Letters to the Editor
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William F. Buckley Jr.: Pure Snob Appeal
The first time Buckley's name registered was at a VN anti-war rally in New York at Hunter College. Congressman Ed Koch was on the stage and Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith among others.
Buckley was in the audience with a legal pad and his foot partway up on the stage. He heckled the speakers through most of the evening and made himself very annoying, but they seemed to know him--and didn't kick him out.
I later found his views reprehensible--unable to imagine they were the beginning of the end of the politics of my generation. (Boy did he teach us a lesson or ten.) He reminded me of a snake when he spoke using his tongue to lash his "guests" on his TV show. He liked the ones he could leave a little spit on more than the ones he couldn't.
The last time I saw him he was on Charley Rose saying medicare should be abolished. I played it over a few times to make sure I actually heard it. He was convinced Hillary was going to win.
I had the feeling his views had more meaning in justifying his position as an intellectual in his class than they did with anything else. I don't think any figure in his lifetime matched him for pure snob appeal. He reveled in it with each sinister-elongated dissembling vowel.
Go gently in that good night, Mr. Buckley, and may your anal retentive ideas die with you. (I know they won't but it sounds like just the right lopsided tribute.)