Conservative Icon William F. Buckley Dies

Ah, memories of a Buckley-Vidal spat..

BBB
It were da heavangelical christianal movement dat destroyered his Republicanable Party und eventually killed him. Twere pre-dick-able.

BBB

I meant to add, Rest in Peace.

His writing was so clear...lucid...pellucid...that I was forced to organize my thoughts as to exactly why I disagreed with him.

He was a rock-ribbed Republican, but he's also been taking George Bush to task over Bush's Iraq policy.

Dont know much about the man. But at the occasion of his death, TNR dug up from its archives "a long and thoughtful piece about the great conservative in his twilight years" by Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of The New York Times Book Review, "with a particular focus on the Iraq war".

It included this description, which struck me as the ultimate example for all of us to follow, even if we're just posting on some web forum:


Sounds so easy. Is so difficult. I wanna be like that...

He and G Gordon Liddy, seemed to be the only Conservatives with senses of humor. Guys of today's conservative screech radio are so damn "unentertaining and super dour" that mid day radio has gotten to be a coast to coast shouting match mixed in with unthinking dittoheads.

While I disagreed with him, he was entertaining.

RIP

I'll miss reading Buckley Editorials while keeping a dictionary handy.

Bill was a true conservative. One who believed that governments place was out of the boardroom and the bedroom all the while maintaining fiscal sanity. Nothing like the modern neo-conservatives who feel no compunction about invading bedrooms and promote voodoo borrow and spend economy.

RIP Bill Buckley I'd like to hear your debate with St Peter, somehow I'll bet you arrive with all your debts paid.

Rap

I heard an audiobit on him on NPR this afternoon. When he invited friends or was not otherwise in front of a camera , he never talked politics. HE actually hated it. His comme nt was that he only talked politics "whenever they pay me".

I remembr the comedy bit when he was on a faux firing line arguing with himself with a comedian (forgot who) who imitated him, his every mannerism and convoluted communication. It was high comedy and Buckley ate it up.

He was bright enough to convert a bright friend of mine into conservatism.

But I never understood what did he really mean by "perfunctory ersatz"

he loved word sounds. I remember once he found some damn way to use the word phlebotomy, and I had to go look it up. I was in HS at the time and will never forget the word, even though Ive only used it whenever I had blood samples drawn.


He could say phlebotomy like nobody's business



OH YEH----He was saying something like "Were undergoing an economic phlebotomy" then hed do that really weird smile.

Buckley
I always looked forward to Buckley's "Firing Line" broadcasts and enjoyed all of them. I thought they helped to establish the reputations of many young liberals.

BBB

My understanding of the origins of this phrase, fbaezer, is that it was first used by a college girlfriend of Mr. Buckley in describing how he and other American males made love.

My favorite Buckley term;
Insouciant= 1. carefree; nonchalant; indifferent; casually unconcerned.
My father always watched Firing line followed by Joe Pyne on PBS.

My mother, father and I watched Firing Line regularly which, in retrospect, might seem a little odd. Dad was an Englishman who'd grown up on the Canadian prairies to become an engineer and passionate union organizer. Mom was a Mennonite prairie girl and a serious liberal. I was an expelled high school student. Yet we all had deep respect for Buckley's intelligence and thoughtfulness and, of course, for the beauty of his language. That he and JK Galbraith remained livelong friends speaks to both those men and speaks to a better time in american political discourse.

UTube has lots, for those who didn't get the opportunity to be familiar with Buckley and the quality of discourse on american TV before it became as soundbite and shallow as it has now become. In the link below, for example, you can choose a discussion between Buckley and Chomsky, or the famous Buckely/Vidal fight.

I really love this quote from Mailer, noted in today's NY Times...

I hope this doesn't sound too hokey or stupidly sentimental (I know it is just a generational perspective) but at the end of Shakespeare's tragedies there's always a palpable feeling that those who remain standing are really second-tier characters.

Here's the utube link...
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=william+f+buckley&search_type=

Golly. I haven't watched this bit of footage (chomsky and buckley) for a long while. Buckley, along with his good character traits, could also be a pretty annoying elitist snob. The difference in tone and discourse manners (and carefulness in thought) is pretty evident here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Samvw6Z08

Blatham


And, of course, there was his Catholic religion. I didn't object to his spiritualism, but his adoration of dogma really pushed my button.

BBB

Yes. His catholicism clearly influenced him and in turn the movement he helped set in motion.

It's interesting to think about the confluence here between that version of catholicism and Irving Kristol/Himmelfarb coming out of the jewish tradition and forwarding a particular notion of 'virtue'. Both seem to me extremely elitist, really in the mode of Plato's notions regarding who really ought to be running the show (not the great unwashed).

Blatham
I get riled when elitist people of great wealth, especially those with inherited wealth, pontificate about how the poor and middle classes should conduct their lives to achieve "the American Dream" if only they pursued it correctly. His life was very different from mine. I was born in 1929 at the beginning of the "great depression." Buckley was born before it began and his family was probably only slightly effected by it as demostrated in the article below.
---BBB

William F. Buckley was born on November 24, 1925, in New York City, the sixth of ten children in a devoutly Roman Catholic family. Because his grandfather had made a fortune in the oil business, Buckley's childhood in Connecticut was one of wealth and privilege, but also one of discipline and intellectual rigor. He was educated in England and France, and graduated from the Millbrook School in Millbrook, NY, in 1943.

Buckley's first language had been Spanish, having been raised by Mexican nannies, and he now studied at the University of Mexico before being drafted into the Army in 1944. After being discharged in 1946, he worked briefly for the CIA. He then attended Yale University, graduating in 1950. Shortly thereafter, at the age of 25, he became a literary sensation with the publication of his book, "God and Man at Yale," a scathing indictment of what would later be called "political correctness."

Buckley founded National Review magazine in 1955, at a time when the words "conservative" and "intellectual" were rarely seen in the same sentence. His magazine revolutionized political thinking, and had a profound affect on conservative leaders such as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. He became even more influential when his newspaper column, "On the Right," was syndicated in 1962. In 1965 he ran for mayor of New York under the Conservative Party banner and received 13.4 of the vote.

What finally propelled Buckley to iconic status was his weekly television show, "Firing Line." He had been a skilled debater at Yale, and viewers loved to watch him spar with such guests as Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, the Dalai Lama, and Groucho Marx. A disturbing Psychology Today poll conducted in the early Seventies found that an alarmingly high percentage of women fantasized about Buckley while having sex with their husbands.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, Buckley and his wife, Pat, became the most sought-after socialites in Washington. His Blackford Oakes spy novels were consistent best sellers. With the high life, however, came controversy. Many were shocked at Buckley's callous response in the early years of the AIDS epidemic; he went so far as to suggest that those who suffered from the disease should be tattooed on their backsides.

In the early 1990's, Buckley stepped down as editor of National Review, though he continued on as a contributing editor, and devoted more time to such passions as sailing and playing the harpsichord. He broadcast his last "Firing Line" in the year 2000.