Giants

Gore Vidal

This week we lost an intellectual giant. Gore Vidal died.  Love him or hate him there was no question he had a mind larger than most.  From literature to politics and opinion Gore Vidal had a talent for the artistry of the mind.  He was a devout liberal who believed in a progressive society and often frustratingly to conservatives found a way to represent his opinions with logic and fact. He was an eminent historian and wrote several comprehensive novels.  The grandson of a blind Oklahoma Senator Thomas Gore, he lived a gifted North Eastern life.  Despite his privileged when it came time to enter an Ivy League University he instead chose to be a warrant officer in the United States Navy during World War II.  He followed in the footsteps of his father who was an officer and flight instructor at the United States Military Academy.  He was filled with contrasts.  He had both male and female lovers and while labeled a liberal actually considered himself a conservative.  He was called a communist sympathizer yet he held a deep love for the country and was fiercely patriotic.  He was often a skeptic of America's future and while he loved the nation seemed resigned to an American decline.

William F. Buckley

A number of years ago we lost another great thinker who sat most assuredly on the opposite side of the spectrum.  His name was William F. Buckley and his dry sense of wit was the bane of all those who attempted to debate him.  For many years he hosted the Firing Line a show on Public Television that brought together a variety of thought and opinion for intelligent discussion.  Buckley would sit back in his chair almost as if he was going to fall asleep and tip over backwards when his eyes would suddenly light up and he would opine magnificently on some topic.  Buckley was a sailor and a representative of the North Eastern patrician class.  The quintessential Yale Man.  I first came to know William F Buckley when he was the editor and chief of his magazine The National Review.  My father subscribed to it and the dry mostly wordy publication would arrive at our home every month. As I came to understand more about Buckley's views I wondered why my father would read them.  He was after all a bit of a counterpoint to Buckley's conservatism.  His other subscription to the New Republic a left leaning dry wordy magazine made much more sense.  Eventually I came to understand that my father read National Review and William F Buckley precisely because he did disagree with him.  You see unlike today where media that comfortably re-affirms our belief system overwhelms us and commands our constant attention, there was a time when people actually listened to opposing points of view.  There was an attempt to challenge the belief system by at least understanding if never accepting the point of view of another.

Michael Kinsley

My relationship with Bill Buckley continued as I shared his love of sailing and watched him engage in periodic PBS debates with a liberal hero of my own, Michael Kinsley.  Kinsley, a Harvard man was the editor of The New Republic the counterpoint to Buckley's National Review. 

Both Buckley and Vidal were ironically born in the same year, 1925.  While both shared North Eastern elitist cultural origins, each went his own way.  Buckley became a conservative icon and Vidal a liberal banner waver.  The two clashed during the Vietnam war in a serious of television interviews and became heated rivals culminating in an ugly exchange when both men at the height of their intellects proved that even the best could summarily lose it.  It was August 27th 1968 at the Democratic Convention in Chicago when on live TV with 10 million people watching they began to discuss the issues of the day.  It started with Vidal calling Buckley a "pro-crypto-Nazi."  Vidal later said that he meant to say fascist but lost the word.  You have to wonder if he had said fascist perhaps Buckley might have taken it as a compliment.  Buckley immediately became agitated and shot back "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."

The great debate

When Gore Vidal passed away this week I decide to look back at some of their meetings and revisit both men.  What I found in the personalities of these two intellectual giants was a well known but certain validation of the general stupidity of our age.  To think that television once spotlighted these men and let them speak to the nation.  This in an era when three networks commanded the attention of the entire country.  Both men were constantly having a conversation of ideals and belief systems.  They relied on facts and empirical data to express themselves.  They did not exist solely on opinion, they existed on the revelations and mental craft of true intellectualism.  Who was right and who was wrong is a different question open for the most intellectual of debate.  As Gore Vidal seemed to become more and more pessimistic about the future of America I can't help but feel the same way about American intellectual thought.  The pundits of today can't hold a candle to these men.  They are simply parrots off opinion. While there are those that desperately try to stem the tide the sad reality is we are a nation that is mentally dying.  Good bye William F Buckley, Goodbye Gore Vidal, I will miss you.