Popularity Contests

[limbicnuminousity]

https://blackbirdsatdusk.wordpress.com/2024/02/03/popularity-contests/

Excerpt: A gem of a debate between arch-conservative William F. Buckley and liberal icon Gore Vidal highlighted the Republican and Democratic National Conventions of 1968. Famously, the wit of the participants rapidly devolved into ad hominem attacks which revealed a primal antipathy dividing the men. The whole thing ended with Vidal calling Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley threatening to “sock” the “queer.” Political discourse in America never really recovered. Some 55 years later the titanic battle between ideological leaders plays out again in the surprisingly delightful tete-a-tete between Taylor Swift and the Swifties opposite the forces of darkness embodied by a convicted rapist and his maladjusted sycophants.