Jose Saramago Quotes
Age carries with it a double load of guilt.
Saramago, José. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero, Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993.
The Senator had been illegally frequenting prostitutes and was a regular customer of an infamous DC Madam. The reason this quotation is noteworthy is that it is a stunning example of moral hypocrisy in politics. Vitter ran as a very conservative politician who placed traditional Christian and family values at the forefront of his political philosophy. When his behavior was made public there were calls for his resignation. He refused and instead gave this statement. However, he had been elected to replace Robert Livingston who had been the Speaker of the House but had resigned when he was caught frequenting prostitutes. Vitter’s hypocrisy was all the more hypocritical as he had demanded the resignation of President William Clinton who had engaged in adulterous sex while in office. When he was running for office and his opponent complained that Vitter had been frequenting prostitutes, Vitter said that the accusation was absolutely and completely untrue" and that it was "just crass Louisiana politics”. This reinforced the hypocrisy in that Vitter claimed that one of Clinton’s failings was that he lied about his adulterous affair, while Vitter not only lied, but did so the public for purposes of getting elected. And just a few months before this statement, Vitter proclaimed the importance of abstinence for teenagers and faithfulness for adults. See {625896}.
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE, was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant." Bloom and Saramago met when Saramago presented Bloom with an honorary degree from the University of Coimbra; according to Bloom: "A warm acquaintanceship ensued, marked by an exegetical disagreement concerning The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, which continued in correspondence and at a later meeting in New York City".
