“That was a time when television was still a public
square, when Americans gathered and saw pretty much the same thing. There’s
nothing like that now.”
“The ability to talk the same language is gone. More and
more we’re divided into communities of concern. Each side can ignore the other
side and live in its own world. It makes us less of a nation. Because what
binds us together is the pictures in our heads. But if those people are not
sharing those ideas, they’re not living in the same place.”
Those quotations above reverberate for me long after
hearing it in Best of Enemies, the
documentary about the Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley television debates ahead
of the 1968 election. Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville wrote and directed the
documentary, an examination of the series of ten debates between Vidal, a
liberal author, and Buckley, a conservative pundit.
They set the background for how these debates came into
being with ABC trailing the other two big networks in ratings and desperate for
something to bring viewers to their air. They hit upon the idea of getting
these two men who despised not only each other’s points of view, but actually
despised each other, in a room together and let the sparks fly.
Gordon and Neville spin a coherent, if perhaps a little
doctored with the benefit of hindsight, narrative to illustrate how television –
at least the news divisions of the networks – went from providing a public
service to providing entertainment in order to sell ad space. Was this series
of debates, which were, at least based on the clips provided in this film,
highly entertaining, really the beginning of sacrificing integrity in the name
of corporate interests? I don’t know, but it sure seems convincing. And at any
rate, these were two powerhouse intellectuals who could use words as cutting
weapons, both with an ability to thread sentences together that are beautiful
to listen to even if you find their content condemnable.
Looking back on these moments from the vantage point of
2015, where we have presidential candidates conducting themselves in nationally
televised debates no better than chimps throwing feces at one another, it makes
me wish we had more of this kind of thing. But then I remember that’s just me.
Vidal and Buckley were speaking to issues that I find important and doing so in
a way that was appealing to me. But was this really a series of debates that
spoke to all Americans the way those quotations above suggest? It’s highly
unlikely that the rural uneducated would have had anything to do with either
one of these men on TV. America has always been divided into communities of
concern because what farmers in Iowa care about is not the same as what welfare
families in Brooklyn care about.
If Best of Enemies
has a failing, it’s that Gordon and Neville don’t ever seem to question the
notion espoused by all these talking heads in their film that the entire TV
audience and all of America was transfixed by this very highly-educated, very white,
and very well-to-do manner of speaking. But this is a documentary that is both
entertaining and illuminating. Watching these two go at it with their very
obvious disdain for one another is excellent programming. It’s fairly obvious
that this is not theatrical dislike that is a put-on for the cameras. And the
arrival of that watershed moment when Buckley threatened to punch Vidal in a
moment of abject frustration seems very much like product of careful planning
on the part of Vidal, who knew all too well that his opponent could be driven
out of his shell to reveal some of the darker sides of his personality.
I think almost anything would be better for this country
than the cacophony of shouts, slings, barbs, and insults that passes for debate
on the cable news channels. Maybe intellectuals like Vidal and Buckley don’t
speak to or for everyone, but hey, I’m willing to cop to the fact that I’d be
satisfied having the national conversation directed by a select number of
elites for a little while.
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