The Inconclusive Mr. Buckley
Added 2024-05-05 14:21:16 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam gab about "The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," a new PBS documentary on William F. Buckley Jr., which features Matt Sitman (!) as a talking head — along with a rogue's gallery of KYE friends and former guests: Perlstein, Tanenhaus, Tait, Gage, Burns, the whole gang... What do we make of the doc? Is it a whitewash? Is it too credulous about the conservative movement? Does it "get" Buckley, the man? (Does anyone?) And what does Buckley have to do with Donald Trump? This was a lot of fun. Good ol' KYE classico.
Sources Cited:
Barak Goodman, "The Incomparable Mr. Buckley," PBS (2024)
Rick Perlstein, "An Implausible Mr. Buckley," American Prospect, April 17, 2024.
Alexander Chee, "Mr. and Mrs. B," Apology Magazine, Jan 1, 2014.
Ross Douthat, "'We're On Our Way Home Now, Duckie!'" Atlantic, Feb 2008
Nicholas Buccola, "The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America," Princeton U Press, Oct 2019.
Sam Adler-Bell, "The Conservative and the Murderer," New Republic, March 7, 2022
Previously on KYE:
Buckley vs. Vidal (2020)
Buckley for Mayor (w/ Sam Tanenhaus) (2021)
The Conservative and the Convict (w/ Sarah Weinman) (2022)
In Search of Anti-Semitism (w/ John Ganz) (2023)
Comments
Yes, his lack of graduate training shows through.
Doug Griffith
2024-08-03 14:51:50 +0000 UTCSpeaking of Buckley threatening Vidal, eight months later, Buckley threatened Chomsky on Firing Line (at 9:20): https://youtu.be/9DvmLMUfGss
JimJim5122
2024-07-04 20:16:56 +0000 UTCThe recent Sylvia Plath biography, Red Comet, says she was one of the Buckley’s house cleaner when she was in high school, when William F. would’ve been in high school or college. She was neighbors with the family, friends with one of the siblings. Just an interesting crossing of intellectual paths.
Caitlin
2024-06-12 16:47:57 +0000 UTCI watched it on Roku> PBS app> American Masters series. You may have to register. They would like you to contribute but I was able to watch it and the Moynihan episode without any recent contributions.
seaward
2024-05-19 12:57:04 +0000 UTCthe Bozell line has zagged a bit since the patriarch stormed an abortion clinic some decades back..
Where there’s a Wills there’s a Way
2024-05-18 20:44:53 +0000 UTCBuckley was a modern Voltaire, both known for using others’ controversial ideas in their own brilliant performances. Neither one wrote a magnum intellectual opus, that wasn’t what they were about.
Mark K
2024-05-17 19:51:09 +0000 UTCI’ve been looking around to find how to watch this but can’t see it available anywhere. It’s not listed on their On Demand service or even rentable anywhere I could find. Anyone know where I might be able to watch it?
Shane Burley
2024-05-17 00:13:23 +0000 UTCDear KYE, are there any plans to cover the Marty Peretz memoir? There’s a great review in The Nation, but I think you’d offer excellent additional insights. (Apologies if this has already been discussed on Twitter or elsewhere.)
Aaron Deveson
2024-05-15 14:39:36 +0000 UTCCongrats on being a part of the documentary, Matt! Thoughtful episode and y'all are doing excellent marketing for the Tanenhaus book. I watched the documentary,and something I was utterly unprepared for and wrestled with afterward was how charming and witty Buckley was on TV. "Demand a recount," however contrived, is a great line. His response to "not being able to think on his feet" was also funny. Seeing the clips made it easier for me to see how his telegenic allure could bolster a political movement. It was a good reminder of the crucial role of performance in politics. (Something I think technocratic liberals would rather ignore.)
Daniel D.
2024-05-09 22:55:49 +0000 UTCYou could say that about nearly every figure discussed on a show called Know Your -Enemy-. If that were the beginning & end of their discussions, the pod wouldn't have lasted 5 years.
drizzly_november
2024-05-09 18:36:09 +0000 UTCThe main takeaway I get from every Buckley themed episode is that he was an intellectual lightweight and that his main strength was coalition and network building. Going forward, It might be worth stating up front that it’s not really worthwhile trying to understand this guy as a “thinker,” because what passed for his thought was mostly hackneyed boilerplate. He’s interesting mainly as a political phenomenon, as someone whose strength was connecting capital with organizational power. That way , we don’t have to spend any more time puzzling over his vapid utterances as if there’s a “there” there.
Charles Zug
2024-05-09 12:44:56 +0000 UTCNaughty words opposition succeeded so markedly against George W. Bush and Trump that we cannot but follow that course.
Adam Lewis
2024-05-08 12:17:00 +0000 UTCI agree. I also think it’s inseparable from the personal image and persona of Buckley. Gary Wills, if I recall correctly, points out in his Confessions of a Conservative that the NR set imitated Buckley’s mannerism. The aristocratic image he presents appeals to certain people. I often wonder if what really bothers conservatives is that over the 20th outsider culture, essentially black culture, became attractive to a wide audience through consumer culture. And what really upsets them was that it became increasingly aggressive. There’s a big difference between Duke Ellington and gangsta rap or the gender bending of Tyler the Creator. If you’re a conservative based in any metropolitan city, say NYC, this confronts you every day and probably fuels a great deal of personal animosity and fear. That in the mimetic triangle of desire they are losing against those whom they consider their inferiors.
Steven Ngo
2024-05-07 16:25:01 +0000 UTCHe was a racist piece of s— asshole. Why cant you just say it?
Edmundo Saballos
2024-05-07 16:03:58 +0000 UTCHi Holly, I'd love to give you some recommendations, send me an email at matt.sitman@gmail.com
Know Your Enemy
2024-05-06 22:52:10 +0000 UTCI think the criticism of nostalgia for Buckleyite conservatism has to be connected to the consistent elevation of young erudite conservatives who are later to be revealed as racist reactionaries. Conservatives themselves seem to be cognizant of how to present themselves to appeal to this nostalgia and for folks on the left it’s seen as a revealed preference for interlocutors. It’s a pretty central knot for genuine political discourse and understanding.
Chad Stanton
2024-05-06 20:57:04 +0000 UTCThe dashing figure of Buckley really paints an (at best) ambiguous role of political, literary intellectuals in the 20th and 21st c. There’s often this refrain about the loss of public intellectuals or that its intellectuals alone a la Zola that opposed the madness of mass politics. But in truth their role in courts of powers and competitors for power is much more in the red of the ledger. Firing line. The Hitch’s support of the Iraqi war. Dawkins’ racism. Whatever ideological project Jonathan Haidt is fomenting in The Atlantic. I feel the nostalgia for Buckley amongst liberals and conservatives is a longing for when politics was just entertaining spectacle and the dislocations as a consequence of politics was distant or ignorable.
Steven Ngo
2024-05-06 17:31:23 +0000 UTCGreat ep but also as someone going to Rome this month, humbly requesting the KYE boys’ Rome recs…
Holly Kallmeyer
2024-05-06 12:26:49 +0000 UTCThanks to Rick Perlstein for writing that piece. I wearied of the doc's friendly approach: the words "fatuous preppy" may have been uttered.
Adam Lewis
2024-05-06 01:29:24 +0000 UTCMona Charon deserves credit for staying anti-Trump after he wins. And she paid a price for it. She got physically removed from CPAC.
erik w bjorke
2024-05-06 01:16:46 +0000 UTC
