- One of the semester’s chief joys, whenever I teach journalism, is the first of eight classes on “political commentary”—the day when I introduce unsuspecting youngsters to the K-hole known as “YouTubing Gore Vidal vs. William F. Buckley.” We watch selections from the 1968 debates in Chicago and Miami, and undergraduate jaws tend to dislocate within the first three minutes. The classroom’s stated task is to compare 1960s and ’70s notions of public intellectualism and political gamesmanship with our own age’s debased versions of these things, and to have a gut-bustingly good time doing so.
Once in a while a student will take a shine to Buckley (“debonair” and “like James Bond”), but if we let the tape roll long enough, Vidal’s deeper composure and keener knowledge of history will often seduce even the most conservative students. Whereas Buckley produces one of Evelyn Waugh’s anti-socialist epigrams idly, like removing a kerchief from the pocket of his blazer, Vidal’s points of reference in these televised sparring matches are precise, sedulously selected from his self-compiled encyclopedia of a brain. His glibness is not, as with Buckley, the premise of argument, his wit less a tool of deflection than a source of argumentative propulsion. Few pieces of 20th-century political theater can match the intellectual bloodsport of these tapes.
My only Korean War veteran client loves Gore Vidal and tells me I need to read everything he has written.
I was introduced to Gore Vidal via interviews with Christopher Hitchens. #hitchens #hitchslap. It occurs to me that while Vidal/Buckley had each other, Hitchens never really had a specific nemesis. He certainly lay claim to many an adversary but there wasn't one that stood out above the rest. Am I wrong? If so, who am I not thinking of...?
I don't think you're wrong; to my knowledge none of his adversaries had a thick dislike of Hitchens. Despite the nature of his far-less-than-subtle retorts in debate, I've always perceived some respect between him and whomever his opposition was, which I think was what made Buckley stand out in respect to Vidal. I don't think Hitchens wanted to compromise his message by resorting to ad hominems, and was acutely aware when he treaded in that direction. This is 100% google sourced though; I'm not very well acquainted with Hitchens aside from reading a few of his books and watching a few of his debates years ago (aka I don't know what I'm talking about). Hopefully someone more knowledgable can correct or confirm.“Edward genially enough did not disagree with what I said, but he didn't seem to admit my point, either. I wanted to press him harder so I veered close enough to the ad hominem to point out that his life—the life of the mind, the life of the book collector and music lover and indeed of the gallery-goer, appreciator of the feminine and occasional boulevardier—would become simply unlivable and unthinkable in an Islamic republic. Again, he could accede politely to my point but carry on somehow as if nothing had been conceded. I came slowly to realize that with Edward, too, I was keeping two sets of books. We agreed on things like the first Palestinian intifadah, another event that took the Western press completely off guard, and we collaborated on a book of essays that asserted and defended Palestinian rights. This was in the now hard-to-remember time when all official recognition was withheld from the PLO. Together we debated Professor Bernard Lewis and Leon Wieseltier at a once-celebrated conference of the Middle East Studies Association in Cambridge in 1986, tossing and goring them somewhat in a duel over academic 'objectivity' in the wider discipline. But even then I was indistinctly aware that Edward didn't feel himself quite at liberty to say certain things, while at the same time feeling rather too much obliged to say certain other things. A low point was an almost uncritical profile of Yasser Arafat that he contributed to Interview magazine in the late 1980s.”