Anchors like Howard K. Smith and Walter Cronkite had occasionally offered commentaries on the news, “but that was very civil,” Mr. Neville said. “What they brought,” he added, referring to Vidal and Buckley, “was a whole other level of incivility that television hadn’t really seen.” [...]And thus was the modern punditry circuit formed.On a night of riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago, Buckley and Vidal had their own climactic on-air clash. Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” prompting a reaction that still stuns.
“Now listen, you queer,” Buckley replied, “stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” He was nearly out of his chair, inches from Vidal, his face, as Christopher Hitchens recalls in the film, “a rictus of loathing.”
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Republicans leaving FAA shut down and thousands out of work through August:
Over the past week, the partial shutdown of the FAA has been massively overshadowed by the debt ceiling fight. If you needed better evidence for how maimed our nation's political situation has become, think about that: a major federal agency is mostly shut down for more than a week and it gets little attention because there's an internal danger facing our government and economy that so dramatically outweighs it.Here's a rundown of what you may have missed and where things stand now. The short version is, the FAA will remain closed through August, because House Republicans declined to stay in session after voting on the debt deal. That came despite Senate Democrats, led by Jay Rockefeller, saying they would introduce a bill cutting the rural air subsidies that Republicans had allegedly wanted cut; even Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison decried her party's decision not to end the shutdown before recess.
Why wouldn't Republicans jump at Democrats agreeing to a cut they proposed, aside from wanting to get out of town? Because it was never about a $16.5 million cut, of course.
How inequality and the courts beget a New Gilded Age: Just 400 families in America are paying for half the campaign. http://t.co/...
— Nick Confessore (@nickconfessore) August 1, 2015Monday through Friday you can catch the Kagro in the Morning Show 9 AM ET by dropping in here, or you can download theStitcher app (found in the app stores or at Stitcher.com), and find a live stream there, by searching for "Netroots Radio."
