RE: I still think our side needs to learn how to head butt, throw elbows, and hit below the belt. This is not a Marquis of Queensbury Rule event. It’s intellectual war.
At the Aug. 28, 1964 debate in Chicago - the penultimate encounter in the series of debate between WFB and Gore Vidal ( who was of course, gay but did not openly flaunt it then ), with an estimated 10 million people watching - things began with relative calm.
But it did not stay that way, and before long the men began exchanging words that one simply didn’t hear on TV at that time. Vidal called Buckley a “pro-crypto-Nazi,” a modest slip of the tongue, he later said, because he was searching for the word “fascist” and it just didn’t come out.
Inflamed by the word “Nazi” and the whole tenor of the discussion, Buckley snapped back: “Now listen, you queer,” he said, “stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in you goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
Watch the exchange here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpyozeraXoQ
Moderator, Howard K. Smith attempted to calm the exchange with “gentlemen, let’s not call names,” but the damage had been done. The two men, considerably subdued, met the following night for the last of their week of debates.
Is that what you mean by intellectual war?
Yes, that is a great example. “Crypto-Nazi” deserves “pink queer” every single time, and twice on Sunday. I like to imagine that St. Paul said something similar whilst debating the philosophers atop Mars’ Hill.
I thought this occurred in 1968 during coverage of the National Democratic Convention in Chicago. Their feud lasted for several years after that, but WFB would never respond to questions about his "outburst."