BEST OF ENEMIES

 

One of the great things about watching television in the Sixties was the chance to view the spectacle of our finest writers verbally slugging it out on talk shows. Smart and savvy men in matters of politics, literature, and art who, when confronting another who is just as smart and with equal measures of self-regard, act like petulant children who are an hour beyond their scheduled bedtime. It was an era where our perceptions of what was occurring in the world beyond our living rooms and kitchens were framed by a host of local newspapers, with the New York Times being the only one we might consider a “national” publication, and three major television networks: NBC, CBS, and ABC. There were other outlets for contrary opinions, such as literary journals, alternative political magazines, and a wide spread of local newspapers. But in a pre-internet age, there were few platforms in which ambitious intellectuals had to command the spotlight and keep it on them; the personalities themselves had to be large.

It was a different kind of fireworks, with the considerable brainpower in the TV studio surging for spite, payback, revenge against slights and dismissals, real or imagined. The new documentary “Best of Enemies” is a close look at one of the centrally extended spats of the period – a fascinating backward glimpse at a heated, passionate feud between William F. Buckley, conservative gadfly writer and editor of the National Review, and novelist-essayist Gore Vidal, a formidable wit and left-leaning contrarian. Both writers, representing the political right and left respectively, were hired by a ratings-starved ABC News for a series of ten debates during the 1968 Republican and Democratic National Conventions. The film augments little-seen footage from the testy debates with remarks from Dick Cavett, Christopher Hitchens, historian Todd Gitlin. It is a character study of two men who, although representing and to an extent conflicting embodying worldviews shared more than either was ever likely to admit. Buckley and Vidal detested one another. The film gives a swift but vivid account of their past encounters and impressions of one another; Buckley considered Vidal a harbinger of an amoral, godless chaotic world that threatened the foundations of civilization. In turn Vidal regarded Buckley as a pampered apologist for and defender of rich elites who used any means they required to increase their wealth and power. That both men had manners speech patterns and patrician affectations that would suggest they should have shared more common ground is the larger irony.

But at heart was the concern as to who should lead America. Gitlin says at one point that Buckley didn’t believe in democracy but should be ruled by an Elite ruling class. However aristocratic he might have seemed Vidal spoke in favor of direct democratic processes empowering the disenfranchised with more political will and for ridding the political system of undue influence from corporations. It was a mess if nothing else but it was so the cliche has it “good television”. This was not a debate it was blood sport. At stake both would perversely agree on was the fate of the United States; Buckley viewing it as descending into chaos should the left achieve their agenda of equal rights and non-interventionist foreign policies and Vidal with the idea that American Empire much like Roman Empire and other empires before it would collapse from overextension. The debates were lively energetic two men bent not on discussing party policies on social issues but rather determined to expose each other as frauds charlatans great social menaces. Anyone familiar with these debates meaning anyone around my age of 60 something knows what this builds up to; Vidal in the 9th debate goading Buckley by calling him a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley his calm destroyed looking at Vidal with unmistakable contempt says his fateful rejoinder calling him “queer” and that he would sock him “in your god damned face” if Vidal made that Nazi comparison again. It was judged by media writers at the time that Vidal had won these debates by simply keeping his cool.

In the aftermath both writers wrote their feelings about these exchanges in successive issues of Esquire first Buckley then Vidal resulting in a libel suit against Vidal when he implied with forceful insinuation that Buckley was a closeted gay man. In all this film ends on a melancholy note suggesting that neither writer quite recovered from these confrontations. In later footage both are shown as tired wizened melancholic looking at this world that would follow their respective measures of advice closely or faithfully enough. It is fitting perhaps as we see here two of America’s smartest writers at that time giving it their all in an effort to change this country make it better according to their radical prescriptions only to see this long view at last that what made them anxious in their youth still exists they haven’t energy to enter this fray.