Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Oh... Mailer would have punched Buckley's patrician lights out if that happened. It was the 1968 Democratic convention and Buckley was addressing the less heterosexual and less pugilistically inclined Gore Vidal.

Vidal called Buckley a "pro-crypto Nazi." (Everyone was a crypto-something in those days) Buckley's reponse to Vidal: "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddamn face, and you will stay plastered."

Posted by: Dr. X | February 28, 2008 10:38 AM

Ahcuah, thank you very much for the youtube link. You made my day.

Posted by: James Hanley | February 28, 2008 11:31 AM

YouTube has some really out-of-sync videos of that legendary "Now listen..." exchange, but
here is a watchable one, presumably cleaned up by A&E.

Posted by: cognitive dissident | February 28, 2008 11:39 AM

there is no one like Buckley on either side with any prominence anymore

My first thought was to respond "Glenn Greenwald, Digby, James Wolcott, Michael Bérubé. Shall I continue?" But then I re-read and noticed the words "with any prominence".

And that is a sad commentary indeed -- the voices are out there, but they are lost in the cacophony.

Posted by: xebecs | February 28, 2008 11:49 AM

Here's a little hint, from radical feminist author Mary Daly, that Buckley may not have been so far above today's right-wing hacks as some people think he was:

...Buckley attempted to discuss my book without having familiarized himself with its contents. Although he lacked the wit to cover his ignorance, he did display considerable skill in getting the last word just before each commercial break. However, after each "pause" I managed to come back with a refutation of his ill-logic. After the show, friends seated in the studio audience told me that they saw him pushing a button under his seat whenever he decided it was the opportune time for a "break." Although I could not see this, it did not seem improbable, since the commercial seemed invariably to immediately follow his punch lines. (New York, 1969)

From "Outercourse: The Be-Dazzling Voyage," by Mary Daly (Harper San Francisco, 1992)

Like Hitler, Rush, Coulter, and other professional cowards, he seems to have made himself look brilliant partly by rigging the rules on his own show.

Posted by: Raging Bee | February 28, 2008 12:14 PM

Buckley may have used tricks like calling for a commercial break, but he was an extraordinarily skillful debater. The only person I ever saw really stand up to him on Firing Line was the magnificent Bernadette Devlin.

Posted by: Bill Poser | February 28, 2008 1:14 PM

Buckley spoke at my college commencement, back in the dark days of Ronald Reagan.

All I remember of his speech, was that he joked that many people considered him a shithead, an appellation that he seemed to relish.

Something to be said for his intellectual honesty, I suppose.

Posted by: Mad Librarian | February 28, 2008 3:10 PM

Buckley was an evil hate-monger. His strained justifications of his 1960's pronouncements about Jim Crow were simply crude attempts to prettify his thoroughly conventional racism.

He was Ann Coulter's spiritual godfather, and the world is a better place with him gone.

Posted by: Tom Ames | February 28, 2008 4:52 PM

You have to respect his mad language skills. Whether or not he was pressing a button under his seat is irrelevant--he wrote kickass prose, and I wrote him a eulogy today because I think he deserves to be remembered for his sesquipedalian superpowers.

Posted by: Casey | February 28, 2008 6:19 PM

I only got interested in politics in the 1980s, and National Review was THE magazine to read at the time (New Republic was pretty good , but really slid in the '90s). Buckley wrote beautiful prose with a razor wit; even if you disagreed (and I mostly did) it was a pleasure to read, and the magazine offered a smorgasbord of opinions at the time, far different from the magazine today.

What Buckley preached was that conservatism was not an ideology, it was a philosophic position that change must be proven, not accepted for its own sake. While I apply this much less frequently than he, it remains a valuable caution. He will be missed, for his wit, his wisdom, and not least his candor in admitting the many mistakes he committed. Ave atque vale, indeed.

Posted by: kehrsam | February 28, 2008 7:10 PM

Here, here Ed. God (I'm an atheist but have no problem evoking the term in this situation) grace that man in death. I too don't agree with him, but at least he had a modicum of class. Hannity, Worldnutdaily and Rush are utterly disgusting by any measure of the mind.

Posted by: hominuslupus | February 28, 2008 11:24 PM

Make sure thay put a stake through his heart, then cut his head off, BEFORE nuking his funeral from space. It's the only way to be sure... ;) DJ

Posted by: DingoJack | February 29, 2008 12:23 AM

Onkel Bob said he agreed with the NY Times comment that said: "Fought to dismantle social security, welfare and anything else that might help the poor."

These are not fair accusations. Buckley was against the War on Drugs, which has put more poor people (and disproportionately black, an interesting consideration for the above posters who called him "racist") in prison than any other program. He gained nothing by saying this and was actually ostracized from the movement he started for doing so. More recently, he opposed the Iraq War and said that GW Bush would have been recalled if America had a parliamentary system. He was not the type to keep his mouth shut and toe the line if he disagreed with something.

Secondly, any conservative worth his or her salt would remind everyone that it's arguable whether or not the poor are helped by Social Security and welfare, which the poor largely pay for through the inflation tax and other regressive taxes (inflation caused after the government prints money to pay for these programs, which hits the poor while Wall Street takes the extra money. In sum, the poor people get hit with higher prices for everything much quicker than the rich.) You have to live to be very old to make back what you put into Social Security over the years, when adjusted for inflation and when accounting for the fact that poor people usually have lower-paying jobs. There are longer and better arguments, but these are some starter ones.

Finally, even if he did have a magic eject button under his seat, the reason that Buckley was famous was not for his television appearances but for the eloquent way in which he defended his ideas in the written word.

Posted by: Libertarian Girl | March 3, 2008 2:46 PM