Independent Lens

Announcer

1968-- an election year, a war raging in Vietnam, and a new conflict is borne on American airwaves that will rock television.

Man

You have Mr. Pro and Mr. Con. And you have them argue, and that's punditry.

Vidal

5% of the population have 20% of the income, and the bottom 20% have 5% of the income. Well, you see, I believe that freedom breeds inequality. Say that again?

Man

Each night, there was more spectacle to be had.

Vidal

He's always to the right and almost always in the wrong. Argument is sugar, and the rest of us are flies.

Announcer

Filmmakers Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville explore how these debates gave birth to the combative cable news of today.

Buckley

And I'll say it a third time.

Vidal

No, twice was enough. Balderdash. No, I won't. Shut up a minute.

Banging

Man

It changed television forever. Perfect. Ha ha ha!

Announcer

"Best of Enemies"-- now only on Independent Lens.

Man

10 seconds now. Stand by, Howard. Cameras, please. Cameras.

Announcer

William F. Buckley.

Cheering and applause

Buckley

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. That was a very nice introduction.

Scattered laughter

Buckley

On the other hand, if it hadn't been, I would have smashed you in the Goddamn face.

Laughter

Buckley

Man,

as Buckley

My mind moved to Gore Vidal and the dismal events of the summer of 1968, when he and I confronted each other a dozen times on network television, leading to an emotional explosion, which, it is said, rocked television.

Vidal

I keep nothing but a few photographs in the bathroom of myself at an earlier time. Here, above the bathtub, in a place of honor are the debates with William Buckley in 1968. He's a well-known right-wing commentator whose name seldom passes my lips. Man,

as Vidal

The American Broadcasting Company had asked us to discuss politics, so I had spent a number of weeks doing research on the major candidates as well as on my sparring partner.

Man

I would definitely have Gore Vidal and Bill Buckley on my television show. I would guess that the rematch of the great conflict would attract people precisely because it held out the possibility of something-- Violence.

Laughter

Man

Let's have our speed here, everyone. Action. Cut it!

Snap

Man

And action. In the sixties, the institution in which Americans had the greatest confidence was television news. Split-second organization on a world-wide scale. Speed and efficiency in the nerve centers of NBC News.

Woman

News was this big, bland center that determined for us what America was-- which was White, Anglo-Saxon. There were never any vowels at the end of the names.

Announcer

Chet Huntley and David Brinkley still are the team supreme in the art of easy-going commentary.

Man

Networks--did they deal in controversy? No! Did they invite controversy? No! They were in the center. They were cementers of idea, not disrupters of idea.

Announcer

This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.

Cronkite

Good evening from our CBS Newsroom in New York...

Man

NBC and CBS were fighting for the lead, and ABC was clearly number 3. The other two networks were doing full coverage at the conventions, gavel to gavel.

Banging

Man

Turn the cameras and microphones on and let 'em roll. And ABC had less money to spend on these things. So, in 1968, ABC went to the truncated version of convention coverage to do 1 1/2

hours from 9

30

to 11

00 at night.

Wald

They didn't have Cronkite. They didn't have Huntley and Brinkley. They didn't have the standards.

Man

Cameras, please. Cameras. Ah...ahem.

Wald

ABC was the 3rd of the 3 networks.

Smith clearing throat

Wald

Would have been 4th, but there were only 3. They had the weaker programming.

Man

Aaah! Somebody famously said that the way to end the Vietnam War was to put it on ABC and it would be cancelled in 13 weeks.

Crash

Man

In order to be competitive with the 1968 convention, ABC needed something... provocative, a media event, and they settled on Buckley and Vidal. It wasn't necessarily sensible. It was a shot in the dark, and it changed television forever.

Buckley

Why are the races unreconciled? Why does poverty persevere? Why are the young disenchanted? Why do the birds sing so unhappily? It is easy to be carried away, and yet always there is a strain of seriousness, something in the system that warns us-- warns us that America had better strike out on a different course, rather than face another 4 years of asphyxiation by liberal premises. This is William F. Buckley, Jr. in New York. Perfect. Ha ha ha!

Announcer

This is the William F. Buckley America knows best, grimacing or incredulous or disdainful, readying himself for a deceptively quiet attack on his intellectual prey of the moment. This is the William F. Buckley Barry Goldwater insists fills a crying national need.

Crowd

We want Buckley! We want Buckley! We want Buckley!

Announcer

William F. Buckley, Jr. has a strong definite opinion on every subject. So, wherever he goes, he has to have an answer about every question.

Man

Do you think that America really doesn't believe in itself as much as it used to? Yes, I think that's true. I think it's happening because of a restlessness for so long, as liberalism suggested, that it could bring happiness to the individual, Then people tended to look to government agencies for those narcotic substitutes for a search for happiness and contentment, which they ought to have found in their religion, in their institutions, and their culture themselves. Bill Buckley was the first modern conservative intellectual to see that ideological debates were cultural debates. And what he did was to put conservatism on the march, and that's the creation of the movement we have today.

Woman

He's stimulating, he's exhausting, he's fun. Sometimes I could kill him, but not too often.

Man

He could have been the playboy of the Western world, but he chose instead to be the St. Paul of the conservative movement.

Announcer

Most workdays, he winds up in the offices of the "National Review," his journal of conservative opinion, which reaches 110,000 subscribers and is read by many more.

Tanenhaus

"National Review" is the most influential magazine of our time. Why? The magazine attached to a movement.

Man

My brother Bill-- he was a conservative, right- wing, libertarian, Christian. That's what he was. But most of all, Bill was a revolutionary.

Woman

When the people at ABC had first approached Bill, they had asked him would he be willing to be the conservative debater commentator with the national conventions, and he said yes, he would. And they asked him, "Well, is there anybody you wouldn't go on with?" and he said, "Well, I would refuse to go on with a Communist. "And apart from that, the only one I can think of is--is Gore Vidal."

Man

Cameras rolling. Men and women who are sexually repressed regard all sexual pleasure as dirty, evil, the Devil's work. Yet, we are all prostitutes in one sense or another, ethically, if not sexually. For Buckley, Vidal was the Devil. He represented everything that was... going to moral hell... that was degenerative about the country.

Vidal

A cultural war has now joined the race war in the United States, and the change is going to be very difficult. And as our own Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must occasionally be watered with blood." In a sense, this was the beginning of a war between an old order and what I hope will be a new order.

Man

We didn't just see rioting in the streets. We saw a revolution breaking out. Remember, Gore Vidal was always an iconoclast, an apostate, a writer against the grain. And he saw Buckley and his ideas as antidemocratic. If Buckley were not taken out, his ideas would take down the nation.

Vidal

It occurred to me that the central drive in human beings is power. And that has always been my theme, but I deal in politics, which is an obvious manifestation of power.

Man

Gore Vidal is one of America's most successful and distinguished writers. He also lives in a personal cloud of outrageous leisures. After the early books, which first brought him to the public eye, came a group of highly praised historical novels, which sold in their millions. But it was "Myra Breckenridge" that confirmed Vidal's place as the "enfant terrible" of the respectable American literary scene.

Tyrnauer

By 1968, he had just published a bombshell of a book, his greatest satire, and, I think, one of the greatest satires written in English-- "Myra Breckenridge."

Cheering

Movie trailer announcer

And now, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for! The book that couldn't be written is now the motion picture that couldn't be made! "Myra Breckenridge."

Tyrnauer

He'd gotten, you know, the cover of "TIME" magazine for it, and his career was soaring at the time, but it was edgy material.

Vidal

I don't know where Myra came from. I really was like the Huxley character-- each day wondering what Myra would do and roaring with laughter as this thing presented herself to me. Gentlemen... I am Myron Breckenridge. Uncle Buck, your fag nephew became your niece two years ago in Copenhagen and is now happy in being the most extraordinary woman in the world-- ha ha ha! And suddenly, it occurred to me about sexual relations-- how, indeed, much of it is based not upon any pleasure principle or even a procreative one, but of people gaining power over others. A-ha! Gotcha! And so I conceived my androgynous protagonist who is a man who becomes a woman who becomes a man.

Bridges

A transsexual seducing men, or in one case I believe raping a man, uh...

Tyrnauer

The themes of "Myra Breckenridge" and also sexuality and transsexuality was way ahead of its time and got under Bill Buckley's skin. Ha ha ha ha!

Man

Mr. Buckley, did you see the film "Myra Breckenridge" and why not?

Laughter

Bridges

That told the people at ABC "Wow! We have a chance for some great theater here. Let's get Gore Vidal."

Buckley

Gore Vidal is a whore of debate in, uh, when it comes to values of our country and of historical forces. The man is brilliant, and the man is fun to watch. But there is always a residue, in my opinion, when I watch him of nausea. I didn't say anything nasty about him, did I?

Man

It is under--mmm. It is understandable that the Republicans decided to hold their convention south of the Mason-Dixon Line. They have not done so in 104 years. And it is obvious why anyone might want to come to Miami Beach. But the real reasons for the Republican presence here are less obvious. And I blew that one. Let's--

Clears throat loudly

Man

Wide! Right.

Donaldson

This 9-mile-long sandbar has one advantage above all others. It is remote. It's therefore easy for the Republicans to avoid the danger of large, militant demonstrations.

Smith

There's a huge, almost empty convention hall down there, waiting for the 1968 Republican convention. There's very little work left to do before the first gavel on Monday. Every political convention has features no other convention before it has had. What's going to be distinctive about this one? First of all, this is the first one available to the public completely in beautiful color, and lady delegates have received careful instructions about how to dress so as to appear vivid but not garish.

Splash

Bridges

Bill Buckley took off for a week sailing before the Republican National Convention. They sailed down to Cozumel. I would be rather surprised if he did any special preparation for this encounter with Gore Vidal.

Edwards

Buckley expected this to be an opportunity to debate the issues, to have some fun. He was not prepared for Mr. Vidal.

Man

Gore told me he hired a researcher. He wanted to paint "National Review" as being racist-- if he could, anti-Semitic.

Edwards

I don't think he was really interested in conducting a debate about the issues or about the parties or about the policies or about the platforms of the 2 parties. What he wanted to do was to expose Bill Buckley.

Man

Their confrontation is about lifestyle. What kind of people should we be? Their real argument, in front of the public, is who is the better person.

Smith

In one minute "a second LOOK" with William Buckley and Gore Vidal. Man,

as Buckley

Across from us was Howard K. Smith-- suave, intelligent, mildly apprehensive, rehearsing with his lips the lines he would presently deliver....became skirmishes... 30, 40, 50 technicians, reporters, directors, filled the enormous room, at one corner of which, earphones attached, Vidal and I awaited the sound of the bell. Man,

as Vidal

From past experience, I knew that Buckley would have done no research, that what facts he had at his command would be jumbled by the strangest syntax. Man,

as Buckley

We'd exchanged minimal amenities, and I scribbled on my clipboard to avoid having to banter with him, and he did the same.

Tanenhaus

For all their ideological differences, they both see what the problem is-- that America can't stay on the course it's on and that the country's being split at the seams. And each has staked out his position in ways that portend where our country is divided right now.

Bell dings

Tanenhaus

To help us extract meaning from these conventions, two of America's most eloquent and most decided commentators have joined us this year. They are Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, Jr. Can Mr. Vidal assess the Republicans for us? Can a political party, based almost entirely upon human greed, nominate anyone for president for whom a majority of the American people would vote? Uh, may I comment, uh, Mr. Smith?

Smith

Please do. Yeah. It seems to me that... uh, the--the author of "Myra Breckinridge" is well acquainted with the imperatives of human greed. Ha ha ha! Well, I would like to say, Bill-- its-- if I may say, Bill-- what dominates the-- before you go any further, I would like to say that if there were a contest for Mr. Myra Breckenridge, you would unquestionably win it. I based her entire style polemically upon you-- passionate and irrelevant. Now, my--my point is that, um, for Mr. Vidal to, uh, condemn a particular party as engaged in the pursuit of human greed, requires to understand his rather eccentric--

Vidal

The nice thing about the Republican party is that every 4 years, after denigrating the poor amongst themselves, referring to them as freeloaders-- "They don't want to work"-- and I have many quotes here from Ronald Reagan. And then every 4 years, you get these sort of crocodile tears for the poor people because they need their vote. It is quite true that-- uh, Reagan is capable of talking about freeloaders--so am I-- because there are freeloaders. It is one thing to say that, uh-- it is one thing to say that a society ought to concern itself with the plight of its poor. I think the Republican party is saying that. Perhaps the Republican party should have a platform on how to deal with Vidal. If absolutely necessary, I'll write it for them, but meanwhile-- But meanwhile, I'd be very, very nervous. You have written lately of your intimacy with Reagan and with Nixon, and that you've discussed the Vietnam War with them and that you are satisfied with their positions. You suggested the atom bombing of the north of Vietnam in your little magazine, which I do not read but I'm told about, the 23rd of February 1968, So you're very hawkish. And now if both Nixon and Reagan are listening to you, I'm very worried for the country.

Buckley

Now, it seems to me that the Republican party has shown a record of greater sobriety than Mr. Vidal, who boasts of not reading something which he is prepared to misquote in the presence of the person who edits it. Now, Bill Buckley, if you-- if the quotation is exact, and it is exact... Now, now, don't be mis-- we know that your tendency is to be feline, Mr. Vidal-- Yes. but just relax for a moment and take it very simply on this. I have not advocated-- I'm not horrified at the prospect, uh-- Bill, I just quoted when you said these things and where. What I'm-- Are you saying you didn't say them? I am saying that I didn't say them. Oh, you're taking them back. You notice that your misquotation-- Tune in this time tomorrow night, and we will have further evidence of Bill Buckley cold warrior turned hawk. Ah, that's it, that's right, and about the human greed of everybody in the world except yourself, and then on tomorrow's-- And then on tomorrow, of course, we'll go over what Mr. Vidal thinks about the Kennedys. Good night, and let me tell you...

Smith

Excuse me, gentlemen. It's been very enjoyable hearing you articulate two points of view. Thank you very much, indeed. I think I detected some unfinished lines of thought. We'll have time to follow them through tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Every night, we...

Man

There's nothing feigned about the mutual antipathy. They really do despise one another. Each thought that the other was quite dangerous, and it was drawn from quite a deep well in both cases. Gore Vidal and William Buckley first clashed almost by proxy in 1962 on "The Jack Paar Program." Vidal had gone on Jack Paar's show, and they both started mocking Buckley-- his eccentric mannerisms, the voice, the facial tics, all the rest. So, in effect, Buckley was given equal time. And he went on Jack Paar's show, and Paar expected the kind of troglodyte, Neanderthal man of the right whom Vidal had caricatured on the program. And instead, you have this genius of debate, and Paar was stunned. Man,

as Vidal

We next met in San Francisco, 1964, during the Goldwater convention. I confess to having prepared a trap for Buckley. I egged him on. The next day, Buckley sent me a letter to the effect that he never wanted to see me again. I found this sentiment agreeable.

Man

Buckley was eager to be on television. The downside of it for Gore was that he contributed to Buckley's becoming an onscreen celebrity.

Hitchens

Mr. Buckley, read by many but not that many, would be nothing if it wasn't for his program "Firing Line."

Man

Buckley sat in his chair with a clipboard and would invite left-wingers or liberals on his program, and they would go back and forth for half an hour. You know, people on the left are more law-abiding than anybody else. That's why they're on the left. You know, they have-- Explain that, would you? I'd be happy to.

Laughter

Man

You're marvelous, man. I enjoy you. You're the only man I know can ask a question and convict the man before he can answer the question.

Buckley

Television was happy to have Bill because everybody else was saying the same thing. From my point of view, what Elijah Muhammad is doing to you is diseasing your mind. You--you sit and tell me that we white people would like to divide and--and conquer. You do. I--I grew up as a white child. I heard much more talk against Democrats than I did against black people.

Scattered laughter

Man

When he began "Firing Line," he did it, in part, to show off, but he actually did just what pundit television should do, which is he elevated the discourse and he educated people through it.

Smith

On the eve of the Republican convention, the heat is on. We bring you a report on who did what to whom in the last hours before the gavel, plus commentary and some dissent from our guest commentators, author Gore Vidal..

Merlis

ABC's unconventional convention coverage was the subject of ridicule 'cause we were abdicating our journalistic responsibility. But if the goal was to raise ABC News' visibility, we certainly succeeded.

Woman

Everybody watched the news. Nearly 80% of the country watched coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1968.

Man

We're going live to the West Coast in about 6 or 7 minutes.

Merlis

And then ABC News' studio collapsed.

Rumbling and popping

Cracking

Crash

Hold on. Man

Ha!

Merlis

The lighting grid fell down onto the floor of the set.

Sheehan

And the roof fell in--ha ha--literally. You know, it was built inside the arena.

Man

Hard hats on.

Rich

ABC was really, you know, the Budget Car Rental of television news.

Man

Pieces of the ceiling start flying, and then all of a sudden, the whole thing started giving way. Mr. Lower, ABC promised to be unconventional this year, but this is ridiculous. We're sure gonna be unconventional, Sam, I can tell you that. Thank you very much. Now let's just... cut it.

Music playing

Smith

This is Miami day 1.

Announcer

From Miami Beach, ABC News presents... "Race to the White House."

Merlis

They did what they could. Basically, they hung a lot of drapes, lit the set with C-stands and lamps. Frankly, I think it was an improvement.

Smith

We would like now to demonstrate how the English language ought to be used by two craftsmen-- our guest commentators.

Man

Hook to air in 10...

Tanenhaus

If you view debate purely as sport, let's call it blood sport. Ha! Then really, all bets are off.

Man

9, 8, 7... stand-by announce...

Tanenhaus

You have one objective, and that's to win in that moment.

Buckley

When you attack the position of your opponent, you have to first attack it clinically and rationally.

Man

6, 5, 4...

Buckley

But mostly what you have to get is what's behind those things. What is driving the human being who's in front of you?

Man

3, 2, 1... Cue tympani.

Bell dings

Smith

Gore Vidal. Tonight, the key question for every patriot is can an aging Hollywood juvenile actor with a right-wing script defeat Richard Nixon, a professional politician, who currently represents no discernible interest except his own. As of yesterday morning, Ronald Reagan says "the only function of government is to get out of our way and leave us alone as much as possible." Now, on this occasion, I'm afraid I have to agree with William Buckley, the distinguished thinker, when he says--my favorite quotation from you. I have a treasury here. "Today, as never before, the state is "the necessary instrument of our proximate deliverance," as usual, in your slightly Latinate and inaccurate style. But you do feel, as most of us do, that, uh, the state must have some responsibility for what happens in the country. And now you have Ronald Reagan, whom you approve of, who does not want to use the Federal government to do anything at all.

Buckley

Mr. Smith, I-- I confess that anything complicated confuses Mr. Vidal.

Smith chuckling

Buckley

This has been plain for a very long time. He has a great difficulty reconciling even axiomatic positions concerning political philosophy. But we were treated to Mr. Gore Vidal the playwright, saying that after all Ronald Reagan was nothing more than an "aging Hollywood juvenile actor." Now, to begin with, everybody is aging, even-- Ha ha! Even you are, Bill. You are, Bill. Mr. Vidal. That's right. Perceptively before our eyes. So, therefore-- and then he said "Hollywood." Now, one either acted in Hollywood during the time Mr. Reagan acted or one didn't act at all. Uh, Mr. Vidal sends all of his books to Hollywood, many of which are-- are rejected, but some of which are-- Oh, but Bill, I never send any there. He called him--he called him "a juvenile actor," which is presumably to be distinguished from an adult actor. Now, my point is...

Tanenhaus

Buckley was his generation's greatest debater. He knew very well how to make an argument. What he was even better at was dismantling your argument. Now-- Now, Bill, I think--...for the very simple reason that-- Now, Bill, if I may say-- just--just as I think ABC has the right-- I have a very good idea, Bill-- just as I think ABC has the authority-- Now, Bill, careful now-- I'm almost through. No, you're n-- in every sense.

Smith

Let Mr. Buckley finish his sentence, then, Mr. Vidal, I'll assure you time to refute it....that ABC has the authority to invite the author of "Myra Breckenridge" to comment--to comment on Republican politics, I think that the people of California have the right, when they speak overwhelmingly, to project somebody into national politics even if he did commit the sin of having acted in movies that were not written by Mr. Vidal. So if Buckley was the great debater of his time, Vidal was the great talker of his time. Well, as usual, Mr. Buckley, uh... with his enormous and thrilling charm, uh, manages to get away from the issue toward the comedy. He's always to the right, I think, and almost always in the wrong. And you certainly must, Bill, maintain your reputation as being the Marie Antoinette of the right wing and continually imposing your own rather bloodthirsty neuroses on--on the political campaign.

Merlis

He also rehearsed his ad-libs. All the great bon mot that he unleashed on the air, he tried out first on the reporters in the pressroom. So, calling Buckley "the Marie Antoinette of the right wing," he'd--he'd done that with a reporter beforehand. This is the hobgoblinization--

Smith

Gentlemen-- of the Marxists, which-- you have just about one concluding sentence apiece. Can you give us one? Well, I think that it is something for which all of us have to be grateful that there are left in America people who believe in the democratic process sufficiently to know that, um, occasionally people can penetrate such myths as have been energetically projected by Mr. Vidal, which would be not only a philosophy under an economy of stagnation, but also a spiritual world of stagnation. Well, thank you very much indeed, gentlemen. While William... So these two guys were circling each other early on. Why? Partly because each one saw in the other a kind of exaggerated image of his own anxious version of himself.

Bridges

It's--it's almost as if they were matter and antimatter, sort of parallel lives.

Tanenhaus

They spoke with these patrician, languid accents. They'd both been to boarding schools, very prestigious families and backgrounds, so everyone thought. These were two guys who were not so much of the Eastern establishment as conquerors of the Eastern establishment.

Man

Gore never went to college, which he was very proud of, actually. We are savages, my family. Father was from the frontier. We didn't belong to Long Island society, nor did we wish to. This has always been an anti-intellectual country. These days, anybody who spoke like those two men in public would be seen to be heartless. In fact, they're supposed to be

what American mass audience despises

they're intellectual, they sound like elites, but people warmed to it.

Woman

Mr. Buckley, do you think miniskirts are in good taste? On you, I think they are.

Laughter and applause

Woman

Good legs are in good taste.

Man

Good legs. I never would have figured you for that kind.

Laughter

Man

Gore Vidal famously said there are two things you never turn down-- sex and appearing on television.

Daly

Go ahead, Gore. Joanne Woodward. Very good. That's 1 down and 9 to go.

Kilgallen

Oh, no! I got it!

Daly

Hey, put on your-- Oh!

Rich

They both instinctually knew about the power of television in a way that a lot of American intellectuals of that era did not. Why don't you just talk to me instead of talking to the audience, huh? Well, by curious thing, we have not found ourselves in a friendly neighborhood bar but both, by election, are sitting here with an audience, so therefore it would be dishonest of us--

Applause

Rich

to pretend otherwise.

Man

Mr. Buckley, I've noticed that whenever you appear on television, you're always seated. Does this mean you can't think on your feet?

Scattered laughter

Man

It's very, um, very hard to stand up carrying the... the weight of what I know.

Laughter and applause

Wolcott

They were both very much aware that TV is the present and the future, and you have to be on it and you have to use it well.

Tyrnauer

In a way, I think the brilliant thing about Gore Vidal is he had opinions and he was willing to air them and very, very bravely. I mean, this is the person that wrote "The City and the Pillar," published in 1948.

Vidal

It was the first novel that dealt very openly, uh... with homosexuality as being a perfectly normal sexual activity.

Tyrnauer

He was willing to take these risks that almost no one, statistically, was ever willing to take. He deserved so much credit for that that he does not get. You have your own narrow views of what is correct sexual behavior. I happen to disagree with it, and I think there are a great many people who do. We cannot in any way encourage young boys into this kind of relationship. You have every right to propagandize from the pulpit and give us the same right to propagandize with books. I certainly am not going to try to shut down your church, as appalling as I find your argument.

Man

Vidal's view is that sexual orientation among civilized human beings is not named, discussed, or labeled.

Kaplan

Gore Vidal would never answer to the question "Are you gay?" "Yes, I'm gay."

Tyrnauer

You have to understand that Gore was obsessed with shedding sexual labels.

Vidal

It is as natural to be homosexual as it is to be heterosexual. And the difference between a homosexual and a heterosexual is about the difference between somebody who has brown eyes and somebody who has blue eyes. The mores of the country are going to hell. And if there's one thing William Buckley cared more about than another thing it would have been that.

Bell dings

Vidal

In a very moving piece called "A Blow For Peace," in that magazine I will not mention, on the 29th December 1964-- We know that you'd like nothing to sully your lips. You came out-- oh, you came out-- you will eat it first. You came out in favor of "History aches for such an act of greatness." That is the bombing of the Chinese nuclear capacity. Mr. Vidal, I have no doubt that there-- there is somebody in Haight-Ashbury or Greenwich Village who considers that your caricature is fetching. I don't. I--I was invited here, and I'm prepared to try to talk about the Republican convention. Yes. But I maintain that it's very difficult to do so when you have somebody like this who will speak in such burps and he likes to be naughty, which--which has proved to be a professional, highly merchandisable vice. Not unlike your so public vices of equal wickedness, Bill. No, I have...

Buckley

We have to keep in mind, the left wing was never hesitant about smearing anybody from the right wing. That was a battle that Bill had to fight all the time.

Man

The disease of the right is--is greed, bigotry, insensitivity, and general stupidity. In a radio interview, you said that you thought "the Jews "tend to construct an ongoing political myth "centered around the Hitlerian experience, "which more or less suggests that Hitler was the embodiment of the ultra-right." That's true. You suggested Hitler was the embodiment of the ultra-right. That's true. Well, what is-- Certainly, he wasn't the embodiment of the ultra-left. Now, do you care to read the context, or shall I cram it down your throat? No, no. If you are a right-winger, you don't want to have anything to do with the gnostic heresies of Nazism and Fascism. And that was a label that the left wing kept trying to pin on the right wing.

Hitchens

Which is the cherry bomb that's waiting to go off, and eventually does.

Smith

Good evening from Miami Beach. Again tonight, we bring you in 90 minutes all that's worth seeing and knowing as the convention's moment of truth comes near. Man,

yelling

I'm talking about white America! Can you hear me?

Crowd

Yeah!

Man

And the rich America! Rich America. Quiet!

Laughter

Man

Never has obedience to law been so disdained.

McWhorter

In 1968, you're seeing the beginning of a Republican kind of rhetoric in which strategies of dividing the country racially are disguised with language along the lines of law and order. Let's make America first again in respect for order and justice under law. Now isn't that what you want? Isn't that where we're going to go? You wanted law and order in this town. You've got it. He's bluffing, boys. Let's get him.

Gunshot

McWhorter

The next one gets a load of buckshot. Any takers?

Dirksen

Must we avoid our great cities by night, as if they were guerrilla- infested hamlets out in Vietnam?

Crowd

No! Man,

over radio

927, we're settin' up.

Man

There was a racial protest that turned into a riot at the convention in Miami. These were two visions of America clashing. So, we're giving out clubs. Turn around. Look at that man right there. Man, you wanna look? Look at that picture. To be sure, this might have been triggered by the lily-white climate of the Republican convention which is in progress right now just a few miles from here.

Cheering

Tanenhaus

The fault lines in our politics were decided in the 1968 election, alliances that connect in shifting ways-- racial, religious, socioeconomic. What we now call identity politics was being formed then. And Buckley knew it because to some extent, he'd helped create it.

Bell dings

The subject for William Buckley and Gore Vidal tonight

"Beyond the Nomination." What issues can the Republicans use effectively to win? Well, I think there are two primarily. Number one-- law and order. I wish there was a way of saying "law and order" that didn't make a critic say, "Oh, you're talking about the racial question." Now, I would like to know how to say "law and order" by other means, but still mean law and order. And one of the problems that we face

and that Nixon's got to face is this

What do we do about the growth of really mutinous members of the American community? Now, these people have got to be faced not only politically but philosophically. And this is something, which, in my judgment, Mr. Nixon has got to elevate into the status of a genuine national debate. I think that if Richard Nixon were elected president, it would be an absolute-- no matter with what goodwill... it would be a disaster because the young, the black, the poor, are disaffected, and I don't see him ever drawing them to him.

Gitlin

Vidal understood what it meant to take the positions that William F. Buckley, Jr. took towards Civil Rights during those years. This was at a time when political leaders had been able to block Civil Rights legislations with the support of entities like the "National Review" and figures like William F. Buckley, Jr.

Vidal

In the United States, 5% of the population have 20% of the income, and the bottom 20% have 5% of the income.

Buckley

I think this is-- It seems to me-- I know that you-- you revel in-- No-- in a kind of inequality I think it's sort of because-- because business is based upon that. You see, I believe that freedom breeds inequality, and that's-- Say that again? A freedom breeds inequality. And I'll say it a third time. No, twice was enough. I think you made your point. Unless--unless you have freedom to be unequal, there is no such thing as freedom.

Sullivan

In Buckley, you see a shrill defense of what he sees as a completely collapsing social and cultural order. What can I say? Not much. You have per-- you've given that ghastly position once again-- Yeah. of the well-to-do and those who inherit money and believe that others who do not must somehow-- This is such balderdash. achieve, uh, achieve equality, but in actual fact you're going to have a revolution if you don't give the people the things they want. Now, I'm putting it to your own self-interest. They're going to come and take it away from you.

Man

Because Vidal is so educated and so one of his class, for Buckley, the betrayal of those values seems to be almost personal.

Gitlin

Buckley--he didn't believe in democracy. He believed in rule by elites, starting with him.

Drum roll

Cheering and applause

Gitlin

The conservative party in New York State had gone to Buckley and said, "Put your money where your mouth is. Run for mayor." So it was Bill Buckley, the conservative candidate, and John Lindsay, the darling of liberal Republicans, whom Buckley was intent on defeating.

Man

He has said that you are out to destroy everything that he stands for. That is roughly correct. I couldn't have put it better. I'm out to destroy everything that he stands for--hypocrisy and ultra-leftism.

Cheering

Tanenhaus

Conservatism in America is an insurgency. It's not the right fighting the far left. It's the right fighting people who are not quite far enough right. Buckley discovered a new constituency for the Republican party. It was angry white ethnics in Brooklyn, in Queens, in Staten Island and the outer boroughs-- the same people who voted for Goldwater in '64 at a time of mounting racial unrest in America.

Man

The conservatives, more than 1,200 of them, paid $1.00 each to see William F. Buckley, Jr. And there was nothing fancy on the menu here, just hot tongue and cold shoulder for everything distasteful to the conservatives. Ladies and gentlemen--ahem-- the apparent winner of this election is Mr. John Lindsay.

Crowd

Oh, no! No!

Edwards

He was realistic enough in 1965 to realize that he could not win. What has made a difference is that thanks to your efforts, we have begun to reintroduce the two-party system to New York City.

Cheering and applause

Tanenhaus

What Buckley had found all through his career-- he wrote about this when he was still a fairly young man-- is he said, "I lose all the big battles, but I win all the small personal ones." He said it with kind of frustration. What he wanted to do was to win the big war.

Man

The next President of the United States-- Richard Nixon!

Cheering and applause

Tanenhaus

Bill Buckley says, "This election-- it'll be decided on the issue of law and order." And he was right. What is on people's minds, what frightens them, is the fear that a generation that by the New Deal was put into the middle class is now gonna lose all of those gains. These are the debates we're having today.

Banging

Smith

Thank you very much, gentlemen. You'll certainly be back, I'm delighted to know for the Democratic convention where Mr. Buckley may attack and Mr. Vidal will have to defend. We'll be back after this message.

Chorus

Happy to see ABC Happy to see...

Wald

ABC was very happy with the coverage when you talk about Buckley-Vidal. People took notice, and they got noticed in the press.

Bellafante

That was very important in 1968 to everybody in television. It turned out that this was kind of a--ha ha--a hit. "About the only fun to be had during the GOP convention, "from a television observer's point of view, "was found in the nightly tete-a-tete between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal."

Wald

I'm never sure whether politics leads what argument is or argument leads what politics is, but together, Buckley and Vidal are enormously successful.

Vidal

I've always tried to keep my political life and my literary life somewhat apart. But in 1959, I decided to bring the two together in a play, and it became a film.

Hitchens

Gore does have a sense of a deep America and deep history. He's written "The Best Man"... the best play ever written about an American political convention.

Man

Do you think people mistrust intellectuals like you in politics? Intellectual? You mean I wrote a book?

Laughter

Man

Well, as Bertrand Russell said, "People in a democracy "tend to think they have less to fear from a stupid man than an intelligent one." Actually, it's the other way around. It's the stupid man who's...

Kaplan

The Vidal interest in politics was not only ideological, it was a very personal and social thing.

Man

What image do you feel Senator Cantwell is projecting at the moment? Oh, I'm afraid I don't know anything about images. That's a term from advertising where you don't try to sell the product, you sell the image of the product. Sometimes the image is a fake. But after all, your own image is-- A poor thing, but mine own. Paint me as I am, wart and all.

Tyrnauer

Gore was born into a political family. He's the grandson of a senator, T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. His father was in the Roosevelt administration. He saw himself as the heir to this political dynasty, and he was going to be the greatest of them all.

Drum roll

Man

Candidate Gore Vidal. Most of my plays, most of my writing is political or a criticism of society, shall we say. And actually I'm-- we're going out and trying to do something.

Tyrnauer

When Gore ran for Congress from Upstate New York in 1968, he saw it as the first stepping stone to the presidency.

Man

He doesn't exactly have the common touch. He's not exactly someone who is going to appeal to the working-class voters of the United States of America. He had a sense of himself as being equal to and belonging in the world of the powerful and the elite.

Tyrnauer

Gore and Jackie Kennedy were related by marriage, and Jack Kennedy gave campaign appearances for him. He was on the Kennedy ticket.

Kaplan

He was a welcome visitor at the White House until there was a run-in with Bobby Kennedy.

Tyrnauer

This will sound absurd with hindsight, but he probably saw Bobby Kennedy as competition for the presidency later in the sixties. And that's one reason Gore didn't like Bobby.

Vidal

Bobby Kennedy's neither a diplomat nor is he much of anything except a political opportunist, like most of them. The whole thing has been taken over by this camera, by people projecting images-- ghastly word-- and, uh, it's--it's these are the cards with which we play.

Kaplan

Bobby Kennedy immediately took a dislike to Gore Vidal-- thought he was pompous, thought he was arrogant.

Man

What is your current relationship with Mrs. Onassis, your step-sister?

Vidal

I haven't seen her since 1962. There's no reason for our lines to cross. She was devoted to Bobby Kennedy, and I was, as you know, plainly not, and we fell out over that.

Tyrnauer

When Gore lost the race for Congress, that led to not only a disillusionment with politics but a disillusionment with the United States.

Vidal

Naturally, I wanted to be a politician, but unfortunately I was born a writer. And, uh, I would not say that I exactly have had the life I wanted.

Man

Most of Vidal's work is done at Ravello from the Sorrentine coast amid lemon groves and vineyards 2,000 feet above the sea. His house is improbably perched above a precipice, the ideal spot, as he would say, to observe the decline of the West. "Playboy After Dark," show number 15. Take 1!

Snap

Beeping

Music playing

People murmuring indistinctly

Man

Mr. Vidal, will you please sign my copy of "Myra Breckenridge"?

Vidal

Oh, with great pleasure with my extra-special William Buckley-- Ha ha ha! I wouldn't be-- I wouldn't be seen without this pen.

Muttering indistinctly

Hefner

A gift from Bill, huh? A gift from Bill. Bill's not as nice as he looks. I know Bill personally. I know both sides of him. That's the best way to know him. Personally.

Harpsichord playing

Hefner

Man,

as Buckley

In the interval between Miami and Chicago, I read "Myra Breckenridge." It attempts heuristic allegory but fails, giving gratification only to sadist homosexuals and challenge only to taxonomists of perversion. I've thought and thought about it. There is nothing left to say about "Myra." And so we met again in Chicago.

Engines roaring

Man

Mr. Chairman?

Gavel bangs

Man

Mr. Chairman.

Smith

Good evening from the International Amphitheatre in Chicago. There are almost as many problems still to be solved as there are flies in this building, located in the heart of Chicago's Stock Yards.

Cattle lowing

Smith

The cheery welcome sign that is everywhere here is as much a command as an invitation. Mayor Daley has beautified everywhere, and what he cannot beautify, he has tried to hide behind new fences-- part of the tightest security checks an American city not under riot conditions has ever experienced.

Crowd

We want Gene! We want Gene! We want...

Smith

Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey arrived in Chicago today.

Gladstone

The Democratic party was in terrific disarray. Bobby Kennedy had just been killed a couple of months earlier. He was already becoming a martyr.

Man

The fight over the Democratic platform will move here right onto the floor of this convention, demanding a repudiation and a reversal of the Johnson administration policies on Vietnam.

Smith

At this moment, it is the calm in the eye of the storm. Their wounds have had time to heal since Miami Beach. They've had time to restock their arsenal for new assaults. They, of course, are William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

Bell dings

Smith

Mr. Vidal, do you feel more comfortable philosophically here than you did in Miami? Philosophically. I wonder if that word will ever be used again while we're here in Chicago. This place is a shambles. It's a police state. One's aware of the horrors of the world here-- the smell of old blood, the shrieking of the pigs as they're slaughtered in the morning. All this reminds one of--of life and death. So, in a sense, I do feel home, in a way, but not happy.

Merlis

Buckley realized he had his intellectual equal sitting right next to him. Vidal had done the homework in Miami. By the time we got to Chicago, Buckley had caught up and done some homework as well.

Smith

William Buckley on the defensive in Miami may now take the offensive.

Tanenhaus

He was also an extremely aggressive debater. And so he thought that justified every technique he could use to win. As a matter of testamentary integrity, I'll reveal a concrete proposal contained in a letter sent to me by Senator Kennedy about 6 months ago. The pice of which was, "I have changed my platform for 1968. "from 'Let's give blood to the Viet Cong' to 'Let's give Gore Vidal to the Viet Cong.'" May I see that? Really? I think, however, that would be immoderate. In any case, uh, I do share Mr. Kennedy's-- I must say... Mr. Kennedy's notion that Mr. Vidal is marred by his sort of strange fantasies concerning the realisms of politics.

Sullivan

We recognize that moment when we reach for a weapon that we know is sort of off-bounds. This is Senator Bobby Kennedy. Yes, I--I realize. Ahem. What a very curious handwriting. It all sort of slants up. Sign of a manic depressive. You've seen that about Senator Kennedy? Uh, I did see that. Whether you forged it or not, I don't know, and I would have to have my handwriting experts-- the graphologists would have to look at it. I put nothing beyond you. But to get back to the plank while we-- it's been fun inspecting your correspondence, but, uh...

Wolcott

Vidal is relatively unfazed. He had almost a Zen technique. You let the guy lean forward so that he falls over. And so each night, there was more spectacle to be had.

Drum roll

Flourish

Cheering

Woman

O say Can you see...

Man

The people of Chicago are proud to welcome a great political gathering of Americans.

Cheering

Newman

All the security makes me very nervous. 'cause it's necessary, apparently.

Man

Uh, the delegates of Paul Newman and Mr. Arthur Miller. It's a little frightening, quite frankly, being in this, uh... fortress, trying to select the president. Crowd,

chanting

Hell no, we won't go! Hell no, we won't go! Hell no, we won't go!

Daley

As long as I am mayor of this town, there'll be law and order in Chicago!

Cheering and applause

Daley

And the rockets red glare...

Wolcott

The forces of history seemed to be going towards a reckoning. It's like they've just gotta blow.

Franklin

...in air Gave proof...

Merlis

ABC crew cars were equipped with gas masks and helmets, and we were asked to make sure the press didn't see the stuff. They were anticipating trouble right from the start.

Franklin

O say can you... that Star-Spangled...

Bell dings

Smith

I would like to ask our guest commentators about Vietnam. How do we get out? Have we really been beaten? What matters here is that we have, in a word, lost the war. Something like 90% of the casualties are civilians, so when they accuse us of genocide, they, uh, are not without a point. Now, wait a minute. We have nothing to gain by this war. Now, wait a minute. Uh--ahem. We have not lost the war in Vietnam. What we have lost is an opportunity to press that war with such weapons as are especially at our disposal. The majority of the people of the United States, including the leadership of the Democratic party and the leadership of the Republican party, belong with me, uh, while you go to Rome, uh, and expatriate yourself. Oh, I--I think we should straighten this out now. I don't expatriate myself. I have an apartment in Rome, and I go there for 2 or 3 months every year to be close to the Vatican to contemplate William Buckley and his mad activities back here.

Banging

Smith

And with enormous serenity-- They're trying to get us, Bill. And I think, to be perfectly bleak and to be perfectly blunt, I think we're headed for total disaster-- this empire, with people like Mr. Buckley here beating the drum. And I think the instinct of the people I used to think was for peace. I think it, now I come back, and I see little American flags on the antenna of the car, they're getting ready for war. They're getting ready for war.

Man

What Vidal saw was that the American empire was completely overextended.

Vidal

These empires are very dangerous things-- He'd have won the war by now. to possess, as Pericles once pointed out. and once you get one, it's very difficult to let it go. But if we don't let it go, it's going to wreck us economically. We're already in trouble, and it has certainly divided the country at a time when resources should go to the slums and to the poor and to try to revise an extremely shabby country.

Ben-Hur

I tell you, the day Rome falls, there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before!

Buckley

Gore Vidal, disliking..., always talked about the empire, in which he is now right. Gore Vidal was correct in prophesizing that we would become an empire. That is our present dilemma.

Helicopter blades whirring

Buckley

Crowd,

chanting

The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!

Hitchens

This is the year of "The whole world is watching." This is the year where all politics is suddenly television. This is the year where the phrase "living room war" comes.

Gitlin

It was as if a theater piece was taking place for the public watching television.

People shouting indistinctly

Woman

Help me! Help me! Hey! Ow! Man,

on megaphone

If you do not leave, you will be subject to arrest!

Merlis

Gore asked me to drive him to an event with a couple of friends. So I had Gore Vidal, Arthur Miller, and Paul Newman in my car, and we drove into a cloud of tear gas.

Muffled shouting; sirens

Man

Here come the police. Step up here. Let's clear out. They're pushing and shoving. We're gonna get it. We're gonna get it for sure. Crowd,

chanting

The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching! The whole world is watch--

Smith

Uh, who is first? Mr. Vidal first.

Vidal

Uh... it's like living under a Soviet regime here-- the guards, the soldiers, the agents provocateur, on the parts of the police. You've seen the roughing up. There's very little that we can say after those pictures... that would be in any way adequate.

Smith

Let Mr. Buckley comment now. The effort here, not only on your program tonight but during the past 2 or 3 days in Chicago, has been to institutionalize this complaint so as to march forward and say that we've got a sort of a fascist situation. But don't infer from individual and despicable acts of violence of Chicago policemen a case for implicit totalitarianism in the American system. If we could all work up an equal sweat, and if you all would be obliging enough to have your cameras handy every time a politician commits demagogy or every time a labor union beats up people who refuse to join his unions, then maybe we could work up some kind of impartiality in resentment-- These people came here with no desire, other than anybody's ever been able to prove, than to hold peaceful demonstrations-- I can prove it. I can prove it. I was 14 windows above that gang last night.

00 and 5

00 this morning from 4,000 or 5,000 voices was sheer utter obscenities directed at the President of the United States. I say it is remarkable that there was as much restraint shown as was shown, for instance, last night by cops who were out there for 17 hours without inflicting a single wound on a single person even though that kind of disgusting stuff is being thrown at them and at all of American society.

Smith

Mr. Vidal, wasn't it a provocative act to try to raise the Viet Cong flag in the park, in the film we just saw? Wouldn't that invite--raising a Nazi flag in World War II would have had similar consequences. People in the United States happen to believe that the United States' policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Viet Cong are correct in wanting to organize their country in their own way politically. If it is a novelty in Chicago, that is too bad, but I assume that the point of American democracy-- Has something-- is you can express any point of view you want. Shut up a minute. No, I won't. Some people were pro-Nazi, and the answer is that they were--they were well-treated by people who ostracized them, and I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American marines and American soldiers. I know you don't care. As far as I'm concerned-- the only sort of pro crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that-- Let's-- let's not call names. I will only say that we can't have-- Now, listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi. Let's--let's stop calling names. or I'll sock you in your Goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered. Gentlemen, let's-- Let the author of "Myra Bracken--Breckenridge" go back to his pornography and stop making any allusions of Nazism-- I beg you-- to somebody in the infantry in the last war-- You were not in the infantry-- and caught Nazis. I was a

indistinct

Smith

. You were not. Now you're distorting your own military record. The network nearly...

Buckley

Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi--

Smith

Let's--let's stop calling names. or I'll sock you in your Goddamn face and you'll stay plastered. Gentlemen...

Merlis

I was watching it with a number of the news executives who were in the control room. Someone said, "Can they say that?" Well, you know, it's live. They had.

Buckley

I think Gore Vidal was fortunate that Bill didn't punch him in the nose. Bill could have broken Gore Vidal over the back of his knee. When Gore Vidal called him a crypto-Nazi, Bill let him have it. It is a slur. And the--the rictus of loathing on Mr. Buckley's face is quite unmistakable.

Tyrnauer

Buckley called Vidal "queer" on television. It's a slur. It would be considered a hate slur today.

Vidal

You have every right in this country to take any position you want to take because we are guaranteed freedom of speech. We've just listened to a rather-- Certainly-- a grotesque example of it.

Smith

I think--I think we've run out of time, and I, uh, thank you very much for the discussion. It was a little more heat and a little less light than usual, but, uh, it was still very worth hearing. Tomorrow night, you will have a chance to consider... Man,

as Buckley

My pulse was racing and my fingers trembled as wave after wave of indignation swept over me. And then suddenly, about to deposit the earphones on the table stand, I stopped, frozen. Vidal, arranging his own set, was whispering to me. "Well," he said, smiling. "I guess we gave them their money's worth tonight." Man,

as Vidal

It was a splendid moment-- eyes rolling, mouth twitching, long weak arms waving. Buckley skittered from slander to glorious absurdity. Man,

as Buckley

I reached my trailer after taking great strides through the maze of technicians, operators, executives, reporters, guests, all of whom looked at me as I stomped by, and then quickly looked away, afraid, perhaps, that I would greet anyone guilty of a lingering glance with a sock on his Goddamn face.

Merlis

The door slammed, and I heard shouting. Paul Newman had been in Vidal's trailer and had been watching it on television, ran down to see us, ran into Buckley's trailer. Buckley came in at about the same time. And Buckley, according to Newman, responded that it was a disaster.

Vidal

We can't have--

Buckley

Now, listen, you queer. stop calling me a crypto-Nazi.

Bridges

These ad hominem attacks were not at all characteristic of Bill....you'll stay plastered. This was a totally unprecedented thing for him to do on television. Vidal was a smart enough tactician to know that he had won the debate in that moment.

Man

And of course, that brings up the one final question

now that the election is over

Will Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal kiss and make up?

Laughter

now that the election is over

I think Vidal would love that.

Merlis

After we did it, no network ever again did wall-to-wall, gavel-to-gavel coverage. It could be that some executive said, "Hey, whatever you may think of it, that Vidal-Buckley thing had a big impact." Get Mr. Pro and Mr. Con, Miss For Abortion, and Miss Against Abortion, Jack, I spent the holidays flying back and forth across this country, and I'm worried. The place seems all out of focus, sea to shining sea. We've both flown many times, Shana, coast-to-coast, but we see a different land below. And you have them argue, and that's punditry. That's enlightenment. Dan, there's an old saying. Behind every successful man, there's a woman-- a loving, giving, caring woman.

Applause

Merlis

Jane, you ignorant slut.

Laughter and applause

Merlis

Argument is sugar, and the rest of us are flies.

Man

Welcome to Radio 81. I think this is Ron, and Gore Vidal is also here.

Ron

I invariably agree with your social views, the content of your ideas, and I detest William Buckley's views. But yet, when I hear you talk and William Buckley talk, I feel that Buckley is the more honest man. In what way do you find him more honest than I? I think it goes way back to the-- the debates you had with him on television. And, uh, you literally blew his mind. I've never seen Buckley lose it like that. He, you know, he swore at you, stood up, and said, "How dare you call me a neo-Nazi. I fought in the Second World War, you see." I know. He was overexcited, yeah. Yes, but I think-- What did you find dishonest about my performance? It had to do with the-- the glee in your face and your eyes that you could not hide. Well, that isn't-- I wasn't being dishonest. I am--I am a happy warrior. I'm in battle, and I'm enjoying it. This is what these things are about. He's somebody that I regard as a very bad person... politically, and to expose him on television for what he is-- is my job. And I think I accomplished it very nicely. So did he. He brought suit against me as a result of it, but--

Bridges

A year after these debates, in August of 1969, "Esquire" published a long essay that Bill had written, something like 12,000 words, trying to explore why he had reacted the way he did.

Tanenhaus

Buckley couldn't let it go. He couldn't let this thing go. He thought he would avenge himself or explain himself by writing in a sophisticated way about Vidal in "Esquire." Man,

as Buckley

For days and weeks, indeed for months,

I tormented myself with the question

What should I have said? Was my mistake that of going on TV at all, in light of the abundant warnings, with Vidal? Could it be that my emotional reaction was defensible and even healthy but that my words were ill-chosen?

Tanenhaus

The problem was, instead of putting a cap on the debate, he's perpetuating it on another platform, which really made it worse. Vidal, then, replied in print to this barnburner piece to take the stage back. Man,

as Vidal

On Wednesday,

August 28th at 9

30 o'clock, in full view of 10 million people, the little door in William F. Buckley, Jr.'s forehead suddenly opened and out sprang that wild cuckoo which I had always known was there but had wanted so much for others, preferably millions of others to get a good look at. Vidal is always suspicious of Buckley's sexuality and makes references that suggests that Buckley has an attraction to the homoerotic.

Man

There was always a question of, um... I don't know how to put it-- the--uh--that there was a kind of sexual ambiguity about Bill.

Tanenhaus

There were rumors-- none of them substantiated. It was more a matter of affect, really.

Man

Buckley was kind of an effete guy. If you read the piece, you are led to believe that, among other things, William F. Buckley, Jr. was homosexual.

Kaplan

Buckley instituted a suit against "Esquire" magazine and against Vidal. Vidal instituted a countersuit against Buckley. The litigation went on for 3 years.

Cavett

Is that still going back and forth in the courts-- It's going more back than forth. Oh. Ha ha! It keeps on ticking away like a bomb.

Hitchens

At the time, it was probably one of the longest lawsuits between two American public intellectuals there'd ever been. Neither of them ever tired of it because it gave them enormous opportunity for the practice of malice. It's still-- it's still litigious, is it? Yes. Very litigious.

Kaplan

By the third year, "Esquire," you know, said, we've had enough.

Tyrnauer

"Esquire" ended up settling. And then Buckley, in a stroke of brilliance, gives a press conference and declares victory. In the public imagination, people thought that he had won this lawsuit that they didn't understand in the first place. I know that Gore hated that.

Cavett

Was it ever resolved who came out ahead on that whole thing? Well, it sort of went on for several years. And then about a week before we were to go into court, he called off the suit. Pulled the suit out from under you, eh? Exactly, exactly. I was looking forward to that.

Birds chirping

Typewriter keys clicking

Man

Why do you work so hard? Why do you work so darn hard? There's a lot to do.

Edwards

Bill Buckley, the popularizer, laid the foundation for the conservative movement, which enabled Ronald Reagan to come along and to win that presidency by the margin that he did.

Applause

Reagan

I can't tell you exactly when I discovered "National Review." It had a profound impact on me.

Man

Well, my relationship to Ronald Reagan was pretty close. I--there was that affinity of ideas. I visited him and he visited me. We took a liking to each other and certainly I to him.

Alterman

When Ronald Reagan saluted William Buckley in "National Review" as president, Buckley became a kingmaker, and he was seen to be a kingmaker. And, you know, appearance is at least as important as reality in this world.

Tyrnauer

When Buckley and Reagan were ascendant and Vidal's kind of political ideology was taking a back seat, I think this was actually a great period for him. Some of his greatest writing occurred in the eighties, both in essays and in literature.

Hitchens

When another right-wing critic attacked Gore Vidal as being anti-American, Gore's reply was, "How can you call me anti-American? I'm the country's official biographer."

Lehmann-Haupt

In "Burr," Vidal got off one of his great lines in when he said at the beginning of Vidal's attempt at revenge on Buckley... I believe his name was William de la Touche Clancey. And I think Vidal said somewhere that it could not possibly be based on anyone, meaning that of course it's based on Bill. Man,

as Vidal

William de la Touche Clancey's voice is like that of a furious goose, all honks and hisses. He detests our democracy. He fills the pages of his magazine "America" with libelous comments on all things American. Despite a rich wife and 5 children, he is a compulsive sodomite, forever preying on country boys new to the city. It is extreme, and, uh... he was a good hater, Vidal. God knows what is at the very bottom of that animosity.

Tyrnauer

He talked about it every day. You don't talk about something every day that didn't cut you, and I don't think that really ever healed. We were in Ravello, not much to do after dinner. He had acquired a VHS copy of the Vidal-Buckley debates. I naively said, "Oh, do you think we could watch them?" Little did I realize this was the main event for the night. We then watched them, I think, again a couple nights later. And on subsequent trips, we watched them 2 or 3 times. And the thrill of the first viewing was gone, and you began to have the sensation that you were edging into "Sunset Boulevard," Norma Desmond territory.

Tanenhaus

It was Buckley who was distressed by it. Buckley let it become personal in a way that he'd been a maestro of being able to avoid, and that haunted him for a very long time.

Man

After 33 years on PBS, William F. Buckley, Jr. taped his last program before an audience of invited guests.

Tanenhaus

The last show was succeeded by an interview with Ted Koppel. And at one point, he showed the now already infamous clip... Now, listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi--

Smith

Let's--let's stop calling names. or I'll sock you in your Goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered. Gentlemen, let's--

Tanenhaus

Buckley uncharacteristically said nothing, and then they went to the commercial break. I was in the audience that day, and he made a beeline up the aisle to where I was sitting and said, "I thought that tape had been destroyed."

Bridges

More than 30 years after the original debates, he was still furious with Vidal and still shaken that he had reacted that way. Do you wish you were 20? No. Absolutely not. No. I would--I would-- If I had a pill which would reduce my age about 25 years, I wouldn't take it.

Rose

Why not? Because I'm tired of life. Are you really? Yeah. I--I really am. I'm--I'm utterly prepared to, uh, stop...living on. Any regrets... about this life that you have lived? Uh, yeah. Like what? Well, I'm not sure I'd tell you.

Cavett

Someone asked when Bill Buckley died what Gore thought. He said, "I thought that Hell will be a livelier place. "He will be permanently among those he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatreds."

Tyrnauer

The last line of that piece was "WFB--rest in Hell." It seems a little farfetched to say that Gore Vidal was waiting around for Buckley to die so he could have the last word, but I promise you that he took great pleasure in that. He was not satisfied if he didn't have something to fight against, and at the end of his life, I think he was fighting against the ghosts of all these enemies.

Hitchens

Truman Capote once famously said that, "It wasn't a matter of when Gore Vidal would be forgotten. It was more or less when did he start to be forgotten." Gore was convinced this had happened already. The young had forgotten him. His books weren't being read anymore.

Tanenhaus

These figures become most interesting when they're not listened to so much because then there's a kind of big silence inside themselves.

Waves crashing

Tanenhaus

I compared it in an essay I wrote to Wallace Stevens' great poem "The Snowman" where he says, "You have to have a mind of winter "to see nothing that is not there and the nothing that is." I think these great debates are absolutely nonsense. Uh, the way they're set up, there's almost no interchange of ideas, very little, even, of personality. There's also--the terrible thing about this meeting, that hardly anyone listens. They sort of get an impression of somebody and they think that they've figured out just what he's like by seeing him on television.

Alterman

The Buckley-Vidal debate... was a harbinger of an unhappy future.

Buckley

Does television run America? There is an implicit conflict of interest between that which is highly viewable and that which is highly illuminating.

Gladstone

That was a time when television was still a public square, where Americans gathered and saw pretty much the same thing. There's nothing like that now.

All shouting indistinctly

Man

Because, see, we're a debate show. No, no, no. That would be great. I would love to see a debate show....a 24-hour day where we have each side on as best we can-- No, no, no. That would be great. You're doing theater when you should be doing debate. The ability to talk the same language is gone. More and more, we're divided into communities of concern. Each side can ignore the other side and live in its own world. It makes us less of a nation, because what binds us together is the pictures in our heads. But if those people are not sharing those ideas, they're not living in the same place.

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