressed by Obama’s intelligence.
Excuse me? Can someone explain to me what else that sentence could possibly mean other than Vidal is saying he spent a lot of time around black people — and Obama stood out because he was intelligent? Otherwise, how do those two thoughts go together?
The rest of the interview is Vidal lamenting the non-passage of healthcare reform, and every other hackneyed thought we’ve heard a thousand times:
On Mr Obama’s plan to reform healthcare, he said: “He f***** it up. I don’t know how, because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.”
…
He also predicted Obama may be assassinated: “Just one lone gunman lurking in the shadows of the capital.”
Wow. What an original. What a singular “prediction.” Did this great “intellectual” come up with that one all on his own? Never heard that one before, have we? Not even from 50 Cent.
America has no intellectual class and is rotting away at a funereal pace, he believes. “We’ll have a military dictatorship soon, on the basis nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people…He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is.”
That is, ‘Americans are stupid.’ A hack like this is a “great writer”?
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