[lbo-talk] WFB, again

Jerry Monaco monacojerry at gmail.com
Fri Feb 29 15:10:48 PST 2008


Buckley was racist, sexist, homophobic, a militarist, and extremely anti-worker. He was insulted by anyone who questioned privilege. As far a I know he never apologized for supporting segregation, or for in fact believing that Jim Crow was a good thing in his youth. In short he was a model intellectual. Why would anyone admire him at all? He was occasionally amusing and if he could have done stand up on the page the way that Christopher does, at least I would say he earned his living.

Questions: Why should anyone on the left pretend he was anything but a bad influence on U.S. intellectual culture? Why should anyone admire him in any way whatsoever? He was also bad for intellectual Catholicism.

P.S. Buckey's spy novels were the worse of the genre and I have read them all. I am glutton for spy novels.

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 1:30 PM, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:


> Well when we gush on about how suave and civil someone was in life then
> it should take more some time to find multiple examples of them
> threatening to "smash peoples god damned face in" shouldn't it? We're
> not talking about an isolated incident.
>
> Going on about how civil and smooth WFB was primarily serves to
> demonstrate what class one most strongly identifies with.
> Only the crass (lower classes) speak ill of someone so articulate
> irrespective of how vile the opinions they elucidated may be.
> Fuck that.
> Dennis P's blog had Buckley summed up nicely in my opinion.
> It's hard to imagine having read WFB and not forming a negative opinion.
>
> John Thornton
>
>
>
>
> Chris Doss wrote:
> > I don't have any opinion about Buckley, but do people
> > just lose self-control sometimes.
> >
> > --- "B." <docile_body at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Are we talking about the same William F. Buckley
> >> that
> >> told Chomsky on air he'd "punch [him] in the god
> >> damn
> >> face"? That civil guy?
> >>
> >> Or was it just -- a joke. The kind of joke that is
> >> just kidding -- but not really.
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>

-- Jerry Monaco's Philosophy, Politics, Culture Weblog is Shandean Postscripts to Politics, Philosophy, and Culture http://monacojerry.livejournal.com/

His fiction, poetry, weblog is Hopeful Monsters: Fiction, Poetry, Memories http://www.livejournal.com/users/jerrymonaco/

Notes, Quotes, Images - From some of my reading and browsing http://www.livejournal.com/community/jerry_quotes/



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