William F. Buckley, Jr. - RIP
Feb. 27th, 2008 07:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpFrom time to time over the years, I've run into diatribes critical of Bill Buckley, and it has always seemed to me that, the more feverish and scathing the criticism, the more it would sound as if the writer had actually never read anything Buckley wrote, and that their only knowledge of this highbrow, well-spoken conservative had been gleaned from the side of a cereal box.
I never met Buckley or saw him in person, but I did have the pleasure of corresponding with him brefly through an email system run by MCI back in the '80s. How, exactly, that correspondence came about I don't recall, but I believe it had to do with something he had written in early 1989 about the Russian term for dog-and-pony show, показуха (pokazukha).
In addition to whatever it was I said about that subject, I suppose I must've shoehorned in an article query by mentioning that I was a fairly regular writer for computer magazines and that I had written an opinion piece that might be the kind of thing his journal, National Review, would be interested in publishing.
My screed was a blast directed toward some environmental wingnuts who had come out publicly to denounce the possibility of desktop fusion power sources, the prospect of which had briefly hit the public's consciousness as a result of an announcement - premature as it turned out - that a pair of scientists by the name of Pons and Fleischmann had demonstrated a phenomenon called "cold fusion." I was not amused by the claim that making clean, non-polluting energy sources widely available to people in the developing world was an an invitation to environmental disaster.
Buckley's reply was pretty conversational and brief, the kind of thing you'd expect someone to compose while waiting for a plane, or something. (I seem to recall WFB used a Model 100 at the time.) In fact, some years ago, I ran across a printout of that email, which was part of a dump of various notes from my NEC 8201 (basically OEMed from the same source as the Model 100), and there, sandwiched in between a trip report for a boiler expert system job and a BASIC program listing, was the email, whose last line read:
Each payment check was accompanied by an index-card-sized memo imprinted with the name and address of the magazine, with a short personal note from "WFB" (which, I was to later learn, was the way he signed such notes). "A fine effort," read one card. "Nice job," said the other.
My old man thought very highly of Buckley, subscribed to the magazine, and watched Buckley's Firing Line television show on a regular basis. In fact, my first real introduction to WFB came while watching him discuss capital punishment on his show with none other than comedian Steve Allen. I was impressed with Buckley's style; that he could disagree without being disagreeable. I started to read the magazine, and read a number of his books and columns but never found myself in much agreement with conservatives on social issues.
Buckley's passing will, I think leave a void that really needs to be filled, because too many of the voices on the right, as on the left, seem to have their sights set on that much-abused quantity, the lowest common denominator.
Cheers...
I never met Buckley or saw him in person, but I did have the pleasure of corresponding with him brefly through an email system run by MCI back in the '80s. How, exactly, that correspondence came about I don't recall, but I believe it had to do with something he had written in early 1989 about the Russian term for dog-and-pony show, показуха (pokazukha).
In addition to whatever it was I said about that subject, I suppose I must've shoehorned in an article query by mentioning that I was a fairly regular writer for computer magazines and that I had written an opinion piece that might be the kind of thing his journal, National Review, would be interested in publishing.
My screed was a blast directed toward some environmental wingnuts who had come out publicly to denounce the possibility of desktop fusion power sources, the prospect of which had briefly hit the public's consciousness as a result of an announcement - premature as it turned out - that a pair of scientists by the name of Pons and Fleischmann had demonstrated a phenomenon called "cold fusion." I was not amused by the claim that making clean, non-polluting energy sources widely available to people in the developing world was an an invitation to environmental disaster.
Buckley's reply was pretty conversational and brief, the kind of thing you'd expect someone to compose while waiting for a plane, or something. (I seem to recall WFB used a Model 100 at the time.) In fact, some years ago, I ran across a printout of that email, which was part of a dump of various notes from my NEC 8201 (basically OEMed from the same source as the Model 100), and there, sandwiched in between a trip report for a boiler expert system job and a BASIC program listing, was the email, whose last line read:
Send your piece to John O'Sullivan and note on it that although I haven't seen it I encouraged you to do so.Now, for all I knew, Buckely's suggestion may have been a nice way to send a coded message to O'Sullivan to immediately deposit whatever I sent in the trash, but the response I got was positive, and within a few months, I had been asked to write a couple of book reviews, both of which were accepted and published.
Each payment check was accompanied by an index-card-sized memo imprinted with the name and address of the magazine, with a short personal note from "WFB" (which, I was to later learn, was the way he signed such notes). "A fine effort," read one card. "Nice job," said the other.
My old man thought very highly of Buckley, subscribed to the magazine, and watched Buckley's Firing Line television show on a regular basis. In fact, my first real introduction to WFB came while watching him discuss capital punishment on his show with none other than comedian Steve Allen. I was impressed with Buckley's style; that he could disagree without being disagreeable. I started to read the magazine, and read a number of his books and columns but never found myself in much agreement with conservatives on social issues.
Buckley's passing will, I think leave a void that really needs to be filled, because too many of the voices on the right, as on the left, seem to have their sights set on that much-abused quantity, the lowest common denominator.
Cheers...
