The Buckley Family | Newsweek Books

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Posted By: JimProbst @ 05/11/2009 3:19:12 PM

I find it significant that the Editor of Newsweek finds this an "Important" book. Not entertaining, or well-written, or mildly enlightening, but Important. To me this seems to indicate a rather limited, parochial, and (in my opinion) inflated view of the value of the East Coast elite class. It does make me wonder about other editorial decisions he may have made. (On the other hand, I liked the recent Cat Stevens story.)

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Posted By: Mwalimu @ 05/07/2009 6:35:13 PM

MAY 7
"Dives didn???t go to hell because he was rich; Dives didn???t realize that his wealth was his opportunity. It was his opportunity to bridge the gulf that separated him from his brother, Lazarus. Dives went to hell because he passed by Lazarus every day and never really saw him. He went to hell because he allowed his brother to become invisible. Dives went to hell because he maximized the minimum and minimized the maximum. Indeed Dives went to hell because he sought to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty. "
This quote by Martin Luther King pretty well describes the life and attitude of William F. Buckley. For all the glitter and stardom, Buckley made a conscious attempt to ignore the Lazarus outside of his gated community of sycophants and admirers.
He opposed Civil Rights legislation. He applauded the brutal regime of Augusto Pinochet, even though Pinochet overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile. Even though the apartheid regime of South Africa brutally murdered Stephen Bantu Biko, a civil rights activist, Buckley found nothing wrong with making South Africa a port of call on one of his famous round-the-world tours on a personally-chartered gas-guzzling Concorde SST jet. (The fuel-inefficient Concorde eventually met its final demise on the runaways of Roissy-Charles DeGaulle airport in 1998.) Presumably, the South Africa gave all of the folks in Buckley's tour a ''white-is-right"high that lasted the rest of the trip.
Like the Bingley sisters in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, William F. Buckley felt "entitled" to think well of himself and meanly of everyone else.
The wreckage of Buckley's modern conservative movement is all round us. Billions of the world's population survive on less than $ 2 a day. According to an article in the current issue of Newsweek, the going wage rate in many parts of India - 25 cents a day - a driving young men into gangsterism. (The same applies in Mexico and Somalia.) We face a massive financial crisis in this country, caused by the laissez-faire attitude of Buckley economics. And at the time I am writing this, Los Angeles has 90 plus temperatures and a wildcat fire is burning large areas of Santa Barbara, just two symptoms of global warming. Unless we do something to stop the carbon emissions - there will be Buckley legacy to discuss because there will be no planet.
I can't help but think of Martin Luther King's quote once again, and I can't help wondering if Dante would have added a 10th ring to the Inferno just to accommodate Buckley and his hyper-rich, hyper-greedy friends.

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Posted By: YOUSOCRAZY @ 05/06/2009 1:27:35 PM

Bill Buckley has to have been the poster boy for the pompous elite intellectual world, the world that he lived in and spoke so "loftily" of has little bearing on the world that is the average Americans reality!
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  Posted By: Vigilance @ 05/06/2009 5:51:58 PM
  
  I disagree. Buckley wasn't always the most progressive guy out there, but he had principles he stood for, a culture and artistic sensibility he tried to promote, and a tradition of civility that he lived in.
  
  Modern neoconservativism as a movement has overturned any or all of these things in this decade, and it's suffering as a result.
  - Posted By: YOUSOCRAZY @ 05/07/2009 9:58:46 AM
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    Since you disagree that his life is something that the average American's reality is similar to, good for you and your weekend sailing around Hopes Sound, shopping for art in Soho, and busting the chauffeurs balls for not restocking the caviar, for me and the others like me who don't speak of my servants and Manhattan cocktail partys, we have but a nuevo riche life style and only wish to be like you and William F. Buckley(financially, but not physically or personality wise).
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      Posted By: bjsassy @ 05/07/2009 12:14:46 PM
      
      I did reluctantly admire William Buckley until I learned that he had left his illegitimate grandson out of his will. "I intentionally make no provision herein for said Jonathan, who for all purposes . . . shall be deemed to have predeceased me," Buckley's will says. Buckley's estate, worth tens of millions of dollars, was left to his only son, Christopher and Christopher's two older children. The boy, Jonathan, is only eight years-old. Apparently, he had the audacity to be born in the Buckley family without permission.
      
      Christopher Buckley agreed to pay $3000 a month for child support, but he refuses to have anything to do with his youngest child. Jonathan's mother is forbidden to have any direct contact with Christopher.
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    Posted By: bitterblogger @ 05/06/2009 10:57:07 PM
    
    Civil like when he called Gore Vidal a *** on the air and threatened him with assault? Oh yes, quite evolved.

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Posted By: rickuws @ 05/06/2009 6:49:23 PM

When will we hear the end of these nasty people?

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Posted By: rickuws @ 05/06/2009 6:48:38 PM

When will we hear the end of these nasty people?

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Posted By: bjsassy @ 05/06/2009 12:43:55 PM

Although Christopher Buckley is a small government conservative who believes in a balanced budget, he voted for Obama. He was so disappointed in President Bush for doubling the national debt and expanding the entitlement programs that he decided to turn away from the Republican Party and vote into office the most radical left president that this country has ever seen. He believed that Obama will have the intellect (after all, Obama wrote his own books) to realize that left wing politics will not "get us out of the pit that we???ve dug for ourselves." Christopher Buckley believes that raising taxes and huge government spending is the wrong approach. Yet, he voted for Barack Obama.

Does Christopher Buckley believe in the tooth fairy and Santa Claus?
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  Posted By: Vigilance @ 05/06/2009 5:49:45 PM
  
  Perhaps he just doesn't believe that the "conservativism" of today has much to do with the movement his father helped found decades ago? William Buckley himself, before he died, said that he thought conservativism had gone seriously astray in this decade.

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Posted By: sginnc @ 05/03/2009 8:31:54 AM

Upstairs/Downstairs/American style!
John Meacham reviewing Christopher Buckley.......wow
Have you ever considered how boring you folks are to those of us at the bottom of the stairs?
Write a letter or send an email to your pals and spare the rest of us.
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  Posted By: Berserker @ 05/06/2009 12:33:01 PM
  
  I envy your comfort level in life, the implied (I apologize if I am wrong) satisfaction that what you know and where you are is sufficient. I find myself cursed with the desire and interest to read, hear and experience how others life, thing, work and exist...I never know when I I will learn something that will improve the life I lead or explain, at least in part, one of my mysteries or unknowns. Congratulations.
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  Posted By: gillyrosh @ 05/06/2009 12:08:54 PM
  
  Nothing to add here. Well said.