Gore Vidal - Tonight on Charlie Rose

Gore Vidal is on tonight's Charlie Rose -- catch him if you can. He's always salty, always witty, and mostly right on about the now-flowering despotism that has lurked under our republic's bedsheets since the United States was born, and fertilized with haste in the post-WWII years.

"Inventing a Nation: Washington, Adams, Jefferson" is a valuable companion to Zinn's "A People's History." It focuses on the Founding Fathers' personalities, their contradictions, their shifting alliances, their vision(s) of America's future (Franklin's in particular is despondent, wise, and chilling).

Vidal uncovers statements since excised from common history -- he's a voracious reader of source material -- and even some gossip, such as the rumor that Washington was the father of Alexander Hamilton, that "bastard brat of a Scotch peddler," as Adams called him.  Ha!