Gore Vidal (great American writer): Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying. And here I am surrounded with these hills [in Hollywood] full of liars — some very talented.
Melvyn Bragg: What do you mean by lying in that sense? Do you mean telling fictions?
Vidal: Yeah, about themselves, about their beliefs, about their histories. Degrees, from universities — this is piled up lies.
Americans are not interested in the truth about anything. They assume everybody is lying because they go out and lie everyday about the automobile they are trying to sell you…
This is a country of hoax. P.T. Barnum is the god of this republic, which is no longer a republic alas. It is an oligarchy and a rather vicious one ([1]. Gore Vidal interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show”, 2008: http://warincontext.org/2012/08/01/remembering-gore-vidal-change-is-the-nature-of-life-and-its-hope/ ).
Gore Vidal (US writer): “The corporate grip on opinion in the US is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent” (quoted in Harry Kawilarang, “Quotations on Terrorism”, Trafford Publishing, UK, 2006).
Gore Vidal (US writer): “The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid John Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and “friend” in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. “None of that conspiracy stuff,” snuffed Clancy. Apparently, “conspiracy stuff” is now shorthand for unspeakable truth” (quoted in Harry Kawilarang, “Quotations on Terrorism”, Trafford Publishing, UK, 2006).
Gore Vidal: “The people have no voice since they have no information …No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity – much less dissent” (Gore Vidal quoted in Andrew Glikson, “The gathering climate storm and the media cover-up”, Countercurrents, 2 January 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/01/02/the-gathering-climate-storm-and-the-media-cover-up/ ; ).