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have here a recent issue of The East Village Other featurin g namely : Excessive bitchery can get out of hand . But first the nar
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a piece entitled "Faggot Logic" which is about me, or mor e rative .
precisely about a column I wrote on Senator McGovern whic h
highly displeased this demimondaine journal . "Followin g In the late Fall of 1967 I had a telephone call from Mr . James Hag-
faggot logic," my critic writes, "is disturbing at any time o f gerty, vice-president of the American Broadcasting Company an d
year, and Buckley's spiteful spewlings today have just pissed m e former White House press chief for President Eisenhower . Would I ,
off, even more than usual ." That is certainly an icebreaker, even i n he asked, consent to confer with Mr . Elmer Lower and Mr . William
The East Village Other, and I read on, my interest aroused to lear n Sheehan concerning ABC's coverage of the 1968 political conven-
something about the nature of faggot logic . "On the Right, " the tions? Yes I said—obviously . We met then, the heads of ABC New s
author went on, referring to the logo of my thrice-weekly column , and Special Events and of ABC Television News and they disclose d
"is nearly invariably an exercise in faggot dialectic . And since I their plans for 1968 . Instead of covering the political convention s
think this peculiar mode of intellect is worthless at best and gener - "gavel to gavel," ABC would condense the day's events into ninet y
ally inimical to the public weal, then I'd like, just once—Christma s minutes of nightly television, divided into five segments . The fourt h
season notwithstanding—to engage in a point-by-point vivisectio n segment was conceived as broad-ranging commentary on the con-
of one of his scabrous evacuations . " vention, and the forthcoming election, and on politics in general .
Alas, many many words later, the reader is left knowing nothin g They had in mind that two people would share that time, one o f
he didn't know before about the nature of faggot logic, which i n them a conservative, the other a liberal . Would I ?
my case was nothing at all, and moreover glumly award that h e I asked a few mechanical questions, and indicated it would prob-
would not likely come to apprehend the meaning of anything in any ably work out, and then asked them who would be my adversary .
way elusive under the guidance of the writer in question, whos e They replied that he had not been selected, did I have any sugges-
thought proved to be as barren as his wit : so that after joggin g tions? I thought a while and gave them eight or ten names, amon g
alongside him over an endless stretch of indignation, one arrives at whom were some of the obvious people (Schlesinger, Galbraith ,
the cheerless conclusion (hardly reassuring to poor Senator Mc - Mailer), and some a little less obvious (for instance AI Lowenstein ,
Govern), that the author likes the senator, dislikes me, and think s Carey McWilliams Jr .) . Was there anyone at all I would refuse to
we should get out of Vietnam instantly . appear alongside? I wouldn't refuse to appear alongside any non -
Even so the piece sticks in the mind because here is a licentiou s Communist, I said—as a matter of principle ; but I didn't want to
rhetorical effort at homicide—in which the author arms himsel f appear opposite Gore Vidal (I said), because I had had unpleasan t
with all the bad words ; and yet he selects as the killer-word : "fag - experiences with him in the past and did not trust him . A fe w
got ." That was the warhead . Very interesting . And particularly re- months later the announcement was made that Gore Vidal had been
vealing in the context of the general attitude of that journal toward s selected as my opposite number . "We knew we wanted Buckley, "
faggotry, the unmetaphorical practice of which it explicitly pander s Elmer Lower told a reporter in Miami at the outset of the Repub-
to, or so it would seem . On page 17 of the same issue there ar e lican Convention, "because we were well familiar with him . . . . It
advertisements as plainspoken as Macy's for garden furniture . was a question of who would best play off against him . We consid-
"NUDE MALE FILM CLUB . . . . There will be continuous screen- ered a number of people and did some 'auditions,' sort of surrep-
ings nightly . . ."—is just one display ad . Another, discreetly seques - titiously that is, watching people on the air without them knowin g
tered in the classified section, positions wanted, "WHEEL AN D we were watching them . It looked as though Buckley would pla y
DEAL" : "Bi-Sexual, nude model, handsome, tall, trim, blond, hung , better with Vidal than with any of four or five other people ." I n
well-built, 30, will pose for sketches or you name it . $20 per session . one sense he was right . Even before Chicago—a good week or te n
. . ." And for those choosy readers who desire a synoptic view o f days after Miami—there were those who took pains to record thei r
the area and its possibilities there is the "1969 Gay Guide for gay misgivings . For instance—not exactly typigll, but singularly inter-
guys, 'N .Y., N .J . baths, bars, glory holes, restaurants, movies, etc .' " esting—Stephanie Harrington, who wrote in The Village Voice ,
Why is faggotry okay, but the imputation of it discreditable? I s looking back on our first series of encounters at Miami :
there a platonic coinage, which is bad—even as the real thing be - "What political analysis ABC did try for turned out to be th e
comes okay? Is that a culture lag, of sorts? Rather like saying abou t most embarrassing ingredient in its grand innovation . This was it s
somebody that he is impious (which is unfriendly) even though, a s attempt to elevate the affair to the level of intelligent discussion b y
everybody knows, explicit impiety is perfectly okay . bringing together nightly Gore Vidal and William Buckley for thei r
At this point my mind moved to Gore Vidal, and the dismal event s comments—which [discussions] had far more to do with their con -
of the Summer of 1968, when he and I confronted each other a doze n tempts for each other than [with] their impressions of the conven-
times on network television, leading to an emotional explosio n tion . It was clearly a sequel to that painful moment some years bac k
which, it is said, rocked television . Certainly it rocked me, and I a m when Buckley, during a televised debate with Vidal, descended to
impelled to write about it ; to discover its general implications, i f his unique level of argument and in a typically Buckleyesque displa y
any ; to meditate on some of its personal implications, which ar e of dirty debater's tricks, destroyed his opponent not by logic but b y
undeniable and profound ; to probe the question whether what wa s using his personal life against him . [I interrupt Miss Harringto n
said—under the circumstances in which it was said—has any mean- to bring you a special announcement : remember that phrase, 'per-
ing at all beyond that which is most generally ascribed to it, sonal life .'] Indeed, he tried again this time, dismissing Vidal's po-
litical opinions on the grounds that he is the kind of man who woul d Vassar .
write a book like Myra Breckinridge . It was obvious that Buckley' s (She said that at Vassar the bias in the social-science depart-
heroics about the show going on despite the broken collarbone h e ments was predominantly liberal, and of course she was right, ask
suffered in a fall on his boat [—heroics? I simply went . Heroism, Mary McCarthy . )
maybe ; heroics, no—] had less to do with interest in the conventio n V . : Meanwhile their brother was at Yale and wrote God and Ma n
than with eagerness to get his claws into Vidal again . " at Yale and said that was full of Communists .
Now under the stress of my conversations with ABC, we see tha t (My book did not charge or intimate that there was a single Com-
the anchor of Miss Harrington's argument is uprooted, and her anal- munist at Yale . )
ysis drifts away into fantasy . Still, she did say a few things con- V . : He feels free to correct, through this little magazine of his ,
cerning which there has been considerable speculation which i s the actions of all our Presidents and the Pope, and philosopher s
relevant : so that (fulldisclosurewise) I now divulge the history , . . . on the subject of philosophy I thought this might interes t
abbreviated but not censored, of my dealings with Mr . Vidal, ac- you, Jack—of Albert Schweitzer—who is one of the great men o f
knowledging Miss Harrington's and others' suspicions that thos e our time, and whose philosophy is reverence for life—he wrote o f
dealings figured, yes indeed, in the meetings at Miami and Chicago . Albert Schweitzer, quote : He is more destructive than the H Bomb ,
unquote .
n January of 1962, appearing on the Jack Paar program t o (The quotation is not from me, but from a book review i n
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promote his play Romulus, Vidal went out of his way to ob- National Review—by a Ph .D . in philosophy . I do not censor th e
serve that I had "attacked" Pope John XXIII for being "too book reviewers . )
left wing" : which sorrowful recording of my impiety dre w V. : On the subject of integration, Mr . Buckley wrote, quote : Seg-
from the audience horrified tremors . regation is not intrinsically immoral, unquote . Well, that's a doubl e
Paar was evidently pressured to invite me to reply, which he di d negative which means I don't quite dare to come out and say I' m
and I did, on an evening Paar once reminisced about as having bee n in favor of segregation, so I ' ll put it in a double negative .
among the most memorable of his career, such was the ensuing up - (a, It isn't a double negative . b, It is a litotes, and should be rec-
roar . Said uproar, for once, directed not against me, but agains t ognized as such by a professional writer . The litotes has bee n
Paar's assault on me after I had left the studio, which assault stim- around as a necessary rhetorical refinement for years ; was used ,
ulated, by the count of one NBC spokesman, seven thousand (anti - for instance, by that old evader, Homer . c, I didn ' t in fact write tha t
Paar) telegrams of protest and one (pro-Paar) phone call from th e phrase, I spoke it in the presence of a Catholic liberal, John Cogley ,
White House . That is by the way—what I liked most in terms o f who d, agreed with me . )
the theatre of the episode was that instants after I left the studio , V . : . . . but that's exactly what it means, which goes against not
Paar ingenuously announced to the studio audience, "I just got a only Catholic doctrine but I would think any humane—you put you r
call here . Gore Vidal's coming back tomorrow night!" Now Paar' s finger on it, you know, when you said there's no humanity there .
shows were taped three hours before they were telecast . So that h e But Mr . Vidal was not through .
couldn 't have received a telephone call from Gore Vidal reactin g V . : I was just going to say one more thing struck me, listenin g
to my appearance—because the show would not go out over the air - to Mr . Buckley . He said (and I was quite fascinated because it' s
waves for another three hours . (And they used to talk abou t amazing the things perhaps you can just get away with, this side
Tricky Dick . ) of libel) . . . . He said that Harry Truman had called Eisenhower
an anti-Semite and anti-Catholic .
Anyway, Vidal showed up, and after cooing about him ("Notic e Paar : Yes, he did say that . But what
the difference in manner and approach and reasoning") for a fe w Vidal : There's no evidence that Harry Truman ever said this .
minutes Paar asked what had I actually said about the Pope and Now I would like to say right now, on the air, that I will give $10 0
the encyclical ? to the National Review, which is Buckley's magazine, if he can prov e
Vidal : Yes, well what he actually said—and I went back an d that Harry Truman ever said any such thing : and if he canno t
looked it up . . . in the month of August, Buckley attacked th e prove it, why I think he should then be regarded as what he is ,
Pope in a piece in his magazine, and the piece was called "A Ven- which is an irresponsible liar . . . . As someone once said . . . [th e
ture in Triviality. " Buckleys] are sort of the sick Kennedys .
(a, I did not "attack the Pope ." b, There was no "piece," merel y I flew early the following morning to Switzerland, leaving a tele-
a one-paragraph, unsigned editorial . c, The paragraph was no t gram to be dispatched by my office to Jack Paar . It read : "PLEAS E
called "A Venture in Triviality" ; it bore no title ; one phrase in i t INFORM GORE VIDAL THAT NEITHER I NOR MY FAMILY IS DISPOSED T O
said "[the encyclical] must strike many as a venture in triviality RECEIVE LESSONS IN MORALITY FROM A PINK QUEER . IF HE WISHES T O
coming at this particular time in history ." ) CHALLENGE THAT DESIGNATION, INFORM HIM THAT I SHALL FIGHT BY
V . : It was a vicious piece, and America, which is the Jesuit THE LAWS OF THE MARQUIS OF QUEENSBERRY . HE WILL KNOW WHA T
weekly in the United States, attacked Buckley in an editorial de- I MEAN . WILLIAM F . BUCKLEY JR ." The telephone was ringing whe n
claring that he owes his readers an apology, unquote . I reached my destination in Switzerland, as I half expected it woul d
(The demand by America for an apology was unrelated to th e be . Come on now, calm down, whaddaya say, forget it, write a piec e
editorial in question . ) about the whole thing instead . So I finally withdrew the telegram ,
V . : And Buckley's answer to the Jesuits was : "You are impu- and contented myself instead to send a letter to Jack Paar :
dent. " Dear Mr . Paar :
(My answer to the Jesuits was in 2500 words, one sentence o f [I have been informed of what Mr . Gore Vidal said on your show
which stated that it was impudent for America to ask a non-Catho- on February 1 . ]
lic journal of opinion to apologize for a transgression—even assum- 1. The documentation, taken in each case from The New Yor k
ing that that is what it was—against exclusively Catholic protocol ; Times, is as follows : On October 9, 1952, President'-Harry Truma n
and of course I was right . ) accused the Republicans generally of supporting "the discredite d
V . : I mean, who is he? Here's a guy who has never worked fo r and un-American theory of racial superiority ." On October 17 ,
a living . . . has never had a job . Assistant Secretary of State Howland Sargeant read a messag e
(I had held down one part-time job, as a member of the facult y from Mr . Truman to the Jewish Welfare Board in Washington .
of Yale, 1947-1951 ; and three full-time jobs before going to wor k Eisenhower, Truman said, "cannot escape responsibility" for hi s
for National Review, in 1955, which is at least a full-time job . ) endorsement of Senator Revercomb, "the champion of the anti -
V . : He's got two sisters . Catholic, anti-Jewish provisions of the original D .P . bill." Truman
(Six . ) charged that Eisenhower "has had an attack of moral blindness ,
V . : One said while she was at Smith . . for today he is willing to accept the very practices that identify th e
(It was ten years after she graduated . ) so-called 'master race' although he took a leading part in liberatin g
V. : . . . that the faculty was filled with Communists . Europe from their domination . "
(She said four faculty members had Communist-front connec- 2. The following day, Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, ex-President o f
tions, which was true . ) the Zionist Organization of America, expressed "shock that an ir-
V . : The other was at Vassar and started the same thing at responsible statement of that character could be made . The at-
tempt by implication to identify a man like General Eisenhowe r book of essays, Rocking the Boat, in which his own intellectual sy n
with anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism, is just not permissibl e pathies, at least, were quite candidly stated . "Now it is an uncle ]
even in the heat of a campaign . " lying assumption of twentieth-century America," he wrote—a n
3 . Please instruct Mr . Vidal to make out a check for $100 to th e the student of rhetoric knows already, the "now" being a dead giv e
National Conference of Christians and Jews . " away, that the writer is about to introduce an assumption wi t
Paar, directed to do so by NBC's lawyers, read, or rather cause d which he disagrees—"that human beings are either heterosexu c
to be read, the letter aloud over his program, during a station break , or, through some arresting of normal psychic growth, homosexu a
following which he made no reference to it whatever . Vidal mad e with very little traffic back and forth . To us, the norm is heter e
no acknowledgment, tendered no apology, did not reply in any wa y sexual ; the family is central ; all else is deviation, pleasing or n o
to a couple of letters asking him to make out the check . depending on one's own tastes and moral preoccupations . Suetoniu s
—Vidal was reviewing a translation of The Twelve Caesars b :
Robert Frost—"reveals a very different world . His underlying a s
It is not my habit to review the material that appears in the bac k sumption is that man is bisexual and that given complete freedo n
of the book section of National Review, so that I saw for the firs t to love—or, perhaps more to the point in the case of the Caesar s
time in the published magazine, weeks later in Switzerland, a re - to violate—others, he will do so, going blithely from male to femal e
view by Noel E . Parmentel Jr . of Vidal's play, Romulus . The re - as fancy dictates . Nor is Suetonius alone in this assumption o :
view was unfavorable to the play, but generous—one should sa y man's variousness . From Plato to the rise of Pauline Christianit y
accurate—in its appreciation of Vidal's talents as a playwright . which tried to put the lid on sex, it is explicit in classical writin g
One aspect of Romulus the reviewer found offensive, and was no t [Nonsense, as it happens . E .g . Aristophanes, who mocked Plato' :
alone in the critical community in doing so . "All in all," he wrote , homosexuality ; Juvenal, who stigmatized the Greek-aristocrati c
"Romulus adds up to (with the possible exception of Sail Away ) homosexuality ; Catullus, who found Caesar's bisexuality, in th e
the most offensive instance of 'inside' theatre, which such divers e words of Gilbert Highet, 'ridiculous and disgusting .'] Yet to thi :
types as the late Ernie Kovacs and New York Times drama criti c day Christian, Freudian and Marxian commentators have all d e
Howard Taubman have chosen to call 'effeminate' and which th e creed or ignored this fact of nature in the interest each of a pa t
boys in Lindy's are calling 'la nouvelle (ague.'" ented approach to the Kingdom of Heaven . . . .
Parmentel went on . "Although the critics have generally ridi- Now in fact the subject did not come up, though the questio r
culed the Vidal literary product, he is far from being a jejun e was raised, I think (I do not exactly remember and I do not ha w
hack . He has certainly traveled an odd road . During his early ca- the transcript) as to whether practicing homosexuals working i t
reer as a 'serious' novelist, he evinced an interest in homosexualit y sensitive government agencies were security risks, like, say, drunk .
equalled only by that of the editors of One . Many of his novel s ards . I have never been convinced, by the way, that they are, but ]
and stories are clinical, apparently informed commentaries on th e did recite the reasons given by security of ficials (susceptibility t c
problem . [Notice what Vidal would consider the planted axiom : blackmail, primarily), and I do not know whether I loosed an in-
—the problem .] In spite of all this high purpose, critic Willia m flection that burrowed into the memory of Miss Harrington . I cannot
Peden was once moved to note that the Vidal output constituted ' a conceive that if I had made a major, or even a minor statement ,
rather dreary landmark in the literature of homosexuality .' " about Gore Vidal's "personal life," that it would have escaped th e
And there followed a crack I confess I have repeated here an d attention of every single one of the television critics who watche d
there mostly because I thought it funny, still do . "Always the seeker and reported on the program, and there were apparently many o f
after truth, Vidal lived for a time in the ruins of a sixteenth-cen- them, none of whom made the slightest reference to the cause o f
tury monastery in Guatemala, where he gathered material for a n Miss Harrington's trauma . Could she have had in mind a persona l
anti-United Fruit Company novel—positively, as a local wag ob- reference to Vidal's relations to the Kennedys? But the only thin g
served, the only anti-fruit novel Vidal ever wrote . " I knew about his private life in that connection (Vidal had not ye t
And then, more seriously, "At another point he made a pilgrim - fallen out with the Kennedys) was that his sometime stepfather i s
age to the bedside of Andre Gide . It is reported that the great Jacqueline Kennedy's incumbent, a nexus that connects an awfu l
French writer liked Vidal and gave him an inscribed first editio n lot of people with an awful lot of people and is neither newsworthy
of his controversial Corydon . Vidal carried his almost obsessio n nor scandalous .
with homosexuality into the movies . Although he is quite a pro- On the other hand, I gather that I spoke sharply to Vidal ( I
ficient scriptwriter, he once wrote a scenario about Billy the Kid , should hope so!) . One reviewer who was also covering the open-
acted by a bewildered Paul Newman, in which the legendary outla w ing of the Lincoln Center that night, wrote that every so often h e
appeared as a misunderstood homosexual . It was only natural tha t "would switch over to an independent channel where a fair-haire d
Sam Spiegel should call on Vidal's specialist skills for Tennesse e barracuda named William Buckley Jr . was nibbling at the flesh o f
Williams' Suddenly Last Summer. " a young sea robin named Gore Vidal . . . . In the only complet e
The operative word is "obsession ." And it wasn't only National sentences spoken on this piscatorial orgy, we heard Mr . Vidal say-
Review, as Parmentel made clear, that thought it a—problem . Ou r ing he couldn't imagine Mr . Buckley in the role of an abolitionis t
sister publication on the Left, The New Republic, carried a review and Mr . Buckley saying that he was an abolitionist for the slave s
of Romulus by Robert Brustein who is now the dean of the Yal e of Eastern Europe, which Mr . Vidal wasn't . " There was no mask-
Drama School . He wrote that Vidal had "transform[ed] Darren- ing, I gather, the mutual dislike, which in Mr . Vidal's case was spon-
matt's tough parable into an effeminate charade . . . . To make th e taneously generated, in mine evolved as a reaction to his hit-and-ru n
Romans into homosexuals," he concluded, "is simply in bad taste . " network disparagement of my family and myself earlier in the year .
Why bad taste ? "The debate," another reviewer wrote, " got entrenched in so much
The months passed, and David Susskind asked me if I woul d personal opprobrium nothing really was decided other than Buck-
appear mano a mano with Vidal on his Open End—just the two o f ley's clear debating superiority. . . . When it came to historical
us . And discuss what? I asked . Everything, said Susskind . All right , and political facts and interpretation, Vidal, frustrated in realisti c
I said . fencing, resorted to personal disdain, never an attractive effect .
Now no discussion of "everything" nowadays can be counte d . . . Both indulged the sort of ad hominem needling that dazzle s
upon not to touch on sex . Accordingly I was prepared, should th e and spins off sparks and delights viewers who adore such exercise
subject arise, to attempt to state the case, biological, cultural, an d of forensic fisticuffs, but it does keep issues muddled while delight-
religious, for heterosexuality (that sounds funny, doesn't it?) — ing the more sadistic semantic fight fans ." Vidal said a while late r
prepared to go so far as to defend its "normalcy" ; to defend, even , on the Les Crane program that I had beaten him badly, and gav e
the idea that normalcy in this instance at least is related to wha t as the reason that he, Vidal, had permitted himself to become "emo-
is normative : to defend, one might say, the conservative position . tionally involved," whatever that means .
It seemed to me utterly natural—one is tempted to say utterl y
normal—that in defending heterosexuality I should furtively con-
sult my own preferences in that direction, and accordingly that i n It was during the Republican Convention at San Francisco in 196 4
defending bisexuality, the question of Vidal's preferences woul d that I resolved I would not again debate with Gore Vidal . It was the
reasonably arise . I had read, in preparation for our meeting, his memory of that encounter, added to everything else, that made me
suggest to ABC that I'd prefer not to debate with him, and now I either convention .
gather that his exclusion graveled him . Indeed over the intervenin g Vidal was evidently much more detailed . One critic wrote tha t
years I had never asked him to appear on Firing Line, which was according to Vidal he had "accepted ABC's offer, even though h e
launched early in 1966 . "The one forum on which they have not was to be teamed with Buckley, a man with whom he has had
met is Buckley's syndicated series, Firing Line," a reporter wrote , video encounters before and for whom he has utter contempt . "
after interviewing Vidal . "Buckley invited the novelist to the pro- Another quoted Vidal as saying, "Bill, of course, will try to per-
gram, but 'I refused to give him that much help,' Vidal smiled sonalize our shows . He thrives on insults . But I'll try to stick to
thinly ." (I'd have smiled thinly too if I told a reporter I refuse d politics . He never sticks to a subject because he's on such wea k
Ed Sullivan's invitation to tap dance on his show because I didn' t ground ." Another wrote that Vidal "was not the least bit reluctant
want to give Sullivan that much help .) At San Francisco it wasn' t to discuss his adversary. Vidal welcomed the chance to be quoted.
just the usual things that aroused me, but an insight I got int o Apparently he relishes the vaudeville-team approach to interpreta-
what I now concluded was more than a merely episodic insensibilit y tive journalism employed by ABC television for the national con-
to the truth . Specifically, Vidal announced on a television program , ventions and is anxious to allow the churlish nature of thei r
once again "moderated" by Suaskind (Susskind's advocacy of on-screen rapport to carry over into off-screen conversatio n
Vidal's positions competed with the positions themselves in burden- . . . . 'though I don't like being brought down to his level . That' s
ing Vidal), that I had that very afternoon importuned Barr y the reason I've refused to appear with him over the last four—o r
Goldwater to accept a draft of an acceptance speech I had writte n is it six?—years . . . . Buckley is frivolous, superficial and ofte n
for him, and that Goldwater had brusquely turned me down, al l very entertaining . '
of this in the presence of John Jones, a Goldwater aide . I tol d And he told Mr . Hal Humphrey, whose column is widely syndi-
him, a) that I had not laid eyes on Goldwater that afternoon , cated, that he would "stipulate at least one ground rule . . . . 'Whe n
b) that I had not written nor suggested to anyone that I write a I'm talking I want the camera on me and not on Bill's face doin g
draft of Goldwater's acceptance speech, and that c) although I kne w all those wild expressions of his while I'm just a voice off-stage .'"
very well who John Jones was, in fact I had never laid eyes o n Later he told a correspondent that he had complained to th e
him in my entire life . Vidal not only refused to modify let alone director of getting insufficient camera time, and the director ha d
to withdraw his allegation, he reasserted it several times . The nex t promptly complied with his requests . On these and related matter s
day, Suaskind (over Vidal's protests, Susekind subsequently told he proved most fastidious. "Buckley," a Miami reporter wrote ,
me) read over the air a letter from Jones confirming my denials . . . is as conservative about being pictured in the make-up chai r
(Goldwater, it happened, had tuned in on the program, and was a s as he is in his political philosophy . He submitted to a brief
nonplussed as Jones. ) [make-up], a quick swish of a comb by his wife Patricia who ha d
There were one or two other instances of the same kind of thing , accompanied him . On the other hand, his fellow program jouste r
and I remember that it occurred to me then, as it did a couple o f Gore Vidal was thoroughly liberal about being touched up . No
times in Miami and Chicago, that perhaps Vidal makes his ow n hurry-up job, this. Miss May leisurely cleansed the skin with an
reality, which is, all things considered, sufficient reason to under- antiseptic lotion, added a cream-type foundation and powder and
stand his philosophical melancholy, even as the order of realit y commented on his hairline : 'He has a good hairline ."l don't hav e
would be melancholy if it had conceived Vidal . At any rate, one a wig,' he quipped . 'Tell your photographer not to make me look as
wants to stay away from such people, at least publicly . Yet once though I have . Past pictures have . See how vain I am . I'm letting
again the debate had been lively. One reviewer, who took pains to you take my bad side,' gesturing to his right ." *
disavow any sympathy with my politics, said that, in the service In general, the press anticipated the forthcoming debates wit h
of "the radical right, [Buckley] was far more successful tha n unmitigated glee. In Toledo the headline was, "Politicians Ar e
Susskind and Vidal on the medium left . . . Susskind and Vidal Forewarned/Bill, Gore May Steal Show ." The Washington Pos t
rocked back and forth like two old harpies and spat at him with n o announced that "The best show during the Republican and Demo-
visible effect on their target nor, I suspect, on viewers ." The other cratic Conventions next month will not be on the convention floor s
reviewer "got the impression . . . that Susskind was a zookeepe r or in hotel corridors but in an ABC studio . . . . In Buckley an d
trying to prevent two hissing adders from killing each other. But Vidal, ABC has a dream television match . They are graceful,
the hissing was always wreathed in benign smiles ." August 7, shrewd, cool antagonists ; paragons of caustic wit and established
1968, The Rockford Star, "'I haven't seen Buckley since 1964 a t observers of the American political scene ." "It's anybody's bal l
the Cow Palace,' Vidal recalled . 'His last words to me were that game," wrote the New York Daily News about the G .O.P . Conven-
he never wanted to see me again .' " Needless to say, I did not sa y tion, "as they've been telling us the past couple of days, but righ t
those words. But they represented, accurately, my thoughts . now the inside dope at the convention is that Bill Buckley and Gore
I find only two unpleasant references to Vidal written by me Vidal have it practically sewed up. As a team, Buckley is in the
between 1964 and 1968 . Commenting on an article by Vidal i n No. 1 slot, naturally, since he's thoroughly committed, with Vidal ,
Esquire on the Kennedy family, I wrote, "It is of course ironi c an expert sniper, as his running mate . And the beauty part of it is
that Mr. Vidal, the super-liberal super-thinker who in pursuit o f that, disliking one another intensely and both gifted in invectiv e
the good life has tried everything, but everything in the world , (they are far and away the best infighters in Miami Beach), they'r e
including icon-smashing with a vengeance, now engages an icon h e a cinch to provide challenging leadership." "A rare stroke of good
had a hand in molding ." The other reference was exhumed by th e television programing . . ." said the Philadelphia Daily News . "As
drama editor of The Miami Herald who wrote at the beginning o f an ABC spokesman puts it, 'We fully expect the fur to fly whe n
the Republican Convention that "Vidal is worried the broadcasts those two come together,' and there wasn't a dissenting commen t
may be a bit dull, feeling the allotted twenty minutes or so won' t from his listeners . "
really give them time to get into things . That seems like an obscure
worry as only a couple of years ago, in his newspaper column , o there we were, Saturday, August 3, on duty for our firs t
S
Buckley referred to Vidal as 'the playwright and quipster who los t broadcast, suddenly re-scheduled in a makeshift studio at
a congressional race a few years ago but continues to seek ou t the Fontainebleau Hotel because the ceiling had caved i n
opportunities to advertise his ignorance of contemporary affairs . '" two days before over the studio at the convention site .
We were instructed that we must prerecord an initia l
ent on promoting their forthcoming programs, the peopl e statement of a sentence or two, and I knew, when I heard Vidal's ,
at ABC set up a lunch for me to meet the area's tele - that the session was going to be grim . "To me," he said, "the prin-
vision critics, and subsequently did as much, I assume, cipal question is, can a political party based almost entirely upon
for Vidal . Such meetings, as every writer knows, ar e human greed nominate anyone for President for whom the majority
something of a strain : because you are generally mad e of the American people would vote?" Now there was an interval of
to feel that you can only please by being viperish. What will I wan t eight or ten minutes before we swung into the live portion of th e
to say about the conventions when face to face with Vidal? I didn' t program . Diagonally across from us, William Lawrence was wel l
know . My line on Vidal was that I thought his dissatisfaction wit h
• "We have found, especially in persons whose libidinal development has suffere d
America and with American politics was such as to make hi m some disturbance, as in perverts and homosexuals, that in the choice of thei r
love-object they have taken as their model not the mother but their own selves . "
almost necessarily sour on anything that was likely to happen at —Freud, On Narcissism, II .
into his political forecast, which had followed a pastiche of the day' s never made any particular statement . What to do ?
events screened by ABC producers . Across from us was Howar d I decided to do nothing. To go back and challenge the over .
K . Smith, suave, intelligent, mildly apprehensive, rehearsing wit h arching axiom planted by Vidal at the outset—more damagin g
his lips the lines he would presently deliver, directly in touch wit h more readily exposable, than what he said about Nixon . . . .
the controls, where twenty officials and technicians called the sig- B . : It seems to me that the earlier focus of Mr . Vidal here o r
nals, to Smith, to Lawrence, to the thirty-forty-fifty technicians , human greed—you remember that he said he found himself wonder -
reporters, directors, who filled the enormous room, at one corne r ing whether the party that was devoted to the concept of huma r
of which, earphones attached, Vidal and I awaited the sound of th e greed could ever hope to get a majority of the American people
bell . We had exchanged minimal amenities, and I scribbled on m y to vote for it . Now the author of Myra Breckinridge is wel l
clipboard to avoid having to banter with him, and he did the same , acquainted with the imperatives of human greed
and I felt my blood rising in temperature as I reflected on the
Vidal broke up—reacted quite extraordinarily . . . .
malevolent inanity of his introductory observation, and then the
resolution evolved that I would hit him back hard with a to quoque V . : Ha, ha, ha . If I may say so, Bill, before you go any further ,
involving Myra Breckinridge—which I had not then read . . . . Bu t that if there were a contest for Mr . Myra Breckinridge, you woul d
Howard K . Smith derailed me by asking me not, as I had expected , unquestionably win it . I based the entire style polemically upo n
to initiate the exchange by commenting on Vidal's description o f you—passionate and irrelevant .
the Republican Party, but rather to answer a specific question — B . : That's too involuted to follow . Perhaps one of these days
who, in my judgment, was the Beat Man at Miami? We were off . you can explain it
I answered : Reagan and Nixon, and said why, more or less . Vidal V. : You follow it .
came back with Rockefeller—"I cannot possibly imagine Richar d I didn't and don't . In any case, we were off.
Nixon President of the U . S." He backed this failure of his imagi-
nation by reciting an arresting catalog of Nixon's sins, so livid up B . : For Mr . Vidal to give us the pleasure of his infrequen t
against the exigencies of the day : company by coming back from Europe where he lives in order t o
"And here you have a man who when he was in Congress voted disdain the American democratic process and to condemn a par-
against public housing, against slum clearance, against rent con- ticular party as one that has engaged in the pursuit of human
trol, against farm housing, against extending the minimum wage . greed, requires us to understand his rather eccentric definitions . . . .
. . . He said, 'I am opposed to pensions in any form as it make s I went on to point out that Senator Robert Kennedy, not Nixon ,
loafing more attractive than working .' And now today he offers u s had first suggested the tax rebates, and that the Republican Party' s
a program for the ghettos which he's made much of, and wha t support of the costly Vietnam war was hardly an exercise in greed .
is it? Well, he is going to give tax cuts to private businesses tha t Vidal answered that the Republicans were big businessmen wh o
go into the ghetto and help the Negroes . Now in actual fact privat e made profits from the war, I pitched for the free enterprise system ;
business is set up to make private profits. . . . So I would say that he said the Republicans denigrate the poor and the minority groups ,
so far as Mr . Nixon goes he is an impossible choice domestically ." and that if by some terrible accident Nixon became President, " I
Now up against an extended barrage like that, a debater ha s shall make my occasional trips to Europe longer . "
problems . Point-by-point refutation is clearly impossible . As a rule
one doesn't have handy the relevant material for coping with suc h B . : Yes, I think a lot of people hope you will . As a matter of
arcana . And anyway, in network situations, an elementary sense o f fact, Mr . Arthur Schlesinger Jr ., who is a member of your party ,
theatre (which if you don't have it, you won't ever face the proble m not mine, [has] remind[ed] you of your promise to renounce you r
of what to do in network situations) disciplines you in the knowl- American citizenship unless you get a satisfactory party i n
edge that you simply don't have the time it takes for detailed November .
confutation . Nixon hadn't been in Congress for sixteen years . Jus t V . : Now, now, Bill, that isn't quite what I said . I said it woul d
to begin with, whatever Nixon did in Congress between 1947 and be morally the correct thing to do but I can behave as immorally a s
1962 was largely irrelevant . Apart from that, what on earth doe s the Republicans .
it mean, Nixon "voted against," say, "rent control"? Rent contro l B . : I can believe that, too .
survives in only a few places, primarily New York City . How ca n What Vidal had written, in the book Authors Take Sides on Viet-
any attitude he took toward "farm housing" eighteen years ago nam, published only a few months before Miami, was "For myself ,
bear on his present qualifications for the Presidency? And what should the war in Vietnam continue after the 1968 election, a
sort of a "farm housing" bill did he vote against? How can w e change in nationality will be the only moral response ." So already ,
know?—maybe it was the same farm housing bill that the Ameri- pre-Gethsemane, the statement turned out to be nothing more than
cans for Democratic Action also opposed? And anyway, wasn't moral bravura .
Nixon selected in 1952 by Eisenhower because he had a reputatio n Vidal returned to the theme of Republicans-as-believers-that-
as a domestic liberal (one of Christian Herter's boys) and as a welfare-is-immoral . He managed to intrude a feline reference t o
tough anti-Communist—a good combination in 1952? Hadn' t Ronald Reagan, which so help me God if I had said such a thin g
Nixon's preference for Eisenhower over Taft situated him in th e about Adlai Stevenson, I hope I'd have gone off and joined th e
liberal wing of the G .O .P . ? Trappists . He warmed up by attributing to Reagan, as he had don e
And then there was the problem of the directly quoted sentence . to Nixon, a statement Reagan never made
Vidal quoted Nixon as saying, " I am opposed to pensions in any
form as it makes loafing more attractive than working ." The V . : Meanwhile, with several denunciations [by Reagan] like I
debater knows by the application of rudimentary discriminator y quoted to you, on free-loaders on welfare ►;nd how it encourages
intelligence that no politician in the history of the world ever sai d immorality and divorce—I assume he was dh unemployment insur-
that, and most probably no non-politician : and certainly not anyon e ance when he divorced Jane Wyman
who ever contemplated running for the Presidency . The mind needs And on he went. Another evening (August 6) he would motivat e
to work quickly in such situations, canvassing rapidly the possi- Reagan's liberal-to-conservative switch in the early Fifties o n
bilities that a direct challenge might lead him into a carefull y Reagan 's falling in love with the daughter of "a very prominen t
planned ambush. . . . So one comes in on the subject from th e brain surgeon ." I asked how come, under the circumstances, Reaga n
other direction : If Nixon had ever uttered a sentence so preposter- had achieved the extraordinary plurality of 1966? Well, the peopl e
ous—condemning pensions paid even to ninety-year-old widows, o n make mistakes .
the grounds that they are conducive to sloth—wouldn't a fatuit y Vidal suddenly switched the topic, electing to allude to my
so lapidary have instantly become a part of the political folklore,
"intimacy" with Reagan and Nixon . In order to do so, he assigne d
like, for instance, Mr . Agnew's "If you've seen one slum you've see n to the word "neurosis" a meaning I have never heard it given, no t
them all"? The answer is of course yes ; so that in debate, unde r even by conventional neurotics .
these circumstances, you can feel safe in saying, "Nixon never sai d
that"—even though such a denial is itself a) unprovable, and b ) V. : . . . Since you're in favor of the invasion of Cuba, in favo r
silly ; since no one on earth is familiar with every statement Nixo n of bombing the nuclear potentiality of China, since you're in favo r
ever made ; and no one therefore can know as a certitude that he of nuclear bombing of North Vietnam, I'd be very worried about
your kind of odd neurosis : neurosis being a friend of anybody asked me to encourage the attacks on Myra because the book whole-
who might be a President . If I were one of the candidates I'd sa y salers have been calling all day with orders . . . . Bill refuses t o
Bill Buckley don't stay home . [I know, I know, I don't get it either . ] deal with the issues because he doesn't know what they are, so h e
B . : I'd be very worried too, if you had such a hobgoblinized uses the personal attack . I spend my time reading statements o f
view—but I've never advocated the nuclear bombing of North Viet- Nixon, Reagan and Rockefeller, and I'm able to deal with thei r
nam. positions . Buckley doesn't do much reading . He just arranges hi s
V . : I'll give you the time and place if it amuses you . prejudices ." Vidal was very pleased by his performance . The tele-
B, : Well, you won't. vision people, he explained, learned greatly from it . "Did yo u
V . : I will. notice," he asked another critic, "that after our first meeting th e
B . : I advocated the liberation of Cuba at the same time that Mr . other commentators began to change their style—to try for wit an d
Kennedy ordered the liberation of Cuba . candor? Even Cronkite tried to be funny . It's possible that AB C
V . : No, no, Bill, keep to the record . You said we should enforc e is exploiting our names and reputations . But I couldn't turn dow n
the Monroe Doctrine and invade Cuba the sooner the better in you r the audience . Just think of how many millions of people who neve r
little magazine whose name will not pass my lips in April, 1966 . Yo u heard of either of us now know who we are," he crowed . "He went
favored bombing Red China's nuclear production facilities the 17t h over each encounter," the critic reported, "claiming that he 'abso-
of September, 1965, in Life magazine . . . lutely destroyed' Buckley in their first preview meeting. . . . 'Th e
I had said to Life : "I have advocated bombing Red China' s camera did focus on Buckley too much during Tuesday's session ,
nuclear production facilities . But it becomes more and more difficult but I put a stop to that,' Vidal said . 'The next night there wer e
to do . . . as Red China takes pains to diffuse and protect its facili- not so many full-face reaction shots of him .' "
ties . But technically, it is still possible . How do we justify the bomb- The press wasn't, or at least not all of it, quite so appreciative .
ing in terms of world opinion? On the grounds the good guys of Dean Gysel, who had talked about the dream team, referred to th e
this earth have got to keep the bad guys from getting nuclear shows' "waspish bitchery ." "Vidal was especially guilty of makin g
bombs." personal attacks," said another reviewer . "There was somethin g
V . : . . . and you suggested the atom bombing of North Vietna m positively obscene," wrote Terrence O'Flaherty, who had writte n
in your little magazine which I do not read but I'm told about, th e four years earlier about the San Francisco encounter, sounding a
23rd of February, 1968 . So you're very hawkish, and if both Nixo n note of warning . . . "about . . . [the] face-splitting exchang e
and Reagan are listening to you, I'm very worried for the country . [which] was irresistible as well as embarrassing . . . . It was not
I told him he was misquoting me . the dialogue itself that made the conversation obscene ; it was the
V. : No, Bill Buckley, let me make it clear to you that the expression of almost sensual relish which flashed across their face s
quotation is exact . . . . Are you saying that you didn't say that ? as they thrust and stabbed—for obviously they enjoyed these duel s
B . : I'm saying that I didn't say it, that your misquotations— as much as the audience . [Point : what is obvious may not be true ,
V. : Tune in this time tomorrow night and we will have further and in this case, speaking authoritatively about my own state o f
evidence of Bill Buckley's cold war turned hot. . . . mind, I not only didn't enjoy the evening, I detested it .] [But ]
suddenly the conversation gets the teeth on edge ." And Jack Gould,
I responded limply, and Howard Smith relieved us, and I would of The New York Times : "[Their] petty confrontations shoul d
suppose the national audience, from the misery, by telling us ho w qualify them as the week's major bores in Miami Beach . . . .
"enjoyable" it had been to hear us "articulate" our "points of view . " Sure, there was also the world of the satisfied . "Both stress style
over content," one critic wrote, "but it is high style . Both may be
That was August 3 . Today (as I write) is February 19, 1969 ,
irrelevant, but they are passionately irrelevant . The polemics ar e
and I have just now reached for the bound volume of National Re -
such that the rubber band often breaks, but then they define thei r
view 1968, and leaf through to find the issue of February 23, 1968. positions ." And the ratings were very high .
It does not exist . I look back, to the issue of February 13—surely
My own feeling was that the encounter had confirmed my mis-
that was what he meant? Nothing there about nuking North Viet- givings . On Sunday morning I telephoned to Wally Pfister, the pro-
nam . Perhaps the following issue—February 27? Ha! P . 206 :
ducer, and suggested the possibility of alternative formats : per-
"Vietnam and Partisan Politics" by W .F .B ., second column thir d haps two or three minutes of Vidal, followed by two or three min-
paragraph . "If Lyndon Johnson's reasoning is correct that bomb-
utes of Buckley, but no cross-talk . He reported back the conclusio n
ing the North is justified, then it is also correct to bomb the harbo r of the brass that that would make for uninteresting fare . To a tele-
of Haiphong and prevent the delivery there of the hundreds o f
vision critic he spoke without making reference to my expresse d
thousands of tons of material being used against us so effectively . " dissatisfactions . . . . "Pfister revealed that the day after the firs t
That is the most bellicose paragraph in the issue . Could Vidal hav e
debate, Vidal called him and said : 'I sure took care of him [Buck -
had in mind a column, written about that time, though never pub- ley] last night, didn't I?' Later, Buckley called him and said : ' I
lished in National Review, advocating the use of tactical nuclea r
certainly made him [Vidal] look silly, didn't I?' The mighty ar e
weapons in Vietnam? Who knows . Yes, I have advocated (an d human, too," the critic concluded . The mighty are unmighty too ,
most ardently continue to do so) their use, only after pointing ou t
he'd have better concluded .
that they are conceived as more efficient than conventional artillery ,
under certain circumstances, and that their firepower is more dis-
idal's political philosophy is, I discovered fairly early
V
criminatory, and therefore less damaging to extra-military targets
in our association, elusive . His attitudes, if you look
than, for instance, the mass bombings by the B-52's used in th e
them up in the yellow pages, are neatly left-liberal i n
defense of Khesanh .
I wondered what, say, a court would have done under parallel purely conventional terms . However there are anom-
alies . There is a strain of populism . Buf populism, afte r
circumstances? "You know," the prosecution declaims, "on Feb-
all, should be popular . I have heard John Kenneth Galbraith cal l
ruary 23, 1968, the Supreme Court, in Minelli v . Illinois, declared
himself a populist, always on the understanding that he does no t
that anyone who . . . ." And, later, an inquisitive legal researche r
discovers that the Supreme Court didn't declare anything on Feb- thereby deprive himself of his right to intellectually aristocrati c
habits, e .g . in the case of Galbraith cultural elitism, and in th e
ruary 23, 1968, and that Minelli and the State of Illinois, far from
fighting with each other, were always on the very best of terms . case of Vidal, that much at least ; and, touching on the point alread y
What happens? Contempt of court? Reversal? Disbarment? I'l l raised, sexual singularity as well . But on the whole, populists shoul d
tell you what happens when the audience is not the judge, the jury, be not only expert but enthusiastic at reasoning through to th e
and Minelli's kinfolk, but ten million people . What happens i s justification of the people's demands . Vidal isn't good at this a t
all : or rather, one comes across an impenetrable barrier to th e
nothing .
understanding . Towards "the people," he has ambiguous relations .
though he appears not to be able to do without them, at least no t
Reflections on the first meeting ? for as long as twenty network minutes . Even though "they" are ,
From Vidal : "I don't mind his condemning my books," he tol d strangely, always out to get him . "Vidal expresses the hope," wrot e
one reporter . "The President of Bantam Books, which is bringin g Hal Humphrey in a syndicated story "that security provisions at
out the paperback edition in September, phoned me last night and the conventions are especially good be- (Continued on page 122)
* * shoot American marines and Amer- rally that George Lincoln Rockwel l one spoke at once, and then the d
The discussion turned blisteringl y ican soldiers. had planned to stage in New Yor k swung open—it was Paul New m
to the question of what does the Con- City a few years before, which Mayo r longtime friend of Vidal . I want
stitution guarantee, what doesn't it , And then it came Wagner aborted by denying him a to know, he said, working his jaw I
with Vidal insisting on the blameless- license . Vidal maintained that suc h Hud, I think that was the foulest b i
ness of the demonstrators. . . . V . : As far as I am concerned, th e freedoms are absolute, and Smith, re - I ever saw . I approached him fe v
only crypto Nazi I can think of i s acting to instructions from the contro l ishly : "Have you ever been calle r
V. : When they were in the park s yourself, failing that, I would only sa y board at which the mesmerized execu- Nazi? " I spat the words out at h
on Monday night, when I observe d that we can't have . . tives finally rallied, no doubt to tel l His voice mellowed . "That," h e
them, watched the police come in lik e Smith : Now let's not call names. him to get the two madmen off the air , plained, opening his hands wid e
this from all directions, standing . B . : Now listen, you queer . Sto p interrupted : one does in expressing the obvi o
They were sitting there, singing fol k calling me a crypto Nazi or 1'll soc k S . : I think we have run out of time , " was purely political . What you ca l
songs. There were none of the ob- you in your goddamn face and you'll and I thank you very much for th e him was personal!" I despaired ; a
scenities which your ear alone seems t o stay plastered discussion . There was a little mor e motioned to the door, a gesture wh ,
have picked up . [What I and my wif e Smith : Gentlemen! Gentlemen! let' s heat and a little less light than usual, the clamorous company, silent si r
had heard, fourteen stories high was : not call names. . but it was still very worth hearing. Newman's arrival, by the strai n
F --- L.B .J .! . . . F - - - Mayor Daley ! B . : Let Myra Breckinridge go bac k their necks and the inflection of th e
— how do you begin producin g to his pornography and stop making But it wasn't over . Situated as we eyes, seconded by acclamation . An d
witnesses when there are, say, 50,00 0 allusions of Nazism I was in th e were, in one corner of the immens e left, slamming the door behind him .
of them available?] They were ab- infantry in the last war . studio, at other parts of which AB C
solutely well-behaved . Then, suddenly , V . : You were not in the infantry, as continued ineluctably with its liv e he reaction was voluble . There we
the police began . You'd see one littl e
stirring up in one corner . Then, you' d
a matter of fact you didn't fight in th e
war.
broadcast for another twenty min-
utes, we had, as was customary, ver y
T those who did not conceal a sens e
bawdyhouse excitement . Time ma k
suddenly see a bunch of them come i n B . : I was in the infantry . quietly to unharness ourselves fro m zine wrote that "Commentators W
with their night clubs and I might say , V . : You were not . You're distortin g our ear sets and then tread noise- Liam F . Buckley Jr. and Gore Vi c
without their badges, which is il- your own military record. lessly out of the studio . My puls e made Mayor Daley and his coho r
legal, - was racing, and my fingers tremble d look like amateurs in invective ." A B
Smith : Mr . Vidal, wasn't it a pro - Through it all one hears the plead- as wave after wave of indignation which was in uproar, withheld the e
vocative act to try to raise the Viet- ing voice of Howard Smith : Gentle- swept over me—and then suddenly , tire exchange from the western Uni t
cong flag in the park, in the film w e men, please, gentlemen, I beg of you ; about to deposit the earphones on th e States, where it would normally h a
just saw? Wouldn't that invite—rais- and then, taking the conversation by table stand, I stopped, frozen . Vidal , run two hours after being seen l i
ing a Nazi flag in World War II, woul d the horns , arranging his own set, was whisperin g in the rest of the counry . That wo u
have had similar consequences ? Smith : Wasn't it a provocative ac t to me . "Well!" he said, smiling. " I account for some papers ' (e .g., t
to pull down an American flag and pu t guess we gave them their money' s Oakland Tribune) otherwise un a
Vidal explained that there are dif- up a Vietcong flag even if you didn't worth tonight! " countable failure to remark the pro w
ferent points of view about the Viet- agree with what the United States i s I reached my trailer after takin g cation—"The boys were discussing t
nam war, and that "I assume tha t doing ? great strides through the maze o f police violence, Vidal attacking t:
the point of American democracy i s V. : It is not a provocative act . Yo u technicians operators executives re - police and Buckley defending them
you can express any point of view yo u have every right, in this country, to porters guests, all of whom looked a t wrote Bob MacKenzie . "The insu l
want— " take any position you want to tak e me as I stomped by and then, quickly , became more and more heated . Fina l
because we are guaranteed freedom o f looked away ; afraid, perhaps, that I Buckley blew his famous cool enti r
B . : (garbled) . speech. We've just listened to a cer- would greet anyone guilty of a linger- ly . . " The New York Daily News
V . : Shut up a minute. tainly grotesque example of it . ing glance with a sock on his goddam n Kay Gardella delivered a prim rebu l
B . : No, I won't. The answer is : they face . I reached my trailer and ther e for our "disgraceful" language, and r
were well-treated by people who os- I muttered something about lawfu l was chaos there among my half dozen ported that a spokesman of ABC- T
tracized them and I am for ostracizing acts which are nevertheless provoca- friends, and my wife, who had watched had said that after the telecast Vi d
people who egg on other people to tive, citing the projected hate-Jew on the closed-circuit television . Every - "apologized to Buckley in his trail,
office at the convention site . . . have been saints . But not to perceive mention it . Dramatic, yes, but really ing " told" that it was particularl y
[However] an apology was ada- it at all—not even to be tempted t o hitting below the belt . I can't recal l wicked to kill someone, but I hav e
mantly denied by Vidal when reached resentment—to accept it as the mos t your doing this sort of thing in Ne w nevertheless always supposed it to h e
in his Ambassador Hotel suite in Chi- ordinary thing in the world—argue s Haven . Have you changed that muc h so . And anyway, what does Vidal
cago . 'What would I have apologized a terrifying insensibility. . . Thus —and if so, why?" I don't know. I mean by the "limiting side"? And has
for?' he asked . 'It's Mr . Buckley who the absence of anger, especially tha t hope not (though unquestionabl y that limiting side any obligation t o
begins the personal attack . I simply sort of anger which we call indigna.- Yale hopes so) . But don't you see , try to survive? Evangelists for bi-
respond in kind.'" "ABC official El- tion, can, in my opinion, be a mos t Vidal does not consider that he i s sexuality must endure evangelists fo r
mer Lower," the same story reported, alarming symptom . And the presenc e clubfooted, rather that the conven- heterosexuality. And the man who i n
"referred to the verbal volley yester- of indignation may be a good one . tional morality is . He is no more re- his essays proclaims the normalcy o f
day as 'intemperate language.' He Even when that indignation passe s luctant to suggest his tastes tha n his affliction, and in his art the de-
said that 'ABC was upset about what into bitter personal vindictiveness, i t Swinburne was—and everyone fro m sirability of it, is not to be confuse d
happened, but what can you do ex- may still be a good symptom, thoug h Carlyle to Edmund Wilson has spo- with the man who bears his sorro w
cept talk to the individuals and ask bad in itself . It is a sin ; but it at least ken and written about them—intend- quietly . The addict is to be pitied an d
that it not happen again?' " Well you shows that those who commit it hav e ing to be wildly cruel? "In som e even respected, not the pusher .
can of course do that much, which in not sunk below the level at which th e ways," Vidal has written, "I wa s Such then have been my thoughts .
fact ABC did not do . temptation to that sin exists—just a s lucky to be brought up with no sens e acknowledgedly self-serving, but no t
I wondered as the clippings came the sins (often quite appalling )of th e of sexual guilt . I was never told that empty, I think, of objective interest.
pouring in at the all but universal great patriot or great reformer point it was particularly wicked to g o It remains a fact that, as I began b y
conclusion that my outburst had to something in him above mere self . to bed with boys or girls . I also wen t acknowledging, faggotry is counte-
identified me as the equal of Vidal in If the Jews cursed more bitterly tha n into the army a month after my sev- nanced, but the imputation of it —
intemperance . And worse . Commen- the Pagans, this was, I think, at leas t enteenth birthday, and there wa s even to faggots—is not . There mayb e
tary magazine, shrewd and deliber- in part because they took right an d very little [there] one didn't do . Tha t occasions when the clinical imputa-
ate, wrote that "It was really rather wrong more seriously . " established a promiscuous patter n tion is justified, such occasions a s
irresponsible to choose this pair as Can it be that the rhetorical total - which I'm sure has had its limitin g were mentioned earlier—Robert Bru-
the chief editorialists on the ABC ism of the present day has etiolate d side . But there have been compensa- stein ' s reviewing a play . But the im-
team. Though their political opinions every epithet? It was a commonplace tions ." Vidal as usual writes loosely. putation of it in anger is not justified ,
certainly added up to a rather peri- at Chicago to call the police and the One must suppose that very little of which is why I herewith apologize t o
lolls balance, the shameful pleasure mayor Fascists and Nazis, and th e what we know is "wicked" we know Gore Vidal . ff f
of watching them match wits had less country yawned, indeed much of i t because somebody took us aside an d Mr . Vidal ' s response will appear in
to do with a search for political en- expected that so should the police an d told us so . I don't remember, e .g ., be - the September issue .
lightenment than with such archaic mayor have yawned . Everybody get s
or illegal entertainments as cockfight- away with everything . Paul Krassner
ing, duels to the death, and fliting . of The Realist, addressing the kids a t
The effect was the opposite of edify- the Coliseum at L .B .J.'s "unbirthday
ing . Certainly, Dr . Frederick Werth- party," attaches the very highest im-
am must have been worried by Buck- portance to impunity . "I have it o n
ley's scarcely controlled ferocity as good authority," he yelled into th e
he shook his fist and drawled . loudspeaker,"that when someone pri -
After drama like that, who could be vately asked L .B .J . why he kept u p
content to turn back to the maunder- the war, he answered, 'The Commie s
ings of Carl Albert?" I wondered are saying F - - - you L .B .J . ; and no -
that the editors of Commentary, of body gets away with that .' Well, to -
all people, should apparently think it night, as a birthday present, we ar e
irrelevant to specify what it was that all going to say 'F - - - you L .B .J .—
catalyzed the scarcely controlled fe- and get away with it .'" To that Coli-
rocity . One wonders how the editor of seum William Burroughs dispatche d
Commentary would have reacted if he a congratulatory message calling th e
had been called a crypto Nazi in the cops dogs, and Jean Genet topped him
presence of a dozen million people . and called them mad dogs, and Terr y
WoOld he take the position that that Southern said they weren't dogs bu t
was merely a political charge, in a swine. Can such men understand th e
response to which one has no reaso n causes of anger in others? Under -
—, lose one's cool? If, in non-academic stand the special reverence we need to
~cumstances, you call a man a Nazi , feel for that which is hateful? I d o
re you evoking ethnocentric nation- not believe that anyone thought me a
alism—or Buchenwald? A single edi- Nazi because Vidal called me one, bu t
torialist—in The Arizona Republic — I do believe that everyone who heard
:aught the point. him call me one without a sense of
"This was a smear of the worst shock, without experiencing anger ,
'rind . The New York Times, whic h thinks more tolerantly about Nazis m
was so mad it couldn't see straigh t than once he did, than even now h e
when Spiro Agnew said Huber t should .
Humphrey was soft on communism , And then finally, the word I did
gnored it completely . . . . In order to use, which was "personal" in the un-
)ut the incident in better perspective , derstanding of Paul Newman—and a
ust suppose that Buckley had called few others . Perhaps if I had merel y
Tidal a pro or crypto Communist . . . . " threatened to hit him, that woul d
For days and weeks, indeed fo r have been all right . But to call him a
nonths, I tormented myself with th e queer— " I 've been aware of you, " on e
question, What should I have said ? man wrote me, months after the
)bviously my response was the wrong affair, and apropos of nothing, "since
ne if it is always wrong to lose one's the old days when you were on the
emper, as I was disposed ("th e debating team at Yale and I sat an d
Grath of man worketh not the right- watched and listened . I admired yo u
ousness of God") to believe that it is . then, and since—until you called
Vas my mistake that of going on T V Vidal a 'homosexual' on TV . This re -
t all, in the light of the abundan t minded me—somehow and so much —
'arnings, with Vidal (who says A , of Of Human Bondage when Mildred
lust say B) ? Assume that. But even called the doctor a 'cripple.' I mean ,
the question is not then answered : he did have a clubfoot, a limp, true ,
Vhat might have been done withi n but it was wildly cruel of her t o
ne narrow context? Could it be tha t
iy emotional reaction was defensibl e
nd even healthy, but that my word s
'ere ill-chosen? "The higher th e
takes," C . S . Lewis wrote, "the
reater the temptation to lose your
amper. . . . We must not over-valu e
le relative harmlessness of the little ,
msual elous people . They ar e
)t below, some tempta -
v had perceived, an d
'id feel, the diaboli-
ch theym let u s
/\ me] comitting
in, they would
A.