Twice in the last day I have encountered topics where I thought I knew the salient points, and I did, but somehow the most salient points have escaped me.
First, I sat Gary down and we watched the documentary The Best of Enemies, about the debates between Gore Vidal and Willam F. Buckley. I felt I knew the basic facts: two guys, different opinions, ABC aired the debates during the Chicago Democratic convention. Here’s a summary of what I knew going in:
- Gore Vidal wrote books my father enjoyed.
- Gore Vidal was gay.
- Gore Vidal seemed very full of himself.
- Gore Vidal was on talk shows a lot.
Whereas ..
- William F. Buckley wrote the National Review, which my father enjoyed.
- William F. Buckley was effete.
- William F. Buckley seemed very full of himself.
- William F. Buckley was on talk shows a lot.
Also, I knew that they were politically opposed.
My intent was to show these debates to Gary so he could see what a polite, civilized discussion of ideas is like, in the hope that it would temper his Facebook tirades.
I did not know the key salient point, and the reason everyone still remembers these debates, which is (SPOILERS IF YOU DON’T ALREADY KNOW) that Gore Vidal on air called William F. Buckley a crypto-Nazi and then William F. Buckley lost his cool and answered, “Now, listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
As I say, I had great gaps in my knowledge. More idiocy tomorrow.
4 responses to “How Did I Miss This Part 1: Buckley/Vidal Debates”
Q: On seasoned after-analysis, was the provided debate exchange:
a) more polite and calm
b) less polite and calm
c) equivalently polite and calm, or
d) not measurable/quantifiable
with respect to the provided Facebook tirades?
I am always a bit curious as to how our expectations alter our responses to things, and have noticed myself thinking “oh, that’s a remarkably calm response!” when the item is still not actually *calm* (or acceptable or reasonable), but where I was assuming that the response would be frothingly angry and totally illogical or such.
KC – Vidal and Buckley were b) less polite and calm. In fact, Gary specifically is very calm on Facebook and in real life can get purple with rage over the same topics.
That is interesting, the calm-on-Facebook thing! (that is probably a good thing; while there is such a thing as being too calm in a debate, on the internet it is… rare.)
KC – He is pretty polite when he’s in social settings, too.