When Buckley Met Vidal

A single programming gamble by ABC News helped invent the political TV world we live in now, and it hinged on one combustible pairing: novelist-provocateur Gore Vidal and conservative architect William F. Buckley Jr. We walk through how the 1968 Republican and Democratic National Conventions became a national theater, with two elite talkers treating live television as both weapon and audience. 

We unpack what each man is really fighting for. Buckley brings a movement-building instinct, a belief that culture drives politics, and a sharp defense of hierarchy, “law and order,” and American power. Vidal counters with satire, a suspicion of empire, and a determination to expose the moral assumptions behind conservative rhetoric, especially on civil rights, inequality, and the Vietnam War. As Miami gives way to Chicago, the arguments stop being abstract and start colliding with real violence in the streets and raw division on camera. 

Then it goes off the rails. When debate turns into personal insult and threat, you can hear the future arrive: the conflict between what is most viewable and what is most illuminating. We also follow the long aftermath, from magazine essays to lawsuits to decades of obsession, and end with a question that still haunts media and politics: what happens when we no longer share the same screen, the same facts, or even the same language for disagreement? 

If you found this story useful, subscribe, share the episode with a friend, and leave a review. Who do you think understood television better, Vidal or Buckley?

Transcript

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Opening And A Feud Rekindled

SPEAKER_36 1:21

I keep nothing but a few photographs in the bathroom of myself at an earlier time. The first shows me at the age of twenty-five, looking rather anxious. I just bought a large house in the country and cannot afford it. Here you see the young author of Willow at the age of nineteen, still in uniform. Here, above the bathtub, in the place of honor, are the debates with William Buckley in 1968. He is a well-known right-wing commentator whose name seldom passes my lips.

SPEAKER_03 2:38

That was a very nice introduction. On the other hand, if it hadn't been, I would have smashed you in the goddamn face.

SPEAKER_36 2:57

And so terminally, I have left the bleeding corpse of William F. Buckley Jr. on the floor of the convention hall in Chicago.

SPEAKER_02 3:08

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

SPEAKER_29 3:56

Speed and efficiency in the nerve centers of NBC News.

SPEAKER_46 4:00

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.

SPEAKER_30 4:12

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

SPEAKER_16 4:19

Networks. Did they deal in controversy? No. Did they invite controversy? No. They were in the center. They were cementers of idea, not disruptors of idea.

SPEAKER_24 4:36

This is the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. Good evening from our CBS Newsroom in New York.

SPEAKER_25 4:41

NBC and CBS were fighting for the lead, and ABC was clearly number three.

Network News As The Safe Center

SPEAKER_25 4:48

The other two networks were doing full coverage at the conventions. Gavel to gavel. Turn the cameras and microphones on and let them roll. And ABC had less money to spend on these things. So 1968, ABC went to the truncated version of convention coverage to do an hour and a half from 9 30 to 11 at night.

SPEAKER_16 5:16

They didn't have Cronkite. They didn't have Huntley and Brinkley. They didn't have the standards. Would have been fourth, but there were only three. Provocative, a media event. And they settled on Buckley and Vidaux. It wasn't necessarily sensible. It was a shot in the dark. And it changed television forever.

SPEAKER_03 6:31

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 four years of asphyxiation by liberal premises. This is William F. Buckley Jr. in New York.

unknown 6:59

Perfect.

SPEAKER_36 7:02

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.

SPEAKER_17 7:24

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. Do you think that America really doesn't believe in itself as much as it used to?

SPEAKER_03 7:38

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, in their culture and themselves.

SPEAKER_15 8:07

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.

SPEAKER_48 8:24

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

SPEAKER_27 8:33

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

SPEAKER_36 8:42

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.

SPEAKER_15 9:00

Why is a magazine attached to a movement?

SPEAKER_35 9:05

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

SPEAKER_48 9:18

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 Gore Vidal.

SPEAKER_36 9:40

Camera's going. Men and women who are sexually repressed regard all sexual pleasure as dirty, evil, the devil's work. Yet we are all prostitute in one sense or another, ethically, if not sexually.

SPEAKER_28 9:57

For Buckley, Vidal was the devil. He represented everything that was going to moral hell. That was degenerative about the country.

SPEAKER_36 10:17

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.

SPEAKER_10 10:45

Remember, Gourvidel was always an iconoclast, an apostate, a writer against the grain. And he saw Buckley and his ideas as anti-democratic. If Buckley were not taken out, his ideas would take down the nation.

SPEAKER_36 11:03

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

SPEAKER_08 11:16

Gore Vidal is one of America's most successful and distinguished writers. He also lives in a personal cloud of outrageous legend. After the early books, which first brought

ABC’s Risky Convention Experiment

SPEAKER_08 11:26

him to the public eye, came a group of highly praised historical novels, which sold in their millions. But it was Myra Breckinridge that confirmed Vidal's place as the enfant terrible of the respectable American literary scene.

SPEAKER_10 11:39

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 Breckinridge.

SPEAKER_34 11:48

And now, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for.

SPEAKER_30 11:54

The book that couldn't be written is now the motion picture that couldn't be made. Myra Breckinridge.

SPEAKER_10 12:02

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. I don't know where Myra came from.

SPEAKER_36 12:13

I really was like the Huxley character each day, wondering what Myra would do and roaring with laughter as this thing presented itself to me.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Gentlemen, I am Byron Breckenridge. Uncle Buck, your fag nephew, became your niece two years ago in Copenhagen. Now free as a bird and happy in being the most extraordinary woman in the world.

SPEAKER_36 12:37

Suddenly, it occurred to me about sexual relations. How indeed much of it is based not upon any pleasure principle or even appropriate one. But of people gaining power over others. And so I conceive my androgynous protagonist.

SPEAKER_48 13:00

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

SPEAKER_10 13:08

Uh the themes of Myra Breckenridge and also sexuality and transsexuality is way ahead of its time and gone under Bill Buckley's skin. Did you uh see the film Myra Breckenridge and why not?

SPEAKER_47 15:21

That told the people at ABC, wow, we have a chance for some great theater here. Let's get Corvidal.

SPEAKER_35 15:32

Corvidal is a war of debate in uh when it comes to values of our country and of historical forces. The man is the man.

SPEAKER_30 16:20

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 believe that one. It's therefore easy for the Republicans to avoid the danger of large militant demonstrations.

SPEAKER_36 17:01

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.

SPEAKER_48 17:37

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

SPEAKER_27 17:52

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

SPEAKER_26 18:04

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

SPEAKER_27 18:14

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 two parties. What he wanted to do was to expose Dill Buckley.

SPEAKER_16 18:37

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.

SPEAKER_36 18:54

In one minute, a second look with William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

SPEAKER_18 19:02

Across from us was Howard K. Smith. Suave, intelligent, mildly apprehensive, rehearsing with his lips the lines he would presently deliver. 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.

SPEAKER_11 19:27

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.

SPEAKER_18 19:38

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

SPEAKER_15 19:48

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 is being split into seams. And each has staked out his position in ways that portend where our country is divided. Right.

SPEAKER_13 20:05

In just a few months.

SPEAKER_36 20:10

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 American people would vote? Uh may I comment, uh Smith? Please do. Yeah. It seems to me that the the author of Myra Breckenridge is well acquainted with the imperatives of human greed.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Well, I would like to say, Bill, I if I if I may say, Bill, but what dominates the image of the city?

SPEAKER_36 20:55

I would like to say that if there were a contest for Mr. Myra Breckenridge, who would unquestionably win it. I based her entire style polemically upon you. Passionate and irrelevant. Now, my my point is that uh for uh Mr. Vidal to uh contemn a particular party as engaged in the pursuit of human greed requires us to understand his rather eccentric definitions. Is it greedy, really, for

Buckley Builds Modern Conservatism

SPEAKER_36 21:19

people to suggest that what matters to poor people is that they have houses? Is it really greedy to want to preserve our freedom? We have the luxury of being able to focus on those who are poor in our midst, as though we can do something about it, which is something that no other country less occupied with human greed. The nice thing about the Republican Party is that every four 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 four years you get this sort of crocodile tears for the poor people because they need their vote. It is quite true that uh that uh a Reagan is capable of talking about freeloaders, so am I. Because there are freeloaders. It is one thing to say that uh uh it is one thing to say that a society ought to concern itself with the part of its poor. I think the Republican Party is saying that. Perhaps the Republican Party should have a platform on how to deal with the Dow. If absolutely necessary, I will 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. Since you're in favor of the nuclear bombing of North Vietnam, I'd be very worried about your kind of odd neurosis. Yeah, I've never advocated nuclear bombing of North Vietnam. Uh, you know, I'll give him time and place. Well, if we if we don't mind. No, no, record. No, no, wait a minute. Don't duck away from the record. But 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 was for the country. It seems to me that uh the Republican Party um has shown a record of greater sobriety than Mr. Nadal, who boasts of not reading something which he has prepared to misquote in the presence of the person who edits it. Now, Bill Buckley, if you if the quotation is exact, don't be missing. We know that your tendency is to be feline, Mr. But just relax for a moment. And take it very simply on this. I have not advocated, I'm not horrified of the prospect.

SPEAKER_29 23:32

No, I just quoted when you said it. Susan Ware.

SPEAKER_36 23:34

Now are you saying you didn't say? I am saying that I didn't say it. Tune in this time tomorrow night, and we'll have further evidence. Bill Buckley, Old Warrior, turned off. Oh, that's right. And about the human greed of everybody in the world except yourself. And then out tomorrow. Tomorrow afterwards what Mr. Fidel thinks about the Kennedys.

SPEAKER_44 23:52

Good night, and let me tell you.

SPEAKER_36 23:55

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, and we'll have time to follow them through tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

SPEAKER_32 24:09

Every night we 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.

SPEAKER_15 24:23

Gore Vidal and William Buckley first clashed almost by proxy in 1962 on the Jack Parr program. Vidal had gone on Jack Parr's show and they both started mocking Buckley. His eccentric mannerisms. voice, the facial ticks, and all the rest. So in effect, Buckley was given equal time and he went on Jack Parr's show. Ampar expected the kind of troglodite Neanderthal man of the right whom Vidal had caricatured on the program. And instead, you have this genius of debate Ampar was stunned.

SPEAKER_11 25:09

We next met in San Francisco 1964 during the Goldwater Convention. I confessed 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.

SPEAKER_21 25:31

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

SPEAKER_32 25:47

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

SPEAKER_15 25:53

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.

SPEAKER_21 26:03

You know the people on the left are more law abiding than anybody else. That's why they're on the left.

SPEAKER_11 26:07

You know they have explained that would you I'd be happy to you're marvelous you're the only man I know can answer your question and convict the man before he can answer the question.

SPEAKER_35 26:16

Television was happy to have Bill because everybody else was saying the same thing.

SPEAKER_36 26:22

From my point of view what Elijah Muhammad is doing to you is diseasing your mind. You you you you sit and tell me that that we white people will like to divide and and conquer. I I I grew up as a white child. I heard much more talk against Democrats than I did against uh black people.

SPEAKER_14 26:41

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.

SPEAKER_36 26:56

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

SPEAKER_12 27:26

Everybody watched the news nearly 80% of the country watched coverage of the Republican and Democratic conventions in 1968 west coast in about six or seven minutes.

SPEAKER_13 27:39

And then ABC News's studio collapsed the lighting grid fell down onto the floor of the set and the roof fell in literally you know it was built inside the arena ABC was really you know the budget car rental of television news pieces of the ceiling start flying and then all of a sudden the whole thing started giving away Mr.

SPEAKER_30 28:15

Lauer ABC promised to be unconventional this year but this is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_44 28:20

We're sure gotta be unconventional Sam I can tell you that thank you very much.

SPEAKER_36 28:24

Now let's just cut it this is Miami day one from Miami Beach ABC News presents Race to the White House 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 we would like now to demonstrate how the English language ought to be used by two craftsmen our guest commentators if you view debate purely as sport let's call it blood sport then really all bets are off music stand by an else you have one objective and that's to win in that moment when you attack the position

Vidal, Power, And Cultural Rebellion

SPEAKER_36 29:29

of your opponent you have to first attack it clinically and rationally five four but mostly what you have to get at is what's behind those things. What is driving the human being who is in front of you three two deputy 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 the state must have some responsibility for what happens in the country and now you have a Ronald Reagan whom you approve of who does not want to use the federal government to do anything at all.

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Mr Smith I I confess that anything complicated confuses Mr.

SPEAKER_36 30:53

Bedal this has been plain for a very long time he has a great difficulty reconciling uh uh even uh axiomatic positions concerning political philosophy but we were treated to Mr. Gore Vidal the playwright saying uh that after all Ronald Reagan was nothing more than a quote aging Hollywood juvenile actor now to begin with everybody is aging uh even uh even you are the you are perceptibly before our airport then he said Hollywood now one was either acted in Hollywood during the time Mr Reagan actor or one didn't uh act uh at all uh Mr. Vidal sends all of his books to Hollywood many of which are are rejected but some of which uh are ground out in some Bill I never told him any of that he called him a juvenile actor uh which is presumably to be distinguished from uh an adult uh uh actor now not my point is 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 it's uh now Bill if I may say just because I think ABC has an idea Billy just as I think ABC has the authority I'm almost true. No you're not in every sense. Let Mr Buckley finish this sentence then Mr Buddha refuted that ABC has the authority to invite the author of Myra Breckenridge to comment to uh 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 uh acted in movies uh that were not written uh by Mr.

SPEAKER_15 32:38

Vidal so if Buckley was the great debater of his time Fidal was the great talker of his time well as usual Mr.

SPEAKER_36 32:46

Buckley uh with his enormous 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 uh Bill maintain your reputation as being the Mary Antoinette of the right wing and continually imposing your own rather bloodthirsty neuroses on on a political campaign.

SPEAKER_26 33:11

He also rehearsed his antelopes all the great bono that he unleashed on the air he tried out first on the reporters in the press room so uh calling Buckley the Marie Antoinette of the right wing he he had done that with a reporter beforehand.

SPEAKER_36 33:31

This is the Hobgoblinization gentleman Marxist you have just got I think I'll have one concluding sentence apiece. Can you give us one? Well I I think that it is something for which um 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 uh such myths as have been energetically projected by Mr.

SPEAKER_15 33:58

Bedow which would be uh not only uh a philosophy and an economy of stagnation but also a spiritual world of stagnation well thank you very much indeed gentlemen while would you 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 it it's it's almost as if they were matter and antimatter sort of parallel lines 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 Gore never went to college which he was very proud of actually we are savages my family father was a 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.

SPEAKER_13 35:23

In fact they're supposed to be what American mass audience despises they're intellectual they sound like elites but people worm to it Mr Buckley do you think mini skirts are in good taste on you I think they are legs are in good taste good legs I never would have figured you for that kindal famously said there are two things you never turn down sex in appearing on television.

SPEAKER_10 35:54

Go ahead Joanne Woodward very good that's one down and nine to go up 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 talk to me instead of talking to the audience well by a curious thing we have not found ourselves in a friendly neighborhood bar but both by election are sitting here with an audience so therefore we'd be just honest that it's pretend otherwise Buckley I've noticed that whenever you appear on television you're always seated

Miami Sparks Over Class And Vietnam

SPEAKER_10 36:29

does this mean you can't think on your feet it's very um very hard to stand up carrying the the weight of what I know 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 in a way I think the brilliant thing about Gor 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. He was willing to take these risks that almost no one statistically was ever willing to take he deserves so much credit for that that he does not get you have your own narrow views of what is correct sexual behavior.

SPEAKER_36 37:38

I haven't disagree with it and I think there are great many people who do we cannot in any way encourage young boys uh into this kind of relationship you have every right to propagandize from the pulpit and give us the same right to propagandize with books.

SPEAKER_38 37:52

I certainly am not going to try to shut down your church as appalling as I find your argument Vidal's view is that sexual orientation among civilized human beings is not named, discussed or labeled Gore Vidal would never answer to the question are you gay?

SPEAKER_10 38:11

Yes, I'm gay you have to understand that Gore was obsessed with shedding sexual labels.

SPEAKER_36 38:21

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 who says so I say so it is a completely natural act from the beginning of time. The morays of the country are going to hell and if there was one thing William Buckley cared more about than another thing it would have been that if we go on like this abortion will be on demand women will have sex with women the family will be over the church won't be respected people will be screwing in the street and frying the horses buggery will be legal and if you'd said all that to Gore he would have said well okay bring it on in a very moving piece called A Blow for Peace in uh in that magazine I will not mention on the 29th of December 1964 we know that you'd like nothing to sully your lips. Oh you came out you you will eat it first you came out in favor of history at aches for such an act of greatness that is the bombing of the Chinese nuclear capacity. And this is I have no doubt that there are there is somebody in Haight Ashbury or Greenwich Village who considers that your caricature is fetching or I don't I I was invited here and I'm prepared to try to talk about the Republican Convention.

SPEAKER_03 39:43

Yes but but I maintain that it's very difficult to do so when you have somebody like this who speaks in such verbs and uh he likes to be naughty uh which uh which has proved to be a professionally highly merchandisable vice.

SPEAKER_35 39:56

Not unlike your so public vices being wickedness fear 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.

SPEAKER_17 40:11

The the disease of the right is is greed, bigotry insensitivity and general stupidity on 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 most Jews suggested Hitler was the embodiment of the ultra right what is in action certainly he wasn't the embodiment of the ultra left and do you do you care to read the context or shall I grind it down.

SPEAKER_35 40:37

No, no no if you are a right winger you don't want to have anything to do with the Gnostic heresies of Nazism fascism.

SPEAKER_32 40:48

And that was a label that the left wing kept trying to pin on the right wing which is the cherry bomb that's waiting to go off and eventually does.

SPEAKER_36 41:04

Good evening from Miami Beach.

SPEAKER_09 41:06

Again tonight we bring you in 90 minutes all that's worth seeing and knowing as the convention's moment of truth comes near about what you're doing Quiet Never has obedience to law been so disdained 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 it the next one gets a load of bucks shut any takers must we avoid our great cities by night as if they were guerrilla infested hamlets out in Vietnam there was a racial protest that turned into a rye at the convention in Miami these were two visions of America clashing look at that man right there many 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 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 there.

SPEAKER_36 43:11

And Buckley knew it because to some extent he'd helped create it a subject for William Buckley and Gorvidal tonight beyond the nomination what issues can the Republicans use effectively to win? Well I think uh uh two primarily number one a law or and order I wish there was a way of saying law and order that didn't make uh uh our critics say oh you're talking about the racial question I 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 going to face is this what do we do about the growth of really mutinous members of the American community 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 the 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 it.

SPEAKER_37 44:22

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.

SPEAKER_36 44:45

In the United States five percent of the population have 20% of the income and the bottom 20% have five percent of the income I think this is this seems to me I know that you would you revel in a kind of inequality I think it's only because business is based upon it you see I believe that freedom breeds inequality and that's say that again freedom breeds inequality. Now I'll say it a third time no twice is enough and I think you made your point.

SPEAKER_38 45:13

Unless you have freedom to be unequal there is no such thing as freedom and Buckley you see a shrill defense of what he sees as a completely collapsing social and cultural order.

SPEAKER_36 45:26

What can I say? You have you've given that ghastly position once again of the well to do and the uh those who inherit money and believe that others do not must somehow 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 because Vidal is so educated and so one of his class for Buckley the betrayal of those values seems to be almost personal Buckley he didn't believe in democracy he believed in rule by elites starting with him 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

SPEAKER_15 46:39

On defeating.

SPEAKER_36 46:41

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

SPEAKER_15 46:53

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 ethnic in Brooklyn, in Queens, in Staten Island, in the outer boroughs, detained people who voted for Goldwater in 64 at a time of mounting racial unrest in America.

SPEAKER_40 47:29

The conservatives, more than 1,200 of them, paid $1 each to see William F. Butley Jr. And there was nothing fancy on the menu here, just hot tongue and cold shoulder for everything distasteful to the conservatives.

SPEAKER_36 47:42

Ladies and gentlemen, the apparent winner of this election is Mr. John Lindsay.

SPEAKER_27 47:52

He was realistic enough in 1965 to realize that he could not win.

SPEAKER_36 47:58

What has made a difference is that thanks to your efforts, we have begun to reintroduce the two-party system to New York City.

Television Persona And Moral Panic

SPEAKER_15 48:08

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 with kind of frustration. What he wanted to do was to win the big war.

SPEAKER_32 48:28

The next president of the United States, Richard Nixon.

SPEAKER_15 48:36

Bill Buckley said 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 going to lose all of those gains. These are the debates we're having today.

SPEAKER_36 49:13

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

SPEAKER_16 49:33

ABC was very happy with the coverage. When you talk about Buckley Vidal. People took notice. And they got noticed in the press. That was very important in 1968 to everybody in television.

SPEAKER_12 49:48

It turned out that this was kind of uh 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-tete between William F. Buckley and Gorvidal.

SPEAKER_16 50:03

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

SPEAKER_04 50:22

Well, I have 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 make him a film.

SPEAKER_32 50:35

Who does the sense of a deep America and deep history? He's written the best now. The best play ever written about an American political convention.

SPEAKER_39 50:49

Intellectual.

SPEAKER_22 50:50

I mean I wrote a book. It's a stupid man.

SPEAKER_28 51:02

But the dog interest in politics was not only ideological, but it's a very personal.

SPEAKER_22 51:12

I don't feel senator count what it's projecting at the moment. 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 thing. But after all, your own image is a poor thing, but mine own.

SPEAKER_10 51:27

Gore was born into a political family. He's the grandson of the 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.

SPEAKER_04 51:46

Candidate Gore Bidow. Most of my plays, most of my writing is uh political or in criticism of society, to repair. And for a claim, I'm getting out and trying to do something.

SPEAKER_10 51:58

When Gore ran for Congress from upstate New York in 1960, he saw it as the first stepping stone to the presidency.

SPEAKER_28 52:08

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.

SPEAKER_10 52:35

And Jack Kennedy gave campaign appearances for him. He was on the Kennedy ticket.

SPEAKER_28 52:42

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

SPEAKER_10 52:51

This will sound absurd with hindsight, but he probably saw Bobby Kennedy as competition for the presidency later in the 60s. And that's one reason Gore didn't like Bobby.

SPEAKER_29 53:03

Bobby Kennedy is neither a liberal 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 wood, and uh it's it's these are the cards with which we play.

SPEAKER_28 53:21

Bobby Kennedy immediately took a dislike to Norvadal. Thought he was pompous, thought he was arrogant.

SPEAKER_17 53:30

What is your current relationship with Mrs. Onassis, your stepsister?

SPEAKER_35 53:34

I haven't seen her since 1962.

SPEAKER_36 53:37

There's no reason for our lines to cross. She was devoted to Bobby Kennedy, and I was, as you know, plainly not. And uh, we fell out over that.

SPEAKER_10 53:50

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

SPEAKER_36 54:50

Oh, with great pleasure, with my extra special William Buckley. I wouldn't be I wouldn't be seen without this pen. Okay, this is a property. A gift from Bill. 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.

SPEAKER_18 55:17

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 thought and thought about it. There is nothing left to say about Myra. And so we met again in Chicago.

SPEAKER_41 55:53

Mr. Chairman.

SPEAKER_30 55:57

Good evening from the International Amphitheater in Chicago.

SPEAKER_36 56:00

There are almost as many problems still to be solved as there are flies in this building located in the heart of Chicago's stockyards.

SPEAKER_30 56:14

The cheery welcome sign that is everywhere here is as much a command as an invitation. Mayor Daly 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.

SPEAKER_36 56:39

Eugene McCarthy and Hubert Humphrey arrived in Chicago today.

SPEAKER_46 56:43

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

SPEAKER_20 56:56

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

SPEAKER_36 57:09

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.

unknown 57:26

Mr.

SPEAKER_36 57:27

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

Chicago In Crisis After Miami

SPEAKER_36 57:38

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 life and death. So, in a sense, I do feel home in a way, but not happy.

SPEAKER_26 57:58

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

SPEAKER_15 58:12

William Buckley, on the defensive in Miami, may now take the offensive. He was also an extremely aggressive debater. And so he thought that justified every technique he could use to win.

SPEAKER_36 58:24

But as a matter of testamentary integrity, uh, I reveal a concrete proposal contained in a letter sent to me by Senator Kennedy about six months ago, uh, the PS of which was uh I have changed my platform for 1968 from let's give blood to the Viet Cong to let's give Goa Vidal to the Viet Cong. May I see that, really? I think, uh, however, that would be uh immoderate. In any case, uh oh, I do share uh Mr. Kennedy's uh Mr. Kennedy's uh notion that Mr. Vidal uh is marred by his uh sort of strange fantasies uh concerning the realisms of politics.

SPEAKER_38 59:07

We all recognize that moment when we reach for a weapon that that we know is sort of off bounds.

SPEAKER_36 59:14

This is Senator Bobby Kennedy. Yes, I realize. What a very curious handwriting. It also slants up, sign of a manic depressive. Did you say that about Senator Kennedy? Uh I did see that. Whether you forged it or not, I don't know, and I will have to have my handwriting experts. The graphenologists will have to look at it. I put nothing beyond you.

SPEAKER_24 59:33

But to get back to the plank, uh, while we it's been fun inspecting your correspondence, but uh 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.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:07

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

SPEAKER_36 1:00:17

Well, the security makes me very nervous because it's necessary, apparently, are the delegates of Paul Newman and Mr. Arthur Miller.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:25

It's a little frightening, quite frankly, being in this uh fortress trying to select the president.

SPEAKER_44 1:00:37

As long as I'm mayor of this town, give me law and order in Chicago.

SPEAKER_24 1:00:49

The forces of history seem to be going towards a recording. It's like they've just got a blow.

SPEAKER_26 1:00:59

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

SPEAKER_41 1:01:13

All say can you let us bango?

SPEAKER_36 1:01:23

I would like to ask our guest commentators about Vietnam, how do we get out? Uh, 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 point. Now, wait a minute. We have nothing to gain by this war. Now, wait a minute. Uh uh. We have not lost the war in Vietnam. Uh, what we have lost uh 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, along with me, uh, while you uh go to Rome uh and uh expatriate yourself. I do not know. Oh, I think I think we should straighten this out now. I don't expatriate myself. I have an apartment in Rome and I go there for two or three months every year to be close to the Vatican to contemplate William Buckley and his mad activities back here. 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 the little American flags and the antennae of the car, they're getting ready for war. They're getting ready for war.

SPEAKER_24 1:02:44

What Videll saw was that the American Empire was completely overextended.

SPEAKER_36 1:02:53

These empires are very dangerous things to possess, as Pericles once pointed out. And uh, 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 uh it has certainly divided the country at a time when resources should go to the slums and to the poor and are trying to revise an extremely shabby country. I tell you, the day Rome falls, there will be a shout of freedom such as the world has never heard before.

SPEAKER_35 1:03:23

Gorbidal disliked the United States of America, he always talked about the empire in which he is now right. Govidal was correct in prophesizing that we would become an empire. That is our present dilemma.

SPEAKER_32 1:03:55

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.

SPEAKER_37 1:04:05

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

unknown 1:05:29

We're gonna get it for it.

SPEAKER_36 1:05:43

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. Let Mr. Buckley comment now. The effort here, not only on your program tonight, but during the past two or three days in Chicago, has been to institutionalize this complaint so as to march forward and say that we have got a sort of a fascist situation. But don't infer uh 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, uh every time a politician commits demagogy, uh, or every time a labor union beats up people who refuse to join his union, then maybe we could work up some kind of impartiality and resentment. These people came here with no desire other than anybody's ever been able to prove than to hold peaceful demonstration. I can prove it. I was 14 windows above that gang last night, and the chat between 11 o'clock and 5 o'clock in this morning from four or 5,000 voices uh was sheer offer obscenities directed at the president of the United States. I say it is remarkable uh that there was as much restraint shown as was shown, for instance, last night uh 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 was being thrown at them and at all of American society. 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? Uh, wouldn't that invite uh raising a Nazi flag in World War II would have had similar consequences? You so not. Even the United States uh 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 for the point of the American democracy. And something you can imagine is some people use Nazi.

SPEAKER_45 1:07:57

Shut up a minute.

SPEAKER_36 1:07:58

No, I won't. And some people will throw 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 have to be able to do that. As far as I don't understand, the only pro uh crypto Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that, let's only say that they should have. Now listen, you can assemble. Let's stop calling you in this goddamn face, and let's stay plastered. Gentlemen, let's officer Martin Brackn-Brackenridge went back to his pornography and stopped making any allusions of Nazism to somebody who was infantry in the last war. You will not be infantry as a matter of fact.

War, Policing, And Protest On Air

SPEAKER_26 1:08:59

I was watching it with a number of the news executives were in the control room. Someone just can they say that?

SPEAKER_35 1:09:10

I think Govidal was fortunate that Bill didn't punch him in the nose. Bill could have broken Govidal over the back of his knee. When Govidal called him a cryptonazi, Bill done have it. It is a slur.

SPEAKER_32 1:09:25

And the the rictus of loathing on Mr. Sproutley's face is quite unmistakable.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:30

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

SPEAKER_09 1:09:40

Profanity today is nigger, faggot, and cunt. Those are our only three truly profane words. In 1968, you could call somebody a crypto-Nazi or a queer, and that was fighting words.

SPEAKER_36 1:09:59

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 her. I think uh 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.

unknown 1:10:21

Tomorrow night you'll have a chance to discuss it.

SPEAKER_18 1:10:23

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.

SPEAKER_11 1:10:47

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

SPEAKER_18 1:11:01

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 stopped 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.

SPEAKER_26 1:11:23

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

SPEAKER_48 1:11:48

These hominem attacks were not at all characteristic of Bill. This was a totally unprecedented thing for him to do on television.

SPEAKER_39 1:12:10

Of course, that brings up one final question now that the election is over. Will Bill Buckley and Gore Vidal kiss and make up? I think Vidal would love that.

SPEAKER_21 1:12:55

It could be that some executive said, hey, whatever you may think of it, that would be the whole uh luckly thing. He had a big impact. Get Mr. Pro and Mr. Kahn, Miss for abortion, and Miss Against Abortion.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:08

Jack, I spent the holidays flying back and forth across this country, and I'm worried. The place seems all out of focus.

SPEAKER_16 1:13:17

We've both flown many times in a coast to coast, but we see a different land below. And you have them argue, and that's pun to truth, and that's enlightenment.

SPEAKER_43 1:13:26

Then there's an old saying: Behind every successful man, there's a woman, a loving, giving, caring woman.

SPEAKER_16 1:13:34

Genu ignorance slump. Argument is sugar and the rest of us are flies.

SPEAKER_25 1:13:45

Welcome to radio anyone. I think this is Ron and Gregal is also here.

SPEAKER_35 1:13:50

I invited to agree with your social viewers.

SPEAKER_19 1:13:54

And I tell William Buckley.

SPEAKER_36 1:14:04

In what way do you find him more honest than? I think it's way back to the city. What did you find dishonest about my performance? Well, that isn't I wasn't being dishonest. I'm I

The Line That Breaks The Rules

SPEAKER_36 1:14:39

am I am a happy warrior. I'm in battle. I'm enjoying it. This is what these things are about. He's somebody that I regard as a very bad person politically, and uh to expose him on television for what he is is uh 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.

SPEAKER_48 1:15:00

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.

SPEAKER_15 1:15:16

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 Fidel and Esquire.

SPEAKER_18 1:15:33

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 Fidel? Could it be that my emotional reaction was defensible and even healthy, but that my words were ill-chosen?

SPEAKER_15 1:15:56

The problem was, instead of putting a cap on the debate, he's perpetuating it on another platform, which really made it worse.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:07

Vidal then replied in print to this Barnburner piece to take the stage back.

SPEAKER_11 1:16:19

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.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:03

That there was a kind of sexual ambiguity about Bill.

SPEAKER_15 1:17:08

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

SPEAKER_26 1:17:13

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.

SPEAKER_28 1:17:29

Buckley instituted a suit against Esquire Magazine and against Bidal. The Doll instituted a counter suit against Buckley. The litigation went on for three years.

SPEAKER_21 1:17:45

Is that still going back and forth in the courts, Mr. Pickley? Going more back than forth.

SPEAKER_36 1:17:50

It keeps on ticking away like a bomb.

SPEAKER_32 1:17:53

But at the time, it was probably one of the longest lawsuits between two American public intellectuals that ever beat. Neither of them ever tired of it, because it gave them enormous opportunity for the practice of malice. It's still litigious, is it?

SPEAKER_10 1:18:09

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

SPEAKER_21 1:18:32

Was it ever resolved who came out ahead on that whole thing?

SPEAKER_36 1:18:36

Well, it sort of went on for several years, and then about a week before we'd go into court, he called off the suit. Called the suit after Monday, right? Exactly, exactly. I was looking forward to that.

SPEAKER_19 1:18:57

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

SPEAKER_27 1:19:04

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.

SPEAKER_25 1:19:17

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

SPEAKER_31 1:19:26

Well, my vision was to Ronald Reagan was pretty close. There was an affinity of ideas. I visited him and he visited me. We took a liking uh uh to each other, I think certainly him.

SPEAKER_14 1:19:44

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.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:57

When Buckley and Reagan were ascendant and Vidal's kind of political ideology was taking a backseat, I think this was actually a great period for him. Some of his greatest writing occurred in the 80s, both in essays and in literature.

SPEAKER_32 1:20:13

When another right-wing critic attacked Corbidal as being anti-American, Gaw's reply was, How do you call me anti-American? And the country's official both.

SPEAKER_07 1:20:38

I believe his name was William de La Touche Clancy, and I think Bidal said somewhere that it could not possibly be based on anyone. Meaning that of course it's based on Bill.

SPEAKER_11 1:20:52

William de La Touche Clancy'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 five children, he is a compulsive sodomite, forever preying on country boys new to the city.

SPEAKER_07 1:21:17

It is extreme, and uh uh he was a good hater, you know. God knows what is at the very bottom of that animosity.

Lawsuits And Long Memories

SPEAKER_10 1:21:31

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 uh two or three times, and uh 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.

SPEAKER_15 1:22:17

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

SPEAKER_23 1:22:33

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

SPEAKER_15 1:22:43

The last show was succeeded by an interview with Ted Koppel, and at one point he showed the now already, you know, infamous clip. Now listen, you've got to stop calling me a crypto network. Let's say let's stop calling that goddamn face.

SPEAKER_36 1:22:59

Let's stay plastered. Gentlemen, let's go.

SPEAKER_15 1:23:03

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.

SPEAKER_48 1:23:23

More than 30 years after the original debates, he was still furious with the Vidal and still shaken that he had reacted that way.

SPEAKER_31 1:23:33

Do you wish you were 20? No, absolutely not. No, I would I would if I had a pill which would reduce my age by 25 years, I wouldn't take it. Why not? Because I'm tired of life. Yeah. I I really am. I'm I'm partly prepared to uh stop living on. Any regrets about this life that you have lived? Uh yeah. Like what I'm not gonna tell you.

SPEAKER_21 1:24:11

Someone asked when Bill Buckley died what Thor thought. He said, I thought that hell will be a livelier place. And he will be permanently among those he served in life. Applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatreds.

SPEAKER_10 1:24:33

The last line of that piece was WFB, rest in hell. It seems a little far-fetched to say that Gor 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.

SPEAKER_32 1:25:14

The young had forgotten him, and his books weren't being read anymore.

SPEAKER_15 1:25:22

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

SPEAKER_36 1:26:17

They sort of get an impression of somebody, and they think they figure figure out just what he's like by seeing them on television.

SPEAKER_14 1:26:24

The bucky the dog was a harbinger of an unhappy future.

SPEAKER_03 1:26:32

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

SPEAKER_46 1:26:51

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.

SPEAKER_32 1:27:04

He's number one.

SPEAKER_41 1:27:16

That's terrifying.

SPEAKER_15 1:27:19

Well, it's because we're a debate show. It's like single.

SPEAKER_22 1:27:22

No, no, no, no, no, no, that's a great story. I would love to be a debate in a 24-hour day where we have each side on as best. No, no,

Can TV Still Hold Us Together

SPEAKER_22 1:27:28

no, no, no. That would be great. You're doing theater when you should be doing debate.

SPEAKER_14 1:27:38

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 scary, those ideas, they're not living in the same place.