[SeekAndFind]

Here is the complete exchange

Here is the clip where Vidal called Buckley a CRYPTO-NAZI and Buckley countered by calling him QUEER

[SeekAndFind]

The climactic moment of the movie, as it was of the debates, comes after the moderator, Howard K. Smith, refers to the fact that some of the antiwar demonstrators in Grant Park had brandished Vietcong flags prior to the police onslaught. Here, in full, is the relevant frank exchange of views:

SMITH: Mr. Vidal, wasn’t it a provocative act to try to raise the Vietcong flag in the park in the film we just saw? Wouldn’t that invite—raising the Nazi flag during World War II would have had similar consequences.

VIDAL: You must realize what some of the political issues are here. There are many people in the United States who happen to believe that the United States policy is wrong in Vietnam and the Vietcong are correct in wanting to organize their own country in their own way politically. This happens to be pretty much the opinion of Western Europe and many other parts of the world. If it is a novelty in Chicago, that is too bad, but I assume that the point of the American democracy—

BUCKLEY: (interrupting): —and some people were pro-Nazi—

VIDAL: —is you can express any view you want—

BUCKLEY: —and some people were pro-Nazi—

VIDAL: Shut up a minute!

BUCKLEY: No, I won’t. Some people were pro-Nazi and, and the answer is they were well treated by people who ostracized them. And I’m for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you don’t care—

VIDAL (loftily): As far as I’m concerned, the only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself. Failing that—

SMITH: Let’s, let’s not call names—

VIDAL: Failing that, I can only say that—

BUCKLEY (snarling, teeth bared): Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddam face, and you’ll stay plastered—

(Everybody talks at once. Unintelligible.)

SMITH: Gentlemen!

[SamuraiScot]

“That was political,” Newman replied. “Yours was personal.”

Newman, you self-righteous dork. You were too old-fashioned to admit that the "personal," where homosexuality was concerned, had already become political.

[virgil283]

Its funny that I saw that particular program. We were in a isolated area and only one channel could be picked up so we were watching it when all the cursing began...Shocked I tell you.

Vidal was being a jerk and provoked it...

[Mikey_1962]

The Gore is the same Gore as Al Gore as they are family

[IronJack]

Vidal would argue that the very lack of proof of a military–industrial cabal was evidence enough of its existence

And THAT, my FRiends, is the core of liberal "logic." If you see it, it's proof that it exists. But even if you don't, it's still proof. In other words, even if it's not there, it's there. Because you can't find it.

[Cyman]

Vidal was strictly homosexual and displayed a detectable self-loathing about this.

Here is the Cliff note version.

[Lisbon1940]

I don’t know anything about his personal life. His historical fiction is fantastic.

[miss marmelstein]

A great novelist and a great essayist. He’s unsurpassed in modern American literary criticism. Eat your heart out, Mr. Buckley, you couldn’t come close to “Burr” or “Lincoln.”

[originalbuckeye]

Bkmk

[davisfh]

I’m on Buckley’s side.

[davisfh]

I’m on Buckley’s side.

[Glad2bnuts]

Vidal had the epiphany that America was a “fascist security state.” He claimed that the military–industrial complex had kicked into high gear during the presidency of Harry Truman, whose Cold War containment policies he saw as part of an effort to bolster the economy by maintaining a permanent state of war. Vidal would cling to this worldview no matter the counter-evidence. Like Oliver Stone, Vidal would argue that the very lack of proof of a military–industrial cabal was evidence enough of its existence and its control over American lives. Vidal viewed every unpredictable event through this prism. The Soviets’ invasion of Afghanistan was the result of the American military–industrial complex’s goading them into this venture in order to bleed them dry and, by doing so, remove them from the running for the military–industrial-complex sweepstakes. Vidal believed that these maneuverings, not ordinary people’s desire for freedom, led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. Gore Vidal may have been many things, a despicable man and wrong on many things but, how was he not correct about this? We are in a permanent state of war, the NSA is spying on us all at any time, really at all times. The military has been purged of dissenting voices and experience at winning strategy to prolong conflicts without victory. Guns and bandages, that is the largest export of America. Without those what would our GDP look like? We are "The Lords of War".

[jobim]

That exchange shows nothing but a couple of guys at the end of their ropes. We've all been there.

What IS important, however, is that there once was a weekly TV show in our country where two individuals sat and discussed important issues over the course of 60 or 90 minutes. Buckley's contribution to this puts us eternally in his debt. Would that this concept would be, or could be, brought back. But alas, the hyper-focus on a 30 second name-calling exchange generating so much attention illustrates the demise of a cerebral culture with an attention span, and the rise of one unbridled with neither the interest nor the requisite habit of self-control to engage in one topic for an extended period.