 |
| William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal in "Best of Enemies." |
For our illumination, enlightenment, and consideration, Morgan Neville and Robert Gordon give us “Best of Enemies;" a superb examination of William F. Buckley, Jr., Gore Vidal, and how ABC pitted them against each other in order to save the network from impending doom. Through ten televised debates circling the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968, Buckley and Vidal devolved from intellectuals into petty rivals, and a road to our current normalization of morally-void cutthroat political commentary was paved.
With this at its center, the film poses what I learned wasn’t an unintentional question through a Q&A with the filmmakers:
At what cost did ABC succeed? Was it worth it?
