RIP William F Buckley Jr

alfred: i admit i haven't heard much about WFB being associated with that crowd. i think there's a great deal to admire in the "old right" GOP - and there were plenty of isolationist progressive liberals, like charles beard - and i find it hard to see WFB's full-on support of the cold war as anything but a betrayal of that. admittedly, he wasn't alone, but i find it ridiculous to see people like wolcott try to distinguish him from "the right-wing lunatics who destroyed conservatism."

Like a lot of intellectuals on the left and right, he was infatuated with power and those who used it -- the same fallacy that Orwell, analyzing the writings of James Burnham, deplored. But Wolcott's responding to Buckley's manner; the man, by all accounts, didn't call you a traitor for disagreeing with him, and probably respected you all the more for it.

is no one going to decry ILX's satisfaction over the death of a certifiable asshole as ghoulish/inhuman/morbid/cruel etc? O THE HUMANITY

Eh, it takes a turn for the amusing when you contrast it with the death of, er...let's say Norman Mailer.

It's like when you compare the Castro v. Pinochet threads. One man's "brutal tyrant who ruled with an iron fist" becomes "[name of country] leader who dared to defy [name of powerful countries who wanted him ousted] and survive numerous attempts at overthrow finally calls it quits..."

http://www.alternet.org/story/57001

NYT obit headline: "Sesquipedalian Spark of Right"

So nice the haw-haw humor made the move to their new Blade Runner HQ.

"The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."

rec.music.beatles
Beatle Hater William F. Buckley Dead At 82
Messages 1 - 25 of 30

OK, I laughed at "crowned heads of anti-music," which is a spot-on Geirism.

WFB was a reactionary that elite liberals loved. The New York Times' multimedia tribute to him is not surprising, glossing over Buckley's less attractive stances in his long public career. But that was Buckley's true talent: making reprehensible opinions palatable to liberal tastes. He was much smoother than Ann Coulter, but not that different in ideological outlook. Coulter crashes into rooms, yelling, spitting bile in all directions. WFB slid in almost silently, his bouncing eyebrows the sole evidence of his presence -- until he spoke, that is -- and even then, bullshit oozed from his mouth in polysyllabic strips, with liberals like John Kenneth Galbraith and Murray Kempton eagerly lapping up his crap.

For all of Buckley's social charms, augmented by his harpsichord playing, let's recall that he and his money-losing magazine National Review opposed civil rights for African-Americans while backing white Southern statist repression in the 1950s and early '60s. Buckley himself openly questioned the logic of giving blacks the vote at all, hinting that "chaos" might ensue if the darker hordes voted in a bloc.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2008/02/socked-in-god-damned-face.html

This bears repeating.

William F. Buckley was, in large measure, the architect of the modern conservative movement.

Have some quiet time and think on what that means.

I mean, Morbs is dead on this time, you guys. The man was a fucking horror show.

but he dressed so well

THIS time?

WFB was a reactionary that elite liberals loved.

i can't read any more

elite-lib wannabe!

purely from a historical perspective writing him off as the thinking man's ann coulter is nonsense

of course he was an asshole, obv

THIS time?

Right, as opposed to having a perfectly avoidable conniption.

Speaking of which, where can I find video of Buckley arguing with Carl Sagan about nuclear proliferation? Apparently that one's a corker.

no, but there are three thousand youtube copies of vidal telling him to shut up

deej, Perrin didn't remotely suggest Coulter was as large a "historical" figure as WFB, what he's saying is that beneath the WASP Yalie sheen his ideas are just as clownish and barren.

Lotsa Chomsky on youtube, too. It's good television, you gotta give it that.

i dont really agree xp

Andrew Sullivan posted WFB's letter to Marvin Liebman, who came out to him:

"I honor your decision to raise publicly the points you raise ... but you too must realize what are the implications of what you ask. Namely, that the Judaeo-Christian tradition, which is aligned with, no less, one way of life, become indifferent to another way of life ...

National Review will not be scarred by thoughtless gay bashing, let alone be animated by such practices ... You are absolutely correct in saying that gays should be welcome as partners in efforts to mint sound public policies; not correct, in my judgment, in concluding that such a partnership presupposes the repeal of convictions that are more, much more, than mere accretions of bigotry. You remain, always, my dear friend, and my brother in combat."

"mere accretions of bigotry" – ugh.

Hitchens and Buckley, 1998, speaking on the events of 1968.

Telling exchange:

ROBINSON Well, Bill, you were . . . as you read the kids who were in the street protesting, how much of it was relatively sophisticated ideology? They weren't just rejecting the strait-laced lives of their parents, but their whole notion, their whole Cold War notion, that Communism was bad, we were good. And how much of it was just naivete, romanticization of the commies, and so on?

BUCKLEY Well, you've asked the hard questions. The fact is that there was kind of a listlessness in the sixties, and that listlessness called for a kind of masturbatory relief. People wanted to find if they could go ahead and get their kicks in some way that they hadn't been getting them, and the more so if they could wed them to some ideal. In fact, what it was was primarily self-concern and an attempt to cast a noble perspective on what it is that you were up to.

ROBINSON You were engaged in narcissism, Christopher?

HITCHINS I think I'll have to quarrel, literally as well as metaphorically, with Mr. Buckley's characterization of it as masturbatory. Actually, it was quite celebrated for going the distance. Perhaps one of the great things about it was that it was the first generation--or perhaps one of the last great things about it, but at any rate one of the true things about it--one of the first generations to take the separation of sex and procreation for granted, which I think led to a great deal of jealousy, incidentally, not to say envy among preceding generations.

he sailed his luxury sailboat into international waters and smoked some marijuana

^^pussy

yeah the chomsky v. buckley shit on youtube is FIRE, you can see the panic in his eyes when he realizes he's in a corner. THE corner.

FIRE is probably the last thing i would call that debate

chomsky vs. buckley shit on youtube is AMBIEN

it's just stimulating to the neurons is what i mean

http://www.emeraldrose.com/FireHeadCover.jpg

I listened to that clip more than watched it, and tell me if I'm crazy, but can't you just see Buckley as the voice of Shere Khan from The Jungle Book?

Alfred asked -- The New Republic story about the cruise.

chomsky v. buckley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYlMEVTa-PI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9Samvw6Z08

should i assume tracer's last post just put everyone to sleep

i actually think it's riveting watching buckley try every trick in his book and still come up so woefully short! these videos could be called "portrait of a drowning man"

that interview is on the DVD of Manufacturing Consent

I guess Tracer has killfiled me. Interesting.

whoops sorry dude

NY Times brings the lolz with Carter-on-left; then a cool gravedance from Veedle:

Over 33 years, the list of guests on “Firing Line” was impressive and very much bipartisan: Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Clare Boothe Luce and Henry A. Kissinger on the right. Muhammad Ali, the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Jimmy Carter and William M. Kunstler on the left. There were also, of course, people who, by dint of political or personal conviction, would not appear on “Firing Line.”

“I was never on his show,” Gore Vidal, with whom Mr. Buckley had a famous feud, said on Thursday. “I don’t like fascism much.”

He added: “I was one of the first people he asked. And, of course, I refused to be on it. And, of course, he lied about it afterward.”

haha Gore's always good for teh lolz

editor: "Let's pick a white leftist besides Kunstler... Any Democratic president will do..."

i am reminded of how sad i'll be when gore vidal dies

R.I.P Bill, a man of integrity and style, and one of the last great American thinkers. Maybe it's a blesisng he won't be around to see the next eight years.

It already is.

Slate re-linked his email dialogue with Kinsley from a while back. When he types years, he employs the old-school typewriter quirk of using a lowercase L for the one, as in l964. (The surprise was that Slate's default font is such that I didn't even notice the first few times.)

if i started doing that would it be like when dudes wear fedoras

n_n

Alex Cockburn:

When I first came to America in 1972 I was astonished to find that the conservative cold warrior William Buckley had a television channel paid for out of public funds and reserved for his exclusive use. This was PBS, which alternated Buckley's show with "Wall St Week". In an effort at balance PBS offered the left's point of view in Sesame Street. Buckley's syndicated column was also featured in Dolly Schiff's New York Post. I found him mostly unwatchable and unreadable, being 97 per cent predictable and disgusting in all his views, with a style intolerably loaded with affectation -- fake English urbanity and pompous usage. He was the sort of writer who could never use the word "punishment" without sticking "condign" in front of it, the better to flaunt his stylistic credentials.

His staple was straight cold-war paeans to the unfettered glories of capital. It was all aimed at college-age conservatives. I doubt the rubes could endure him. Who would, when the alterative was Jimmy Swaggart in full spate?

One of many such stories but this one's a reasonably in-depth interview with Christopher B. about the memoir.

allen ginsberg's appearance on the firing line is some kind of something

kerouac's is really sad

^

I second or third or whatever wanting to see that Sagan debate.

Although it is a cliche to point it out, Wm. F. Buckley was precisely the kind of man who would have crucified Christ 100 times out of 100.

Not only crucified him, he would have gone out of his way to ensure it and chortled at the thought of him nailed to a cross under a scorching sun, as he drank some nicely chilled wine on a veranda with a pleasant view. If some urbane company were present, he no doubt would have passed off some witty conversation on the subject, leaving them all congratulating themselves on their shared sophistication. iow, a shitheel with polished manners.