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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Feuds: Wasted Talent
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Candidate
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| Contributor | Craverguy |
| Last Edited | Craverguy Sep 26, 2009 12:16am |
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| Category | Commentary |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Friday, August 22, 1969 06:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | From their polar positions, Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley Jr. see themselves as witty, wily intellectuals magnificently equipped to interpret (respectively) the left and right of U.S. life. Except when they confront each other directly, the notion is not entirely absurd. But when they fence on television or in type, bitchiness erodes their polish and learned discourse dissolves into tantrums.
Millions saw this happen when ABC-TV engaged the two to comment daily on the national political conventions in 1968. A heated argument over the clash of cops and demonstrators in Chicago inspired Vidal to call Buckley a "pro-crypto Nazi" and Buckley to reply: "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddam face." The blowup led Buckley to sue Vidal for $500,000 in libel damages and Vidal to countersue for $4,500,000. Esquire, entirely aware of the entertainment value of the squabble, then allowed the contestants to fight on in its pages. Buckley opened fire in the August issue; Vidal replied in the September issue, out last week. Not since George Sanders divorced Zsa Zsa Gabor has so much talent been wasted on such a nasty spat.
Money's Worth. Vidal claimed that he had deliberately enticed Buckley into the TV eruption as a public service. "Looking and sounding not unlike Hitler, but without the charm," Vidal wrote, "he began to shriek insults in order to head me off, and succeeded, for by then my mission was accomplished: Buckley had revealed himself. I had enticed the cuckoo to sing its song, and the melody lingers on." |
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