Gore Vidal Quotes
The American press exists for one purpose only, and that is to convince Americans that they are living in the greatest and most envied country in the history of the world. The Press tells the American people how awful every other country is and how wonderful the United States is and how evil communism is and how happy they should be to have freedom to buy seven different sorts of detergent.
Vidal, Gore. "The State of the Union: 1980." Esquire, May 1980.
This quotation shows the level of denial that De Valera and other Irish leaders were in over Nazi Germany. See {639721} for other Irish Free State denial. Over 70,000 Irishmen and women rejected the moral stand of their government, and volunteered for the British Army to the great distress of the Free State leaders like De Valera.
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, patrician manner, and polished style of writing. Vidal was openly bisexual and his novels often dealt with LGBT characters, which was unusual at the time. Beyond literature, Vidal was heavily involved in politics. He twice sought office—unsuccessfully—as a Democratic Party candidate, first in 1960 to the United States House of Representatives (for New York), and later in 1982 to the U.S. Senate (for California).
