Login HereI grew up watching Buckley, and I have to admit there was something appealing about how strongly he cut against the grain of conventional political wisdom of the time. He spoke and argued well and was extremely charismatic, which often masked how impoverished his ideology was.
I remember (hazily) the arguments between Buckley and Gore Vidal on television during the 68 convention, and how charged and relevant they seemed. Watching the intellectually shiftless hackery of Tim Russert and Brian Williams last night I thought "Jesus, have we become this stupid?"
And FWIW, although he didn't write it he popularized the phrase "immanentize the eschaton," so condolences to Duncan.
Update: Rick Perlstein:
My friend just passed away at the age of 82. He was a good and decent man. He knew exactly what my politics were about--he knew I was an implacable ideological adversary--yet he offered his friendship to me nonetheless. He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire.
The whole piece is quite moving.
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Hey, Jane!
I coulda been first.
It is sad to see him go because he is one of the last of a dying breed: Conservatives who use their brain and reason.
Great clip Jane.
Word is he keeled over on his desk. Fitting I guess. KLo is in a tizzy.
Have we become this stupid?
I just watched the Russert “highlights” and the answer I am afraid is yes.
Was it a coincidink that we were talking about him in the last thread?
The ultimate end of an era. Conservatives are left with no one to endow their evil credo with an intellectual patina. Can you say ‘ideologically bankrupt?’ I knew you could.
Just like Falwell
Thanks Jane.
bad juju
Duh, sorry I just got back from swimming and didn’t read!
“…which often masked how impoverished his ideology was.”
Perfectly said, Jane. Oh, you do have a way with words.
Well, Russert has certainly become this stupid. Although, now that I think about it, it’s not really stupidity, it’s maliciousness in the service of evil, as personified by say, Bush, Cheney, et al.
I was always ambivalent about WFB. I got to meet him twice. I also sort of made him angry, though he took it rather well, introducing him during a Seattle radio interview on KRAB back in 1972, as “America’s Master Debater.” He was in Seattle to debate U of W Prof Giovanni Costigan, Buckley taking the position that recognizing “Red” China would be a disaster.
His spy novels were my favorite books by him. Every time I hear the beginning of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, I think of him….
If anyone passes his torch to Kristol or Goldber, I’m gonna ralph.
The money quote from downstairs:
ET,
It looks like it may be sunset time for Sen. Toobz.
That Dr Kirk!
jane, thanks for the buckley thread………
i just sent these comments from a few threads ago to my friend jane who is inundated with work at the epa today…….whose farmdog mix is named buckley……for william f…….here’s what she wrote to me this am when i told her in an email that he died…….
”Ohhh, he was so eloquent… such verbal elan.”
=======
what follows is what i sent to her in an email—thanks to those who wrote them, i really liked them.
they were buckley-worthy.
=======
npr just said his son christopher found him at his writing desk……….poetic ending for a poetic man.
i thought these comments would pep you up a little……
d
BobbyG February 27th, 2008 at 8:21 am
54
In response to sangemon @ 53
He exhaled polysyllabically one last time.
Reply
biffdiggerence February 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am
56
In response to BobbyG @ 54
I’ll never forget . . .
dehobgoblinization
Hugh February 27th, 2008 at 8:33 am
63
In response to BobbyG @ 54
He exhaled polysyllabically one last time.
The nation’s thesauruses have gone into mourning.
BTW IIRC Buckley came out against the Iraq war before Hillary Clinton.
Reply
I was in the Museum of Radio & TV a while ago & ran across a half-hour (hour?) debate between Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith–I think it was the Cavett show, probably the early ’70s. What a pair of brilliant, polished intellects, what a lesson in the use of language in spirited debate! That they related to each other with immense respect and a twinkle in the eye made it all the more watchable–none of the mindless killer instinct Russert and the crackpot right-wingers regard as their foundation. I never cared for Buckley’s politics, obviously, but with his (and Galbraith’s) passing we’ve lost a whole approach to being an intellectual in public life. We lose Galbraith, we get Tom Friedman. We lose Buckley, we get Russert. What a shame.
Incidentally, I know the Paley Media Center in NYC has the clip; possibly the LA branch does too. YouTube, alas, does not.
Sorry folks, I can’t get all misty eyed on this one. He was bad news wrapped up in big words. Oratorical “lipstick” on the pig that is the callous, heartless Republican machine.
So who will now becomes the archetype of “Pompous Ass”
I admired his writing, speaking and his respect for civil discourse. A sailor, his book “Atlantic High” sparked a long (and expensive)fascination with sail.
bad juju for him.
Forgive my lack of empathy.
OT: I hereby challenge Olbermann to post his colleague Russert as “worst person.” ;-)
Jane I remember Vidal and Buckley’s debates hazily, but with sadness at the thought the media megacorps long ago squeezed intellect off our public airwaves - too dangerous for the corporatists who squat atop our electronic commons.
I do offer condolences to Buckley’s family and loved ones on their loss - and I hope his passing was an easy one.
Despite the fact he was a willing tool and mouthpiece of the same people and the same movement - the radical anti-government pro-corporate revolutionaries known as American Conservatism - who by destroying the public sector, have ensured millions of Americans will suffer in agony through the deprivation Buckley and his ownwers have thrust upon them - and us.
The same people who have ensured one-third of our people have no meaningful access to health care, and another third have care so poor that they can expect to suffer and die in misery….the opposite of the easy passing I wish for Mr. Buckley.
Unlike Kristol, Buchanan, and ORanty, Buckley was erudite and articulate.
Like them, he used whatever gifts he had to support and conceal policies that led to endless wars of aggression, celebration of racial hatred, demolishing our schools, despoiling our lands, poisoning our children, and destroying our communities.
May the evil he abetted and supported be rembered before his rhetorical skills - he put those skills in the service of hatred and tyranny.
A truly vile man, with a despicable career, who willingly, cynically chose to work for the destruction of America’s public life and for those who labor - and have in large part succeded - to overthrow our Constitutional system.
William Buckley, rot in hell. May you suffer eternal torment until your life work - the destruction of our commons and the overthrow of our Constitution and Republic - is undone.
May those who paid you, those who assisted you, and those who came after you in the same loathsome endeavors soon follow you in death and the torments of hell.
You deserve them, and they deserve you and your fate.
We have always deserved better - and you were smart enough to know it even as you twisted your gifts and intellect to deprive us of our birthrights and national potential.
William Buckley, rot in hell.
You got there forty years too late.
I hope Gore Vidal revels in outliving his nemesis. I know I do.
It is, but I’m not sure if Anchorage mayor Mark Begich is the solution. Alaska’s top muckraker, Ray Metcalfe, who is also in the Dem Primary, is claiming Begich is deep, deep in crooked real estate deals. In one of them, Begich seems to have taken several hundred parking spaces the city gets from the parking authority for $40 a space per month, turned them over to a business partner/friend, who leases them back to the city for $320 a space per month
William Buckley, Walter Lipman, Edward Sanford Martin as social commentators all pre-dated the corporate consolidation of the electronic media and they were members in their times of competing intellectual elites. Now we have Rush, Tim, Brian, Tom, Glen, and Bill and other newsreaders. George, David and Ann operate on their level.
Without any intellectual elites, we get the Bushes and the Clintons and they set the bar.
Buckley invented Lieberman.
Enough said.
When Mark Twain was discussing the death of someone he didn’t like he said “well, I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.”
The right is now rife with intellectual reprobates and slaggards of the Jonah Goldberg, Michael Savage and Katherine Jean Lopez sort who use magical thinking, emotional bullying and their inherent beliefs in moral superiority as blunt clubs.
Buckley was an old school elite with a sharp mind and a quick wit.
I’ll miss him as mush as I misseDavid Brudnoy, the intelligent and arrogant libertarian talk show host on WBZ in Boston.
Adversaries with minds.
-G
707
Thank you, Twain!
What my lack of empathy statement said@24
You have eloquently put in far better words
I don’t like to permit myself to go there because it comes out as rage.
Thanks Kirk Murphy
Wowza! And I thought I couldn’t stand the guy.
Amen, brother.
In High School, I subscribed to National Review, TransAction, and all of the news magazines.
In my Junior year, the logical fallacies and reactionary underpinnings of the Buckley world view became more and more apparent, and I finally broke with the GOP and came over to the bright side of the road after Tet.
I call on all of these fucking douchebags to elevate the discourse!
-G
There’s a lot to say about Buckley, some of it pretty bad (and Vidal has done that better than anyone), but like dugsdale @ 20, I remember being charmed a number of times by Buckley-Galbraith fencing matches — so hard to imagine anyone cultivating that kind of friendship across the divide these days, and with such élan.
And as Nora Ephron said of Buckley, he was right about the peanut butter. You gotta love a guy who can write an ode to real peanut butter.
William F. Buckley was a self-aware caricature of an East Coast conservative intellectual (yes, I know conservative intellectual is an oxymoron but there you are.) He was a great defender of old school Republicanism, and although his critiques of liberalism were often shallow and self-serving, his style of genteel bombast gave a certain patina of reason to conservative positions that more aggressive types like Newt Gingrich exploited and then quickly rendered irrelevant. I would like to think that Buckley was horrified by this turn of events, but I have never seen any evidence that he took responsibility for his part in them or acknowledged that they represented a lethal indictment of the brand of conservatism he espoused.
Buckley will be remembered above all for his style. He was a stickler about language but never brought that level of awareness and analysis to his own ideas. This is why most of us can remember his great droning voice but nothing that he said.
Makes me wonder how Byrd is doing. Anyone hear anything about his condition?
Condolences to the Buckley family.
Buckley was an evil imperialist, and oil baron. He was a CIA agent and involved in overthrowing various foreign governments to steal their oil. His whole family is evil as well.
Well, I liked William F. Buckley, but his intellectual progeny and their cousins have damn near ruined this country.
I remember that everything he said was wrong.
From the WaPo:
“WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Robert Byrd, the oldest member of the U.S. Senate and a fierce opponent of the Iraq war, was being treated in a hospital on Tuesday after falling in his home late on Monday, a spokesman for the senator said.
The 90-year-old Byrd complained of back pain while at work in the Senate on Tuesday, spokesman Jesse Jacobs said. After being examined by a Capitol physician, the West Virginia Democrat went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington for tests and observation, Jacobs said. He was expected to remain in the hospital overnight.”
By the way, John Warner’s in the hospital also for observation (heart problems).
I don’t think you gotta be alive to be no archetype!
Well, aside from that. *g*
Well goddamn!
thanks.
yeah well…. that saves me alookin’
Does anyone believe Buckley completely severed his ties to the CIA after his year of service in Mexico?
I can’t forgive Buckley for founding the Dartmouth Review — even though he had no ties to Dartmouth, he still funded them — and ushering in an extremely divisive time to Dartmouth. It also was the starting point for many fine upholders of today’s discourse — Dinesh D’Souza, Laura Ingraham, etc. Boo hiss. He may have been upstanding in his personal discourse, but he funded these guys to embark on a “politics of personal destruction” publicity campaign, which was painful and awful for many. I have NOTHING good to say about the Dartmouth Review, or those that wrote for it.
The National Review was and is full of ideological bullcrap.
The people who enjoy reading or contributing to that toxic soup of conservative b.s. have nothing to be proud of.
Buckley was the smiling face in front of an increadibly mean and cynical ideology.
What a crappy legacy to leave the world.
unremittingly boring, soporific.
I know it’s early to start drinking, but will anyone join me in a toast? Here’s to Buckley’s death ushering in the death of the Republican menace.
or I could go with living embodiment
Spiked tea OK?
Now that is worthy of a lexus-nexus!
Dinesh Deloser and Laura Ingraham, wowser, what a lame legacy.
-G
I’d say so as I’m not really drinking, just toasting.
my, aren’t we charitable today….
Buckley threatens to punch Noam Chomsky in the face.
4:20@10:24Am PCT
Googlr Results 1 - 10 of about 16,700 for pompus right wing jerk. (0.29 seconds)
Course their could be some duplication!
toasting
OT, but I just can’t take it anymore.
Why are we still screwing around with this e-mail story?
This should be real simple:
Waxman: Please submit the missing e-mails.
Fielding: We don’t have them, can’t find them, or whatever.
Waxman: Then we’re gonna start sending people to jail until somebody’s memory gets better.
I mean, come on! Enough already.
You should be living in Grytviken. Cheers!
Blue Texan wants us to know that Republican Fundraising Still Sucks, but I got a zed, so it’s all good.
From Booman this morning:
That might as well apply here too.
Like that little shit was going to punch anybody! With what a badminton
racquet?
Charity is one of the social virtues Buckley and those he fronted for have worked for decades to desroy in our national culture and public policy.
They have largely succeded in the latter and partly succeded in the former.
Though I offer real condolences to his family, and would feed one if they arrived at my door hungry, I offer his memory no charity whatsoever.
Buckley’s death provides an opportunity to look clearly at his evil life.
His victims will extend for generations - and they deserve the clearest possible record of those who willingly collaborated in creating their misery.
I will make the requisite observation that Generalissimo Francisco Franco along with William F. Buckley is still dead.
Whatever line of argument Buckley obscurely propounded, I never let myself forget that he was a fan of Joseph McCarthy, the House Unamarican Activities Committee and all the horrors of that era. Otherwise, I thought he and Gore Vidal were both pompous. I’m probably not smart enough to recognize genius when I see it, but I couldn’t in either case.
One of Buckley’s mannerisms was to repeatedly flick the end of his tongue through his lips. I always expected it to be forked.
Rick Perlstein’s feel-good piece on his yearning for the return of the type of civility those philosophical adversaries such Mr. Buckley offered is naive at best and at minimum obsolete. As we sit here and discuss the level of civility of our discourse with our adversaries, our adversaries are in more practical terms, busy implementing their destructive and criminal activity and against the will of its people as well as the rule of law. May Mr. Buckley and his, warped, and failed ideas rest in peace. As for his contemporary cadre of 18th century reptilian minded brethren, there is nothing they have to say that I neither care to hear nor want to discuss. They are proven liars and cheaters who are guilty of crimes against humanity and are causing our country irreparable damage. My only goal is removing them from power and once that occurs, to ensure they are held accountable for their criminal activity. Until that happens, I’d assume spit in their elitist faces.
At the least, Buckley made us think, and tasked us a bit.
His heirs - Rush, Newt, etc. - not so much.
In Buckley’s heyday, you could have intelligent conversations with conservatives.
Now - not so much.
Probably a direct correlation between that fall-off and America slouching towards Empire.
Don’t forget the great communicator.
Hey man, got yer post a while back. Every time I see Hal Holbrook I think of Cmdr. Bucher!
Right. He played him in the TV movie and did look quite a bit like him.
Grytviken
?
Forgive me, but I want to see the puppy pictures again, I have to go do battle in the real world of credit where I have none, I am done with the buckley, and would like to leave the house with animals in my head.
Here’s the Bohdi
And here he is all grown up
LOL - sage advice
You saved me 707
Gracias
It’s very sad when someone of William F. Buckley’s stature shakes off the shackles of this earth and moves on to a higher plane. That is, it’s very sad for those of us left here, but not for them necessarily. One of the few things I agreed with Buckley on was his feeling that drugs should be legalized. OTOH, I had a hard time becoming convinced that the most highly addictive of these drugs should be legalized, like coke and heroin. But better to legalize the drugs and relegate the addiction to the status of illness than to criminalize both the drugs and the users, who are clearly out of control.
Despite his conservative views, IIRC Buckley was against the war in Iraq. It seems to me, had he been advising Democrats as to how to handle the WH current residents, he would not have advised starting to put folks in jails. I bet he would have told us to stop funding the administration until they started recognizing and complying with the Constitutionally mandated checks and balances, Congressional subpoena powers, the rule of law, etc. Stop the flow of funds entirely. There are any number of ways they can do this. They can create bills that are so outrageously overblown that Rethugs cannot vote for them. They can insist on ”pay as you go” and raise taxes for every single funding bill. Stop the flow of funds! Period!
way late to this thread, but i found this moving (and surprising).
may we have more of it.
Oh somewhere wags are wagging,
And somewhere mots are bon,
And somewhere pundits lucid
(That ain’t you, Richard Cohen.)
And somewhere no one threatens
To punch Chomsky in the mouth.
But that somewhere isn’t heaven—
William Buckley’s somewhere south.
I love your poem, Ralphbon.
The last intellectual Republican commentator is now gone. Somewhere, my dad is shedding a tear.
Meanwhile, the movement WFB loved has become full of idiots more interested in demagoguery, sound bites and hate than actual governance and ideas.
I bet he died with his heart broken.
heh.
in addition to buckley’s debate with gore vidal, i think i remember watching a debate between buckley and chomsky. as i recall both were extremely entertaining. i should go look them up.
Let me just note, since I don’t comment here often, that Buckley’s ideas were still full of shit.
(Just in case anyone thought I’m a wingnut or something.)
:-)
See # 62 above
Crap…hoisted by my own double negative! I guess I should have written “someone’s threatening” instead of “no one threatens.”
You waited until nearly 11 a.m.?
Impressive …
I had the pleasure of seeing him speak during a rare appearance on the West Coast. He said a TV producer promised to send a plane with two right wings. He’s such an entertaining speaker and doesn’t talk down to the audience. He’s so bright yet so self effacing at times too.
Jane, I thought you might enjoy this quote:
Interesting, isn’t it? The concept of debating and parting as friends, still respectful of each other?
Goldwater noted with much disdain not so long ago the fanaticism of the new conservative. They don’t listen, they don’t compromise. They’re completely unreasonable, he said. “I know, I’ve dealt with them” (paraphrasing).
As amended, for posterity (in the absence of an edit button):
Oh somewhere wags are wagging,
And somewhere mots are bon,
And somewhere pundits lucid
(That ain’t you, Richard Cohen.)
And somewhere someone’s threatening
To punch Chomsky in the mouth.
But that somewhere isn’t heaven—
William Buckley’s somewhere south.
I bet Rush Limbaugh is on his program today telling his listeners that he was exactly like Buckley. Oh please! If he is!
Toasting… to Reformed Whores who oppose the wars they created, better luck next lifetime, you’ve made a mess.
thanks!
somewhere i think i have the whole thing (and the one with gore vidal too)… watching them might be a good way to mark his passing.
I would rather have an adversary like Buckley than that gasbag Limbaugh, that’s for sure. I’ll take debate over a shoutfest. JM2c
i hope it’s only my imagination… but it is my impression that we here at fdl have lately had less tolerance for disagreement, which makes it harder to debate and stay (or be) friends.
that was why i wished for more of it.
OT: you see this selise?
I think Reagan and Tip O’Neil modeled that pretty well and my experience in previous corporate lives was that we could have very aggressive conversations about content and process and then go out for dinner and be great friends.
This medium does not lend itself well to that at all so [edited by mod] >:-)>
no, i hadn’t - thanks!
but this morning, on c-span1 during breaks in the house coverage, they’ve been talking about it a bit - and using part of the holt quote in your hill article link.
makes me wonder why feingold has sad the opposite. but on this issue, as much as i like feingold - i’m going with holt…. since he’s the techie geek with the physics phd. maybe that’s the wrong way to go, and i’d love it if rush and russ would sit down together and hash it out.
On the birmingham church bombings (published just days afterwards):
”Let us gently say the fiend who set off the bomb does not have the
sympathy of the white population in the South; in fact, he set back
the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the
question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur —
of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro.
And let it be said that the convulsions that go on, and are bound to
continue, have resulted from revolutionary assaults on the status quo,
and a contempt for the law, which are traceable to the Supreme Court’s
manifest contempt for the settled traditions of Constitutional
practice. Certainly it now appears that Birmingham’s Negroes will
never be content so long as the white population is free to be free.”
I’m not weeping a tear for ol’ Bill.
Best William F. Buckley Firing Line was this one where Allen Ginsberg played and sung for the right wing rich kid.
**stands and applauds**
As much as I’d like to see the Neoconservativism die a fiery death, conservativism, in principle, is something that is needed. It’s a Yin/Yang thing, IMHO — without it, liberalism has nothing to relate to, to act against, and to be held up against as a better ideology.
The problem is that the Rush’s and Beck’s and Coulter’s of the world don’t get that. For them, their way is the only way, and any thought outside of theirs isn’t just bad, it is to be completely destroyed. There is no debate, discussion, and development of ideas. Just hate, anger, and more hate.
Granted, this isn’t to say that there was some magical time in American history where everyone agreed to disagree in a pleasant way. There wasn’t.
But I doubt anyone can deny that respect for differing opinions — even with some on our “side” — is a rare thing to find any more.
Sounds like wise words from a sharp mind to me :)
W the bloody K on NPR here PCT-When are we ever going to hear from the supposedly liberally controlled media anything that means anything.
selise @ 103
Goddamn we need some realistic pragmatic sanity.
I can only imagine the mixture of horror and disgust with which Buckley must have viewed the current crop of “conservative” pundits.
How nice the whole yin-yang thing. Now as soon as true conservatives take back their party from the Fascists, then it will be time for back-slapping and chit-chat.