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@charleswiegand.bsky.socialOct 4, 2026, 12:12 PM

"At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice."
–Gore Vidal (born Eugene Louis Vidal) (1925–2012)
From "Sex and the Law," Partisan Review, Vol. 32 No. 1 (Winter 1965), p. 86

#gorevidal #quotes #life #authors #love #art #coffee #diary #write #books

"At any given moment, public opinion is a chaos of superstition, misinformation and prejudice." –Gore Vidal (born Eugene Louis Vidal) (1925–2012) From "Sex and the Law," Partisan Review, Vol. 32 No. 1 (Winter 1965), p. 86 #gorevidal #quotes #life #authors #love #art #coffee #diary #write #books #amwriting #writerslift The above quote completes this thought: "After all, there is no position so absurd that you cannot get a great many people to assume it. Lord Maugham, a former Lord Chancellor (where do they find them?), was convinced that the decline of the Roman Empire was the result of too frequent bathing. Justinian knew there was a causal link between buggery and earthquakes..." So the famous sentence is the conclusion of a comic list, not a standalone pronouncement. The examples are the argument. Vidal's essay is an argument against sex laws, written during the 1964 Goldwater campaign, and Vidal's examples are a Florida anti-homosexual pamphlet and a Dallas stripper given fifteen years for marijuana because the jury disapproved of her morals. The sentence is the punchline to a list. Vidal has just offered a Lord Chancellor who believed Rome fell from too much bathing, and the Emperor Justinian, who knew that sodomy caused earthquakes. Only then does he deliver the general claim. Without the examples, it sounds like misanthropy. With them it is an inductive argument, and a funny one, which is how Vidal preferred to win points. Note that he does not call public opinion wrong. He calls it a chaos, meaning unsorted rather than mistaken. Superstition, misinformation, and prejudice are three different failures, and he lists them separately on purpose. His actual target is the next move: treating that mixture as a reliable guide to what the law should
@jckaelin.bsky.socialOct 3, 2026, 3:05 PM

#OTD #TDIH #October3, 1925: #BOTD: #HBD #GoreVidal! #Novelists #Screenwriters #Writers #Historians #Critics #Satirists #PublicIntellectuals #Homosexuals #TVSky #ComedySky #SCTVSky
youtu.be/DDYLYPYDfG4?...

@nathanfrancis79.bsky.socialOct 3, 2026, 4:24 AM

"How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself."

✒ #GoreVidal, American essayist, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and critic, was #BOTD 3 October 1925. #Literature