I've been studying the 1977 Cincinnati Coup. A seldom discussed event where the NRA turned from the very government-friendly author of most gun control legislation to what Gore Vidal would undoubtedly call a collection of Crypto Nazis.
My generation came into the world with two politically active gay uncles. One was Gore Vidal, and the other was Roy Cohn. One has come to be regarded as unquestionably good, while the other has come to be regarded as unquestionably evil. Both were unquestionably aggressive and Machiavellian.
In the 1960s and 1970s, The National Review, run by William F. Buckley, was decidedly conservative and often held up as the intellectually dominant force in American Politics. This irritated Vidal deeply, so deeply that he decided on a course of action that would unmask Buckley and the National Review for what he thought they were.
In the 1960s, openly gay men were considered effete, ineffective, and inconsequential. Gore Vidal was none of these things, but he was not beyond using that image to his advantage.
Vidal didn't invent the phrase or the concept of crypto-fascism; a German Sociologist coined the phrase in the late fifties, but on a debate on ABC television during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Gore seemingly off-handedly used the phrase to describe Buckley, his opponent in the debate, prompting Buckley to say on national television, "Now listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered." Vidal grinned in victory.
For two years, Vidal had been running a campaign to expose Buckley and the National Review as both racists and homophobes. Calling people racists in 1966 was unusual, but labeling them as homophobes was unheard of. In the years before the Stonewall riots, being homophobic was considered a natural right, as much as racism had been in the South before 1960.
Vidal used his reputation as a libertine who drank too much to obscure the viciousness of his true nature. Facing the pro-Vietnam War, pro-segregation, pro-homophobic platform of the American intellectual right at the time, to move the needle of our national timbre even a little bit in his mind, not only warranted ruthless action but intellectual prowess not often seen in American Political discourse. Despite everything the right said about him, Vidal was equal to the task.
On television, Vidal would mimic Buckley's affected way of speaking, even his affected way of sitting, but never so blatantly that Buckley or any of the moderators could ever call him out for it. He embarked on a battle of a thousand tiny needles.
Later in life, Vidal described his political strategy using words from Spanish Bullfighting like Peón and Piccadore, both positions used to infuriate the bull to the point of blindness before the matador killed him.
On national television, on the eve of the most politically contentious convention since the Civil War, Vidal's stinging of Buckley was paying off. He unsheathed his crypto-nazi rapier during a discussion about the Viet Cong and delivered a cut that so infuriated Buckley that he thrust himself onto Vidal's blade for the entire world to see on their televisions.
Of all the millions of words Buckley said on television, Saying he would “sock” Vidal “in his goddamn face” became the ones he was remembered for. They could have put that on his tombstone.
Later, Vidal would say it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to call Buckley a crypto-nazi. I don’t believe him. Among other things, Gore Vidal could be a liar. Most truly adept acolytes of Niccolo Machiavelli are.
The Democratic National Convention in Chicago was in August. Seven months before, Vidal published his most famous work, “Myra Breckenridge,” a satire. Vidal suggested the novel was a comedy, but his detractors, including Buckley, called it pornography. In reality, Myra Breckenridge was a brutal treatise on the political and sexual mores of mid-century America, using satire as a means to deliver his argument more effectively than any academic discourse could.
Gore Vidal never did anything accidentally. Writing Myra Breckenridge was an intentional act, as was Pushing Buckley until he threatened violence at the 1968 Democratic Convention.
In the parlance of middle America in the 20th century, and even today, gay men were weak and the victims of their emotions. In one three-minute spot on national television, Vidal proved that it was actually America’s favorite full-of-machismo conservative intellectual who was the victim of his emotions.
Consider Vidal’s face at the end of this video. That smile. He knows he’s won.
This is pure gold.