Word: buckley
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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...
SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY William F. Buckley Jr., LL.D., editor...
...group stayed with families in ghetto apartments. In San Francisco, a motel manager emptied enough rooms of prostitutes to crowd the group in-and got himself beaten up by their pimps in return. The pimps who stayed were anxious to talk, mostly about police abuse of their rights. Bill Buckley listened for a while before informing them that "there's a contradiction between the sociological and practical approach to this situation." There were other good-natured exchanges, though, as when one hipster patiently explained to Buckley that "high siding" means having...
...much with the press as with the public, which doesn't respond. There is a natural tendency to blame the messenger for failure to get the message across." Some reporters refused to be drawn into the arguments. "I refuse to bore you with my opinions," Bill Buckley remarked imperiously to one hostile audience. But the continual hostility brought out occasional flashes of anger in other reporters anxious to defend the press. At one dinner Look's George Leonard, author of numerous sympathetic studies of the ghetto, finally exploded at accusations: "Goddammit, that isn't true. The press...