I’m almost as torn up about him dying as I am
ahhh, who I am kidding I could give two shits about this ahole he was soooo great for this country. I mean who else was more instrumental in picking up this country by it’s boot straps? And getting this country to be the beloved country it has become globally? What other guy had more influence in the greed and hypocrisy shared by our finest leaders…
It was great to hear the dude from the NY Times writing his biography say on NPR tonight that Buckley never talked politics he only wrote them. He hated talking politics and rarely discussed them with friends. He was a great friend to so many people. Uh whatever man…
That seemed like an odd comment, but then not really the more I thought it over. The guy didn’t like to discuss politics with his friends or others because he didn’t want to debate. He didn’t want to be challenged. He felt he was right, didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to discuss it aloud, would rather just write books and make his point that way without someone telling him after each sentence where he is wrong. What a pompous jerk….RIP. Bush, Boehner and McCain are singing his praises. I needn’t anymore to know what a great human and asset he was for this country.
“I am profoundly saddened to hear of the passing of William F. Buckley Jr., and offer my deepest condolences to the Buckley family,” Sen. John McCain said in a statement Wednesday. “With Bill’s passing, freedom has lost one of its greatest defenders … an American giant who shall be missed.”
HIV patients should be tattooed.
The United States was wrong to enter WWII.
On and on.
I know many people who follow politics and political theory incredibly closely, but choose not to engage every person they come into contact with, in a political debate.
It’s called tact.
Your post also betrays your total ignorance of the man’s work.
While you submit that “the guy didn’t like to discuss politics with his friends or others because he didn’t want to debate. He didn’t want to be challenged,” in fact, Buckley was one of the pioneers in providing political debate to the masses. His show “Firing Line” was the precursor to the plethora of programs you’ll find all over broadcast and cable television today.
Most importantly and perhaps most embarrassingly for you as an American liberal, Buckley’s debates with Chomsky and Vidal are some of the most articulate and intellectually rigorous debates ever on television. They are so epic in their breadth and scope, one can even find the grainy footage on YouTube.
Your writing, however, would indicate that you are more than likely not familiar with the works of Vidal and Chomsky.
Now, if I were to scribble a passage in crayon on the back of a Maxim magazine and place it ever so gently next to the Jergens in your bathroom, you’d be all the more lettered.
Leave the man alone, your partisanship reeks of the worst sort of idiocy and intellectual vapidness.
Whatever, George.
Buckley lost me (and I’d assume most of America too, if they actually knew) when I learned he was for Jim Crow and pro-McCarthy. There are plenty of his writings around to prove as much. Since this was at the beginning of his celebrity pundit/writing career and the base of political and social identity, I wouldn’t call him a ‘Great’ political mind. I’d call him a bigot and misguided.
So keep sticking up for him, but leave the piety and masturbation fantasies to yourself, please.
You’re right though about the political discourse on TV back then….its purpose was to inform, not to entertain as it is today.
….and Gore, Noam and eventually History owned him too….
“I mean who else was more instrumental in… getting this country to be the beloved country it has become globally?”
Lyndon Johnson.
blowing smoke, LBJ?
the American Worker, Education, and ingenuity, along with European & Japanese reconstruction laid the groundwork for that, not WFB.
VC, notice the section I quoted:
““I mean who else was more instrumental in… getting this country to be the beloved country it has become globally?”
Then think huge expansion of the Viet Nam War, napalm, torture and the tiger cages.
In tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. who I didn’t often agree with, but respected and loved
his sagacious intelligence , and flare for language. He passed away this day going the way I’d like to leave, with something to say, and a pen in hand. Wed February 27, 2008
The Politic and Poetic
I have loved and followed politics long enough to know
it’s construed by not just a few, as a seriously depressing scene
where personal hopes are dashed, as corporate profits grow
with the best dressed politicians pockets lined with lobby green.
To counter the seemingly relentless poison of politics
I have been blessed to be able to dream of other things,
and nurture my nature to see and speak in terms of poetics
as if love and beauty, have the power to make my heart sing.
It’s disheartening to indulge in daily disappointment and tragedy
while embarassed to be led by demigods with feet of clay,
who deal in excuse and apology as if it was the national currency
with such a hypocritical ease as if it was their natural way.
It takes an uncanny almost surreal degree of flexibility
to practice the tolerance that I believe is essential,
to feel painful moments without abandoning possibility
to deal with greed and ego, while promoting quality potential.
Stuck with leaders who stand strong for the wrong thing,
and their spineless compatriots who’ll stand for anything.
We have a government that’s fixed on fixing nothing
except fixing the system for the few, who get almost everything.
So grateful that my perception and compassion aren’t for sale
like the gift of a smile and an ideal, that’s priceless when real,
I can’t forsake love and truth, knowing their not a fairy tales
knowing I don’t always succeed, it’s only in not trying that I fail.
Ah, i gets it now….thx DG….
On the other hand: He was the first prominent conservative, I believe, to declare we had lost the War on Drugs and ought to look toward some form of legalization.
Yeah Al, but it wasn’t because legalizing drugs would make a better society, it was because then we’d have something else to tax , like cigarettes. Then the poor junkies could pay for the infrastructure that all of Buckley’s rich friends get to use free of charge.
Hey a limited legalizing of drugs is a-ok with me. Like Medical MJ, becuase I do not want to see people with cancer die as painfully as they do. Not becuase it would make a better society but becuase it would stop destroying the lives of college kids who want to try pot, causing pain for those with terminal disease or stigmatzing our future presdient. It was legal in the 1800’s and nobody wanted to toke up the way they are now that it is a forbidden fruit. In countries where it is legal it is typically a limited kind of thing but at least cancer and AIDS patients can get some relief without worrying about jail time for it.
I love maxim! My wife takes the crayons from me George because I eat them. So I’m left to post things about people that did nothing but further seperate two populations of this country.
but yeah, he was a swell writer
Are you eating crayons again DV? Please don’t. Bill was an a-hole. The only good thing he ever did was say pot should be legal.
What jason330 wrote at the top refers to the quote that remains as a scar on my soul. The exact quote is:
“Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals.”
St. Huckabee shares that sentiment. Imagine that!
Billy Buckley was a good boy, a normal boy, but then one fine day he got Bitch slapped by the Lord, bitch slapped down to the fiery pit of hell for his love of Satan. The Lord struck him down like a giant phallus entering his rectum and spooging love juice all over his innards. But we cannot worship the lord in that church of the priest of sin, we must build a giant chapel of crystal who is with me?……Dear St. Huckabee tone down the rhetoric.
Dear St. Huckabeast:
Does smack down by the lord means mandatory tattooing of homosexuals?
How about Quakers and Jews? don’t we deserve some punishment too?
Rebecca: Quite wrong, actually. He pointed out that we’d save a lot of money, and have a more free society, if we dismantled the police-state mentality behind the WoD. It is a standard argument for libertarians, but rare among mainstream conservatives. Taxing it would just be a happy byproduct.
VC wrote Buckley lost me (and I’d assume most of America too, if they actually knew) when I learned he was for Jim Crow and pro-McCarthy.
Those were some good times.
nemski,
remember those water guns wooooooo they were awesome!
Thanks Al, I’d forgotten that part.