As televised liberal-conservative dust-ups go, this one doesn’t quite hold a candle to the celebrated Bill Buckley vs. Gore Vidal cat fight during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. After wordsmith Vidal insisted that, no, really, the author of God and Man at Yale was a “pro-crypto-Nazi”, Buckley (who famously signs his letters in National Review, “Cordially …”) stopped speaking in his native Latin and declaimed: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in you goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered”. That’s good stuff — and it was on broadcast TV for god’s sake.
Nick Gillespie, “Bob Novak: ‘That’s Bullshit … Goodnight, Everybody!'”, Hit and Run, 2005-08-05.
