CBS News is in turmoil following an appearance by Ta-Nehisi Coates that actually included probing questions about his new book on Israel. All it took was one interview during which Coates received some pushback for the legacy media to lose its mind and denounce the CBS anchor, and for the network to quickly rebuke him. Top CBS newsroom brass—i.e., woke PR types with zero actual newsroom experience who now run the network—apparently believed Coates should be coated in bubble wrap and only given friendly questions, preferably fed to him in advance.
But babying American intellectuals is not the American way. Feuds and sharp elbows have been a long-standing part of the American intellectual tradition—and signal the public's appreciation for robust debate.
One of the greatest feuds in American intellectual history was between Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman. Hellman was an apologist for communism, something for which McCarthy had no patience. In 1980, McCarthy went on the Dick Cavett show and famously said of Hellman that "everything [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Hellman responded with a $2.25 million libel suit, which was never resolved before her death in 1984.
Cavett's various shows, which ran on multiple networks from the mid-1960s to the 1990s, often served as a showcase for great American intellectual brawls. After Gore Vidal lumped together Charles Manson, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer for their poor treatment of women, Mailer was understandably incensed. Shortly afterward, Mailer appeared with Vidal on an episode of Cavett's show. Things were headed south while the two men were in the green room, where Mailer headbutted Vidal. They didn't get much better on camera, with the two men trading barbs and Mailer at one point approaching Vidal menacingly. Cavett thought Mailer was going to take a swing at Vidal, but he didn't, and just angrily pulled the papers Vidal was holding from his hand.
Mailer was still mad six years later when he saw Vidal at a cocktail party at Lally Weymouth's New York apartment. In front of an impressive crew of literati, Mailer threw a drink in Vidal's face and followed up with a punch. As Vidal wiped the blood from his face, he responded with a retort that landed harder than Mailer's blow: "Norman, once again words have failed you."
Vidal also feuded with the author Truman Capote. They didn't trade physical blows, but instead took swipes at each other in the press. Vidal sniffed that Capote's prose was like Carson McCullers, combined with "a bit of Eudora Welty." Capote countered that Vidal got his literary influence from the New York Daily News.
Vidal was threatened with physical violence in perhaps his most famous feud, with National Review founder William F. Buckley. The two men appeared on ABC News during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Vidal had prepared extensively for the debates and got under Buckley's skin by calling him a "crypto-Nazi." An angry Buckley responded, "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi, or I'll sock you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." For the rest of his life, Buckley regretted that loss of composure.
Although Buckley was an excellent debater over his five decades in the public eye, he had a tough time in another debate, with James Baldwin, Coates' ostensible literary role model who was a far better writer, in 1965. The issue was civil rights and Buckley was eager to take on Baldwin, whom he considered an "eloquent menace." The debate took place in Cambridge, and nearly everyone thought Baldwin got the better of the exchange, including Buckley.
Baldwin also got into it with another famous conservative, Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz. In his first memoir, Making It, Podhoretz told the story of how he asked Baldwin to write a piece for Commentary on Black Muslims. Baldwin wrote the piece, but instead published it in The New Yorker, enraging Podhoretz.
Podhoretz confronted Baldwin, telling him that white liberal guilt would not work on him, as "If he thought I felt guilty to him or any other Negro, he was very much mistaken. Neither I nor my ancestors had ever wronged the Negroes; on the contrary, I had grown up in an 'integrated' slum neighborhood where it was the Negroes who persecuted the whites and not the other way round." Baldwin suggested that Podhoretz write up his thoughts, which led to Podhoretz's famous Commentary article, "My Negro Problem and Ours."
Podhoretz had so many intellectual feuds in his migration from left to right that he titled his third memoir Ex-Friends, with the revealing subtitle: "Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel & Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer." As Podhoretz wrote of these—and other—literary luminaries, "I have often said that if I wish to name-drop. I have only to list my ex-friends. The remark always gets a laugh, but, in addition to being funny, it has the advantage of being true."
To enter into the intellectual world is to put yourself out there, to lay out your thoughts and ideas and allow others to respond. You don't get to call other people names like "racist" or "white supremacist" and then cry when they push back. If Coates thinks that the Hamas terrorists who burned innocent women, men, and children alive on Oct. 7 and gleefully broadcast the footage of their atrocities to the world are the good guys, let him argue his case. If he believes himself to be an expert on one of the world's most notorious trouble spots based on a 10-day visit with his progressive political handlers, then let him step forth and display the full extent of his expertise before the world.
All of the feuding intellectuals above had many disagreements; but on the question of having to defend your views, no matter how controversial, they would have been in unanimous agreement: Coddling is for babies.