Best of Enemies

of his time, 499 00:30:43,926 --> 00:30:46,594 Vidal was the great talker of his time. 500 00:30:46,762 --> 00:30:48,804 Well, as usual, Mr. Buckley... 501 00:30:49,681 --> 00:30:52,433 with his enormous and thrilling charm, 502 00:30:52,601 --> 00:30:55,895 manages to get away from the issue toward the comedy. 503 00:30:56,605 --> 00:31:00,191 He's always to the right, I think, and almost always in the wrong. 504 00:31:00,359 --> 00:31:03,903 And you certainly must, Bill, maintain your reputation as being 505 00:31:04,071 --> 00:31:06,614 the Marie Antoinette of the right wing 506 00:31:06,782 --> 00:31:10,201 and continually imposing your own rather bloodthirsty neuroses 507 00:31:10,369 --> 00:31:13,037 on a political campaign. 508 00:31:13,205 --> 00:31:16,624 He also rehearsed his ad libs. 509 00:31:18,210 --> 00:31:20,878 All the great bon mot that he unleashed on the air 510 00:31:21,046 --> 00:31:24,090 he tried out first on the reporters in the press room. 511 00:31:26,343 --> 00:31:30,179 So calling Buckley the Marie Antoinette of the right wing 512 00:31:30,305 --> 00:31:32,765 he had done that with a reporter beforehand. 513 00:31:33,100 --> 00:31:34,809 This is the hobgoblinization 514 00:31:34,977 --> 00:31:37,103 - of the Marxists. - Gentlemen, you have about 515 00:31:37,271 --> 00:31:41,065 one concluding sentence apiece. Can you give us one? 516 00:31:41,900 --> 00:31:44,610 Well, I think that it is something for which 517 00:31:44,778 --> 00:31:46,445 all of us have to be grateful, 518 00:31:46,613 --> 00:31:50,283 that there are left in America people who believe in the democratic process 519 00:31:50,450 --> 00:31:55,538 sufficiently to know that occasionally people can penetrate 520 00:31:55,706 --> 00:32:01,252 such myths as have been energetically projected by Mr. Vidal. 521 00:32:02,087 --> 00:32:06,632 Which would be not only a philosophy in an economy of stagnation, 522 00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,635 but also a spiritual world of stagnation. 523 00:32:09,803 --> 00:32:12,513 Thank you very much indeed, gentlemen. While... 524 00:32:12,681 --> 00:32:16,183 So these two guys were circling each other early on. 525 00:32:16,351 --> 00:32:20,271 Why? Partly because each one saw in the other 526 00:32:20,439 --> 00:32:25,484 a kind of exaggerated image of his own anxious version of himself. 527 00:32:29,239 --> 00:32:31,741 It's almost as if they were matter and anti-matter. 528 00:32:31,908 --> 00:32:34,410 Sort of parallel lives. 529 00:32:39,249 --> 00:32:42,460 They spoke with these patrician languid accents. 530 00:32:42,628 --> 00:32:44,670 They'd both been to boarding schools. 531 00:32:44,838 --> 00:32:47,632 Very prestigious families and backgrounds. 532 00:32:47,799 --> 00:32:48,966 So everyone thought. 533 00:32:49,551 --> 00:32:54,180 These were two guys who were not so much of the Eastern establishment, 534 00:32:54,348 --> 00:32:57,266 as conquerors of the Eastern establishment. 535 00:32:57,851 --> 00:33:00,603 Gore never went to college, 536 00:33:01,104 --> 00:33:03,773 which he was very proud of actually. 537 00:33:03,982 --> 00:33:05,733 We are savages, my family. 538 00:33:05,901 --> 00:33:07,985 Father was from the frontier. 539 00:33:09,404 --> 00:33:14,033 We didn't belong to Long Island society, nor did we wish to. 540 00:33:15,494 --> 00:33:18,371 This has always been an anti-intellectual country. 541 00:33:18,997 --> 00:33:22,917 These days, anybody who spoke like those two men in public 542 00:33:23,085 --> 00:33:25,086 would be seen to be heartless. 543 00:33:25,504 --> 00:33:29,131 In fact, they're supposed to be what American mass audience despises. 544 00:33:29,299 --> 00:33:32,343 They're intellectual. They sound like elites. 545 00:33:32,511 --> 00:33:33,886 But people warmed to it. 546 00:33:34,054 --> 00:33:37,098 Mr. Buckley, do you think miniskirts are in good taste? 547 00:33:37,265 --> 00:33:39,141 On you I think they are. 548 00:33:44,356 --> 00:33:46,482 - Those legs are in good taste. - Great legs. 549 00:33:46,650 --> 00:33:48,776 I never would've figured you for that kind. 550 00:33:51,321 --> 00:33:53,072 Gore Vidal famously said, 551 00:33:53,281 --> 00:33:56,617 sex and appearing on television." 552 00:33:56,785 --> 00:33:58,285 - Go ahead, Gore. - Joanne Woodward. 553 00:33:58,537 --> 00:34:00,830 Very good. That's one down and nine to go. 554 00:34:02,749 --> 00:34:04,417 Hey, put on your-- 555 00:34:04,584 --> 00:34:08,546 They both instinctually knew about the power of television 556 00:34:08,714 --> 00:34:11,716 in a way that a lot of American intellectuals of that era did not. 557 00:34:11,883 --> 00:34:14,677 Why don't you just talk to me instead of talking to the audience? 558 00:34:14,845 --> 00:34:17,304 Well, by a