Gore Vidal (106 page)

But ABC had achieved climactic drama. The network's choice of disputants had paid off, even if in an excessiveness that had its embarrassing side. The ten million people watching had heard a first, something almost unbelievable in those censored and sensitive days. Buckley had not only used the word “queer” but had used it as a censorious epithet. Whether the target was or was not homosexual made no difference. It simply was not done. He had used a homophobic epithet at a time when the general understanding was that such epithets were only for private use. The advocate of high public standards had broken not only the national prohibition but his own Christian and civic code. It was a deeply embarrassing, even shameful moment. When, in 1962, after he had clashed with Vidal on the Paar show for the first time, Buckley had composed a telegram to Paar: “
PLEASE INFORM GORE VIDAL
THAT NEITHER I NOR MY FAMILY IS DISPOSED TO RECEIVE LESSONS IN MORALITY FROM A PINK QUEER. IF HE WISHES TO CHALLENGE THAT DESIGNATION, INFORM HIM THAT I SHALL FIGHT BY THE LAWS OF THE MARQUESS OF QUEENSBURY.” Wisely, he had not sent the telegram. Unwisely, he had now said much the same on national television.

As the fifteen minutes limped to a close, all three men, still stunned, could not have been more relieved for the camera no longer to be running. Gore, who was being interviewed by a reporter for
Life
magazine, stayed a few minutes longer in the studio. Buckley, accompanied by his son Christopher, went to his trailer, where he met Paul Newman, who had continued his nightly habit of going to Buckley's trailer to help himself from the ample supply of beer and then taking his can to Gore's nearby trailer, where the two friends would discuss the telecast. Newman, a delegate from Connecticut, had watched each night's telecast from the ABC control room. Just after he left Buckley's trailer, he met Buckley, still seething, and immediately said
words to the effect of “That was the most disgusting display I've ever seen.” “But Vidal called me a Nazi,” Buckley responded. “That's political,” Newman said. “What you called him is personal.” Buckley declined to see the difference, and of course Vidal had not called him a Nazi, though the comparison was not clearly enough identified as metaphoric for it not to be inflammatory. It would have been the rare person who would not have taken it personally. But it also would have been the rare person who would not have understood that Vidal meant that Buckley, by defending what Ribicoff had called “Gestapo tactics” and by his long-standing advocacy of repression of inflammatory acts of free speech and aggressive first-strike action against those with whom America had foreign-policy disagreements, had certain Nazi-like views and values. It was a harsh way of stating what Vidal and many others believed. If Vidal had said “fascist,” as he had intended, Buckley's response might have been different. If he had explained that the intent of the prefixes “pro-” or “crypto-” was to emphasize that he did not mean the designation to apply literally, as if Buckley belonged to a Nazi Party, past or present, Buckley might not have felt quite as demeaned. There seemed no reason to think, however, that any of the viewers missed that it was a comparison, not an equivalence, something one would say in the heat of debate as a vigorous way to condemn an opponent's views. As such, Vidal thought it no worse than on the far edge of normative public discourse. Buckley, though, was furious. The unforgivable had occurred. He may have feared, or instinctively felt the possibility, that Vidal might bring up the 1944 Sharon incident, which had been a stain on the family's honor. It would be all too easy to make the connection between the accusations of anti-Semitism against his sisters and the “pro-” or “crypto-Nazi” description of himself. As they left the studio, Gore said words to the effect of “We put on a good show.” Buckley turned away. The next night both appeared subdued, drained, mostly going through the motions. Neither addressed the other directly. When, in November, Buckley agreed to fulfill his ABC commitment to appear with Vidal in New York on a postelection summa, he insisted on arrangements that kept them not only physically apart but invisible to one another. They entered and exited the studio by separate doors. They sat on opposite sides of a gray curtain drawn across the room. His anger at Vidal was intense. But he was also deeply disappointed with himself and angry at himself. He could not let go of his anguish. Vidal assumed that the episode was over.

In February 1969 a telephone call to Rome from Harold Hayes, the editor of
Esquire
, alerted Vidal that the Buckley affair was not over. Except for some minor consideration, Vidal had given little thought in the intervening months to the mutual name-calling the previous August. He abhorred Buckley's politics, he thought little (and badly) of him personally. When his father had expressed concern that Buckley's condemnation of him as a “queer” before millions of listeners might harm his public image, Vidal played down its significance. “I said, ‘Forget it, Buckley's considered a far greater creep than I am. This is the way the world goes.'” Reviewers had widely noted the inflammatory exchange. Most, forbidden from printing the homophobic epithet, concluded that Vidal had gone far but Buckley too far, that the association of Buckley with Nazi-like views, strained as the comparison might seem, had a basis in the widely held view among liberals of Buckley's political philosophy and consequently was not totally inappropriate in a polemical argument. Immediately after the telecast, ABC canceled the planned time-delayed West Coast broadcast of the segment. Static was used to cover the word “queer” in its archival tape. Clearly the network
wanted to distance itself as much as possible from Buckley's epithet and the possibility of being named a co-defendant in a libel suit. Vidal's public attitude was flippant, dismissive, though with an edge of allusion to his own (and others') view that Buckley's manner had about it something of the queen, as if to call attention to the ironic implication of someone who considered it the height of condemnation to call someone a “queer” himself seeming somewhat suspect. “I've always tried to treat Buckley like the great lady that he is,” Vidal told the
Chicago Sun-Times
in a morning-after interview. “He's given to neurotic tantrums and I feel sorry for him. He doesn't make much of a point. It's mostly rabid insults and very little substance.” So the phone call from Harold Hayes came as a sharp surprise.

Buckley had had no intention of letting go. “I don't want to talk about him,” he had told
Newsday
the day after the broadcast, referring to Vidal. “I'll write about him myself when I get around to it.” He had been brooding on the event since its occurrence, and in November 1968 he called Hayes, with whom he had a personal as well as a professional friendship.
“‘Mon vieux,'”
he began
, Hayes later wrote, “‘I have something to ask of you. I want to write about that row I had with Vidal on television last summer. Would you be interested?' Sure, I said, but in light of the embarrassment to everyone concerned, including 10 million viewers—why?” Buckley responded, “‘I have been hounded at every turn about my part in it. I think if I were to try and write about it I might be able to work out why I said what I did. I will need some length, and I must be assured that your lawyers will allow me to call Vidal a homosexual in print. Otherwise there is no point in my undertaking it.'” That Buckley was interested in justifying himself and punishing Vidal must have been clear to Hayes. Otherwise, private opportunities “to work out why” would have sufficed. Hayes, who “preferred Buckley as an individual over Vidal and Vidal's politics over Buckley's,” responded with cautious eagerness. As an editor he felt the attraction of famous names and lively controversy.
Esquire
, though, had two concerns: its professional responsibility to be fair to both disputants and its potential liability in case one or both should sue for libel. Two questions had to be addressed before Hayes could respond. Would Buckley accept that
Esquire
had to give Vidal the opportunity to respond? Yes, Buckley agreed, as long as it was not in the same issue. Hayes consented. And what would
Esquire's
lawyer say about Buckley's insistence that he be allowed to call Vidal a homosexual? Would Vidal have the basis for a legal suit against the magazine?
Esquire's
best protection, advised its attorney, Harold Medina, was to make certain that whatever it printed was “true in fact and fair in comment.” Was Vidal, in fact, a homosexual? If so,
Esquire
could accept Buckley's condition. Hayes immediately set two staff researchers to search for corroborating information. Though the result indicated that Vidal had never himself admitted the applicability of the description, there seemed enough support for the claim to protect
Esquire
in the event Vidal should sue. Medina suggested that Buckley be encouraged to go forward, though the lawyer reserved final judgment pending his reading of the full article. “
I told Buckley
to proceed,” Hayes wrote, “and then I called Vidal in Rome. ‘Why are you giving space to that dimwit? He's mad. He exists in the mind of the public only because of his attacks against me. I won't dignify his dreck with a formal answer. But I'll tell you more when I see his manuscript. I might write my answers in the margins.' I told him Buckley's condition that he could not respond until the subsequent issue. ‘In that case,' said Vidal, ‘I'll wait and see what he writes.'”

When Buckley's article arrived at the
Esquire
office in late February, Hayes, after Buckley revised an unsatisfactory ending, sent a copy to Vidal in Rome, another to Medina. “He's pretty rough on you, but you would have expected that,” Hayes wrote to Vidal. “In what form would you like to respond and can you meet the schedule we have in mind?” he asked, as if there were some certainty that the publication process would move forward. Actually, the editor, his publisher, his managing editor, and
Esquire
's lawyer had serious reservations. If they published Buckley's article alone, Vidal might sue. But if Vidal chose to reply in print,
Esquire
, they decided, would proceed only if it could publish both articles after each author had seen and stated his objections to the other and only after
Esquire
had arbitrated “whatever differences remained.” In Rome, Gore read Buckley's article. When Don Erickson,
Esquire's
managing editor, called to get his response, Vidal said, “How does the word ‘injunction' strike you?” He was coming immediately to New York for a consultation with his attorneys and for discussion with
Esquire
. This was now a serious matter about which he could no longer afford to be flippant. Buckley's article seemed not only inaccurate in fact but whiningly self-serving and viciously homophobic. It was a theodicy of sorts, a justification not of God but of Buckley, an egomaniacal self-projection so vast that it seemed satanic, the devil in the guise of infinite self-righteous rectitude. The only thing about his conduct for which Buckley
felt he needed to apologize was that he had lost his temper. “Once at my office,” Hayes reported, Vidal “argued at great length against our going forward under any circumstances. It was exactly what Buckley wanted, Vidal insisted; Buckley would be the only one to gain, all others would lose, for Buckley's only purpose was to call attention to himself. Moreover,
Esquire
's risk was the greatest of all, for Vidal had never acknowledged—‘Never once,' he emphasized—that he was homosexual. It was a dirty business, he concluded, and we—
Esquire
—should have no part of it. I tried to counter each point he raised in the interest of clearing the air between both men once and for all and then, finally, I asked if he seriously wanted me to abandon the project altogether. To his great credit, he answered: ‘I wish you would, but if you decide to go ahead I won't try to stop you. I'm not in the practice of censoring by any means. If you do go on, I will sue you only if you refuse to print my response.'” Hayes thought he could control the process and satisfy both authors. “And so we went on.”

In Rome, as Gore reread Buckley's apologia, he saw there was a cosmic politics at work here larger and more important for Buckley than the usual polemics about left and right, liberals and conservatives, though that of course had its importance. On the personal side, Buckley thought it unforgivable that Vidal had attacked his family. The attacks consisted of the few remarks in 1962 about his reactionary father and the cryptic reference in the August 28 telecast to the 1944 incident at Sharon. That Vidal seemed to him regularly to distort his political views and to have engaged in a systematic campaign to deflate his reputation was barely this side of tolerable, as long as he had his chance to respond. Of all his political opponents, Vidal seemed most to get under his skin, partly because one of his strategies was to help an opponent to self-destruct. And Buckley had done just that on the convention broadcast. Dissatisfaction at his own public intemperance may have given special force to his need to justify himself. Apparently he had in mind some cathartic self-analysis. Political differences alone, Gore realized, could not satisfactorily account for Buckley's vehemence. Vidal's attacks on his family had been unpleasant but muted, though Buckley's sensitivity to the subject made it personally explosive, an issue of honor and empathy. In fact, one of the sisters who had participated in desecrating the church he saw almost every day in her capacity as managing editor of the
National Review
. Still, neither political differences nor the family references seemed to warrant another full-scale engagement with Vidal. The “pro- or crypto-Nazi”
remark had been the only statement that it might be argued was personally defamatory. The Sharon incident had never been discussed in public. What Buckley seemed now to want was some version of public confessional, the point of which would be that not he but Gore Vidal was the real sinner, apparently even at the cost of a response that had the potential to spotlight what he wanted most to keep out of public discussion. His essay, both Hayes and Vidal immediately saw, was not self-analysis at all. It was not a defense of family honor. It was not especially a re-airing of their political differences. It was the avenging sword of religious rectitude striking down the heathen. For Buckley, the proper action was a full-scale attack on Vidal's character, epitomized by two unforgivable elements, one a sin, the other a sickness. Vidal, Buckley argued, was a money-grubbing pornographer whose immorality was purposeful, self-conscious, and self-serving. That was a sin. He was also a sexual deviant, and that was an illness. But unlike most sick people, he did not want to be cured. In fact, “
the man who in his essays
proclaims the normalcy of his affliction, and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher.” By characterizing Vidal as a “pusher,” like Socrates corrupting the youth of Athens, the logic of the argument was that the society would be better off if the pusher were somehow destroyed.