Big Mike: The Worst Insult

In a two-year period in the late 1960s I became obsessed with two things. In 1967, I discovered the Cubs. A year later, I took up politics.

Before 1968, like most dopey kids, I didn’t know a senator from beatnik. Although I must admit that by that time I certainly could distinguish a then-Senator from a future one.

But in that spectacular year, my head was turned by the Vietnam War, civil rights demonstrations, assassinations and finally, in August, the tumultuous Democratic Convention in Chicago. I may have been the only twelve-year-old on Earth who actually watched every minute of the Convention and its accompanying melees on television. I couldn’t believe that my beloved city was being turned into a battle ground with hippies and Yippies flinging bags of shit at cops and Chicago’s finest removing their badges and nameplates so they could fracture skulls in comfortable anonymity. Even on the Amphitheater floor a young Dan Rather was gut-punched by a goon masquerading as a security man on live television.

One of the most indelible images for me that week was when the author Gore Vidal, the flaming liberal, faced off against William F. Buckley, the flaming conservative, on the topic of the antiwar protesters.

Again on live television with moderator Howard K. Smith of ABC News turning apoplectic, the two appeared on the verge of whacking the crap out of each other. When they began talking over each other, Vidal waved his hand in Buckley’s face and said, “Shut up a minute!” Buckley fidgeted in his chair and leaned toward Vidal, saying, “No I won’t!” Then this:

Vidal: “As far as I’m concerned, the only sort of pro-crypto Nazi I can think of is yourself.”

Buckley: “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamned face — and you’ll stay plastered!” Buckley fumed for a moment and continued, “Let the author of “Myra Breckinridge” go back to his pornography and stop making allusions of Nazism to someone who was in the Infantry in the last war and fought Nazis!” all the while putting his face ever closer to Vidal’s.

I was transfixed. The fact that politics and dissent could inspire such rage appealed to this male-hormone-laced pre-teen. I began to devour everything I could about politicians, protesters and activists. I threw my lot in with the Gore Vidals of the world. I never forgot that televised tiff between the two eminent authors and thinkers.

One of the things that made it so memorable was that, at the time, it was shockingly unique. Of course today, such an exchange would be the equivalent of an air-kiss shared by a couple of Fox News politico-barkers.

Today’s incivility makes the Vidal-Buckley contretemps look quaint. Our modern shit-flinging brand of discourse has even infected such a refined, genteel, delicate flower such as, well, I.

The other day, I tried to start a pissing match in the baseball blog I co-write with my partner Peter Ajemian from Boston. Click on the link if you wish, but be warned — it’s of interest only to those who are completely, utterly and probably psychopathically obsessed with baseball. Even our mutual pal Benny Jay continually reminds us that we’re borderline lunatics in our concern for the minutia surrounding the Cubs and the Red Sox. And he’s a guy who still journals every night before he goes to bed about the crush of his life, the Bulls.

Anyway Peter, who goes by the moniker AJ, wrote a post wherein, I thought, he was twisting some facts. I called him on it and added the snarky comment, “What are you, Glenn Beck? Black is white and up is down?”

AJ fired off a response:

Please do NOT ever again suggest, even half-kiddingly, that I am in any way like Glenn Beck. I view Beck as about the lowest of the low and have ripped him on my other blog. So please find another reference — any other one — to make your point. I realize you were probably “baiting” me but Beck is so repugnant that I feel compelled to say this.

Wow. I had no idea that what I’d considered a throwaway comment would rub such a raw nerve. Yet, I’ve made references to Glenn Beck dozens of times in this and other venues. I wouldn’t exactly equate Glenn Beck with Joseph Goebbels but I suspect they’d enjoy comparing notes over a couple of glasses of lager. Beck embodies all the worst aspects of what passes for thought in American mass media. He, Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton, the Balloon Boy‘s parents, and Donald Trump make me wonder why terrorists from all four corners of the globe aren’t flying airplanes into our skyscrapers.

See? There I go again. I won’t say the Gore Vidal-William F. Buckley dust-up started us down this inexorable road to ass-holiness. It wasn’t until nearly 20 years later that daytime talk show guests started tossing chairs and calling each other names that in an earlier day would have earned someone a fat lip.

AJ’s a sweet, sensitive, talented guy. Why did I find it necessary to insult him for the sake of furthering some contrived bickering? I’m afraid I’ve violated one of my own cardinal rules — never fall in with the crowd.

What am I, Glenn Beck?

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