RIP William F. Buckley

[tugmoose]

At the risk of him not being a big enough celebrity to have a thread . . .

 

 

William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82

By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer

33 minutes ago

NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.

 

His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.

 

Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, transoceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.

 

Yet on the platform, he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.

 

"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."

 

After hearing the news, President Bush remembered Buckley as one of America's finest writers and thinkers.

 

"He influenced a lot of people, including me," Bush said in the Oval Office. "He captured the imagination of a lot of people."

 

Bush said he talked with Buckley's son, Christopher, on the phone to express condolences. "Christopher said his dad died at his desk," Bush said. "He said his dad died a peaceful death."

 

Buckley had for years been withdrawing from public life, starting in 1990 when he stepped down as top editor of the National Review. In December 1999, he closed down "Firing Line" after a 23-year run of guests ranging from Richard Nixon to Allen Ginsberg. "You've got to end sometime and I'd just as soon not die onstage," he told the audience.

 

"For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television," fellow conservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said at the time the show ended. "He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."

 

Fifty years earlier, few could have imagined such a triumph. Conservatives had been marginalized by a generation of discredited stands

[Good Old Neon]

I was actually quite saddened upon hearing this news.

 

Though I disagreed with him on nearly every issue, I respect William

[tugmoose]

As much as I despise the pro wrestling that passes for discourse these days, I'm not sure how long I would have hung around with

.

[Good Old Neon]

There

[Beltmann]

I was actually quite saddened upon hearing this news.

 

Though I disagreed with him on nearly every issue, I respect William

[Good Old Neon]

Same here. One of my political-reading rituals has been to read Ann Coulter, and then immediately read Buckley to help me calm down; he was a reminder that not all conservatives resort to, nor approve of, the hateful right-wing rhetoric that dominates in the mainstream press. Even though I often disagreed with him, I always appreciated his fair-minded decency and erudition. I will miss him.

 

As always - well said, Eric.

[TheMaker]

Yes, he was erudite, yes, he had an agile mind and yes, it's also true that he was a bully who was wrong on nearly every issue. I always found him insufferable and I won't miss him. I'm sure his passing was tragic for those who knew him, though.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

The National Review defended the Vietnam War, opposed civil rights legislation and once declared that "the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail." Buckley also had little use for the music of the counterculture, once calling the Beatles "so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."

Yeah, I personally think the world is just a little bit better without him.

Buddy Miles I'll mourn, but not Bill Buckley.

[JUDE]

... who was wrong on nearly every issue. ...

 

In your opinion of course.

[ikol]

[quote name='JUDE

[Beltmann]

I enjoyed reading Bill Curry's thoughts about Buckley. An excerpt:

 

Off camera he was witty and articulate and also gracious and warm. A couple of years after the show went off the air I was running for Governor of Connecticut and bumped into him. He put his hand gently on my arm and said, softly, "I will vote against you with the deepest affection."

 

Buckley evolved over time from one who insisted the constitution forbade us from ending segregation, to one who supported civil rights laws and a national holiday for Martin Luther King.

But the underlying tenets of his thought, grounded in his Roman Catholicism and equally fervent beliefs in free republics and free markets, remained consistent.

 

It didn't always keep him close to the leaders of his party or of the movement he had led. On the National Review website, Buckley identified himself as a "libertarian conservative," a designation that separated him, ever so slightly, from the excesses of his crowd.

 

He saw Viet Nam as a mistake and parted company with Bush over Iraq. He sailed to international waters to try marijuana before calling for legalization. His lovely book Nearer My God reveals a real spirituality, as opposed to the hateful, hypocritical swill peddled as religion by his party. Sam Tanenhaus, author of a much anticipated biography, says Buckley couldn't bear Ann Coulter.

[Good Old Neon]

I enjoyed reading Bill Curry's thoughts about Buckley. An excerpt:

 

That

[Guest Jules]

Yes, he was erudite, yes, he had an agile mind and yes, it's also true that he was a bully who was wrong I disagreed with on nearly every issue.

fixed