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William F. Buckley Jr.

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This article is about the conservative journalist and commentator. For other persons of like name, see William F. Buckley (disambiguation).
William F. Buckley Jr.
Born (1925-11-24) November 24, 1925 (age 99)
New York (state) New York City U.S.
Occupation(s)author
commentator
television personality
SpousePatricia Taylor Buckley (d. 2007)
ChildrenChristopher Buckley (b.1952)

William Francis "Bill" Buckley, Jr. (born November 24, 1925) is an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style is characterized by use of uncommon words.[1] Over the course of his career, Buckley's views have changed on some issues, such as drug legalization, which he now favors.[2]

Buckley is the author of a series of novels featuring the character of CIA agent Blackford Oakes, along with several books on writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing. Buckley refers to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative.[3][4] He is based in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut and is semi-retired. Buckley often signs his name as "WFB."

Childhood

Buckley was born in New York City to lawyer and oil baron William Frank Buckley, Sr., of Irish Catholic descent, and Aloise Steiner, a Southerner of Swiss-German descent. The sixth of ten children, young Buckley moved with his family to Sharon, Connecticut before beginning his first formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London, (his first and second languages were Spanish and French, respectively). As a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, sailing, horses, hunting, skiing, and story telling. All of these interests would reflect in his later writings. Just before WWII, at age 13, he attended high school at St John's Beaumont in England. During the war, his family took in the future British historian, Alistair Horne, as a war evacuee. Buckley and Horne have remained life-long friends. Buckley and Horne both attended Millbrook School, in Millbrook, New York, and graduated as members of the Class of 1943. At Millbrook, Buckley founded and edited the school's yearbook, The Tamarack, his first experience in publishing.

Education, military service and the CIA

Buckley attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico (or UNAM) in 1943 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Army the following year. In his book, Miles Gone By, he fleetingly recounts being a member of Franklin Roosevelt's honor guard when the president died. With the end of World War II in 1945, he enrolled in Yale University, where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society[citation needed], and was an active member of the Conservative Party and of the Yale Political Union, and served as Chairman of the Yale Daily News.

Buckley graduated from Yale in 1950. That same year, he married Patricia Alden Austin Taylor, (July 1, 1926 - April 15, 2007), the daughter of industrialist Austin C. Taylor. He met Pat, a Protestant from Vancouver, British Columbia, while she was a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. Buckley was her roommate's brother. Their son is the author Christopher Buckley. Pat Buckley was a prominent charity fundraiser for such organizations as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery at New York University Medical Center and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She also raised money for Vietnam War veterans and AIDS patients.

In 1951, Buckley was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), yet served for less than a year. Little has been published regarding Buckley's work with the CIA, but in a 2001 letter to author W. Thomas Smith, Jr., Buckley wrote, “I did training in Washington as a secret agent and was sent to Mexico City. There I served under the direct supervision of Howard Hunt, about whom of course a great deal is known.”

In a November 1, 2005, editorial for the National Review, he recounted that:

When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive. It was three months before I was formally permitted to inform my wife what the real reason was for going to Mexico City to live. If, a year later, I had been apprehended, dosed with sodium pentothal, and forced to give out the names of everyone I knew in the CIA, I could have come up with exactly one name, that of my immediate boss (E. Howard Hunt, as it happened). In the passage of time one can indulge in idle talk on spook life. In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President." He thought this amusing, and that is all that it was, under the aspect of the heavens.

While in Mexico, Buckley edited The Road to Yenan, a book addressing the communist quest for global domination, by Peruvian author Eudocio Ravines.

First books

In 1951, the same year he was recruited into the CIA, Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale, was published. The book was written in Hamden, Connecticut, where William and Pat Buckley had settled as newlyweds. A critique of Yale University, the work argues that the school had strayed from its original educational mission. In 1954, Buckley co-wrote a book with his brother-in-law, the late L. Brent Bozell, entitled McCarthy and His Enemies, in which Buckley and Bozell strongly defended Wisconsin U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, albeit with some reservations, as a patriotic crusader against communism. The next year, he made some telling concessions in an article for Commonweal.

We have got to accept Big Government for the duration—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington—even with Truman at the reins of it all.[5]

National Review

Buckley worked as an editor for The American Mercury in 1951 and 1952 before he founded National Review in 1955. Under Buckley and co-founder Frank Meyer, National Review became the standard bearer of American conservatism, promoting the fusion of traditional conservatives and libertarians.

In 1957, Buckley published a review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged by Whittaker Chambers, ostensibly "reading her out of the conservative movement."[6] Objectivists have accused Chambers of merely skimming the novel.[7] Buckley said that Rand never forgave him for publishing the review and that "for the rest of her life, she would walk theatrically out of any room I entered!"[8]

In 1960, Buckley helped form Young Americans for Freedom and in 1964 he very strongly supported the candidacy of Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, first for the Republican nomination against New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller and then for the Presidency. Buckley used the National Review as a forum for mobilizing support for Goldwater.

On The Right

In 1962 his column, On The Right was syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate. For the past 35 years his twice-weekly column has been distributed to more than 320 newspapers across the country. His columns are also available online at NRO and Townhall.

Mayoral candidacy

In 1965, he ran for mayor of New York City as the candidate for the young Conservative Party, because of his dissatisfaction with the very liberal Republican candidate John V. Lindsay, who later became a Democrat. To relieve traffic congeston, Buckley proposed charging cars a fee to enter the central city, and a network of bike lanes; such car-toll plans have recently been considered for New York City, but were blocked by the New York State legislature. He finished third with 13.4% of the vote. When asked what he would do if he won the race, Buckley issued his classic response, "I'd demand a recount."

Buckley was not the first member of his family to run for a big-city mayoral position. His cousin Elliot Ross Buckley ran in 1962 as the Republican candidate for mayor of New Orleans but was easily defeated by the Democrat Victor Schiro. Elliot Buckley's New Orleans race was said to have paralleled and foreshadowed Bill Buckley's campaign three years later.

Denouncing the John Birch Society

In October 1965, Buckley denounced Robert W. Welch Jr. and the John Birch Society, with whom he had previously been friendly in the National Review as lunatic-fringe fanatics promoting strange and bizarre conspiracy theories, and urged the GOP to purge itself of JBS members.

Feud with Gore Vidal

Buckley appeared in a series of televised debates with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Democratic Party convention. In their penultimate debate on August 22 of that year, the two disagreed over the actions of the Chicago police and the protesters at the ongoing Democratic Convention in Chicago. At one point Vidal called Buckley a “proto- or crypto-Nazi”, to which Buckley replied, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddamn face, and you will stay plastered.”[9]

This feud continued the following year in the pages of Esquire Magazine, which commissioned an essay from both Buckley and Vidal on the television incident. Buckley's essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal," was published in the August 1969 issue, and led Vidal to sue for libel. Vidal's September essay in reply, "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley," was similarly litigated by Buckley. The presiding judge in Buckley's subsequent libel suit against Vidal initially concluded that "[t]he court must conclude that Vidal's comments in these paragraphs meet the minimal standard of fair comment. The inferences made by Vidal from Buckley's [earlier editorial] statements cannot be said to be completely unreasonable." However, Vidal also strongly implied that, in 1944, Buckley and unnamed siblings had vandalized a Protestant church in their Sharon, Connecticut, hometown after the pastor's wife had sold a house to a Jewish family. Buckley sued Vidal and Esquire for libel; Vidal counter-claimed for libel against Buckley, citing Buckley's characterization of Vidal's novel Myra Breckenridge as pornography. Both cases were dropped, but Buckley's legal expenses were reimbursed by Vidal, and Vidal's were not. Buckley also received an editorial apology in the pages of Esquire.[10]

United Nations delegate

In 1973, Buckley served as a delegate to the United Nations. In 1981, Buckley informed President-elect (and personal friend) Ronald Reagan that he would decline any official position offered to him in Reagan's administration. Reagan jokingly replied that that was too bad, because he had wanted to make Buckley ambassador to (then Soviet-occupied) Afghanistan. Buckley replied that he was willing to take the job but only if he were to be supplied with "10 divisions of bodyguards."[11]

Spy novelist

In 1975, Buckley saw the film Three Days of the Condor, and was angered by what he viewed as its portrayal of the CIA as an amoral, maverick agency. In response, Buckley wrote the 1976 spy novel Saving the Queen, featuring Blackford Oakes as a rule-bound CIA agent; Buckley based the novel in part on his own CIA experiences. Over the next 30 years, Buckley would write another 10 novels featuring Oakes. New York Times critic Charlie Rubin wrote that the series "at its best, evokes John O'Hara in its precise sense of place amid simmering class hierarchies."[12]

Later career

Buckley participated in a debate following the airing of The Day After, a 1983 made-for-TV movie about the effects of nuclear war. A staunch anti-communist, Buckley consistently defended the strategy of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War. In 1991, Buckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush.

File:Milesgoneby.jpg
William F. Buckley, Jr., on the cover of his autobiography Miles Gone By

Buckley retired as active editor from National Review in 1990, and relinquished his controlling shares of National Review in June 2004 to a pre-selected board of trustees. The following month he published the memoir Miles Gone By. Buckley continues to write his syndicated newspaper column, as well as opinion pieces for National Review magazine and National Review Online. He remains editor-at-large at the magazine and also lectures, grants occasional radio interviews and makes guest appearances on national television news programs.

Buckley has recently criticized certain aspects of policy within the modern conservative movement. He has said, "Bush is conservative, but he is not a conservative", and that the president was not elected "as a vessel of the conservative faith." According to Buckley, the war in Iraq was "anything but conservative. The reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous." He added: "This isn’t to say that the Iraq war is wrong, or that history will judge it to be wrong. But it is absolutely to say that conservatism implies a certain submission to reality; and this war has an unrealistic frank and is being conscripted by events".[13] In a February 2006 column published at National Review Online and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, Buckley stated unequivocally that, "One cannot doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed." Buckley has also stated that "...it's important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure."[14] In 2007, Buckley spoke at a New York dinner for Dartmouth College's secretive Phrygian Society.[dubious – discuss][citation needed]

Television personality

For many Americans, Buckley's erudite style on his weekly PBS show Firing Line was their primary exposure to the man. In it he displayed a scholarly, non-confrontational, and humorous conservatism and was known for his facial expressions, gestures and probing questions of his guests.

With his ability to engage on a wide range of subjects, Buckley was a favorite guest of Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show. Carson considered him a friend and would introduce him as "Bill Buckley".[citation needed]

Throughout his career as a media figure, Buckley has received much criticism, largely from the American left but also from certain factions on the right, such as the John Birch Society and the Objectivists.

Language expertise

Buckley is well known for his command of language.[15] Buckley came late to the English language, not learning it until he was 7 (his first language was Spanish, learned in Mexico, and his second French, learned in Paris).[16] As a consequence, he speaks English with an idiosyncratic accent: something between an old-fashioned, upper class Mid-Atlantic accent and British Received Pronunciation.

Wikiquote has quotations related to William F. Buckley Jr..

Family

Musical interests

Buckley plays the harpsichord very well and did so once on Late Night With Conan O'Brian. Buckley is also an accomplished pianist and was once a guest on Marian McPartland's NPR show "Piano Jazz". Buckley is also a great fan of Johann Sebastian Bach and has said that he would want Bach's music played at his funeral.

  • Buckley was mentioned in the 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck, as a potential candidate to defend the behavior of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy on Edward R. Murrow's television program, See It Now. Buckley eventually did not speak in place of McCarthy; McCarthy himself appeared on the program.
  • Impressionist David Frye included Buckley in his portfolio in the 1960s and 1970s, mastering Buckley's quirky mannerisms, such as his deliberate speech pattern, his use of pen or pencil as a prop, and his tendency to grin and open his eyes wide when making a self-satisfying verbal point.
  • Comic actor Joe Flaherty frequently portrayed Buckley on the television show SCTV.
  • The comic strip Mallard Fillmore mentioned Buckley, encouraging him to run for president in 2008.[17]
  • In the Woody Allen film Annie Hall, Diane Keaton, as the titular character, summons Allen's character, Alvy Singer, to her apartment to kill a spider. When Alvie notices that she has an issue of National Review, he remarks "Why don't you ask William Buckley to kill your spider?"
  • Robin Williams parodied Buckley in his Mr. Rogers skit. Also, in the Disney film Aladdin, Williams’ genie looks and sounds like Buckley while listing the restrictions on his three wishes.
  • In a Christmas episode of the TV series called ALF, Alf confronts a man wanting to commit suicide by jumping off of a bridge. Alf (dressed as Santa Claus) talks the man down, but gets into a debate on his Santa Claus outfit and persona. After a few minutes of arguments, Alf gives up by saying "I'm debating with William F. Buckley"

Trivia

  • Buckley has taken Ritalin for decades, for low blood pressure.
  • Buckley visited the RMS Titanic in the submarine Nautille in 1987.
  • Buckley has made several transoceanic sailing voyages across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.
  • Buckley was a huge admirer of the German film The Lives of Others, writing an extremely laudatory column on the film for The National Review.

Bibliography

Non-Fiction

Fiction

Blackford Oakes novel series

  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (2005). Last Call for Blackford Oakes. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-101085-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1999). The Blackford Oakes Reader. iUniverse, Inc. ISBN 1-58348-383-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1993). A Very Private Plot. William Morrow & Company, Inc. ISBN 0-688-12795-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1990). Tucker's Last Stand. Random House. ISBN 0-394-57675-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1987). Mongoose R.I.P. Random House. ISBN 0-394-55931-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1986). High Jinx. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-19443-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1985). See You Later Alligator. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-19442-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1984). Story of Henri Tod. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-15234-5.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1982). Marco Polo, If You Can. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-15232-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1980). Who's on First. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-15231-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1978). Stained Glass. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-12542-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Buckley, William F., Jr. (1976). Saving the Queen. Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-03800-3.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

Notes

  1. ^ For complete, searchable texts see Buckley Online.
  2. ^ "The Openmind: Buckley on Drug Legalization". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  3. ^ C-SPAN Booknotes 10/23/1993
  4. ^ Buckley, William F., Jr. Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist, Random House, ISBN 0-679-40398-1, 1993.
  5. ^ "www.amconmag.com/11_17_03/cover.html". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  6. ^ "Big Sister is Watching You". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  7. ^ "A Half-Century-Old Attack on Ayn Rand Reminds Us of the Dark Side of Conservatism". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  8. ^ William F. Buckley, Jr. Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography. Regnery Publishing. 2004. p. 309.
  9. ^ Vidal calls Buckley a 'crypto-Nazi'. Buckley called Vidal, a cousin of future Vice President Al Gore, a 'queer' and a drunkard, and threatened to punch him
  10. ^ "Buckley and Vidal: One More Round". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  11. ^ http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6724737060193073610&q=william+buckley Reagan: A Life in Letters, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003), 64.
  12. ^ 'Last Call for Blackford Oakes': Cocktails With Philby, Charlie Rubin, The New York Times, July 17, 2005
  13. ^ "Season of Conservative Sloth". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  14. ^ "It Didn't Work". Retrieved 2007-07-27.
  15. ^ See Schmidt, Julian. (June 6, 2005) National Review. Notes & asides. (Letter to the Editor) Volume 53; Issue 2. Pg. 17. ("Dear Mr. Buckley: You can call off the hunt for the elusive "encephalophonic." I have it cornered in Webster's Third New International Dictionary, where the noun "encephalophone" is defined as "an apparatus that emits a continuous hum whose pitch is changed by interference of brain waves transmitted through oscillators from electrodes attached to the scalp and that is used to diagnose abnormal brain functioning." I knew right where to look, because you provoked my search for that word a generation ago, when I first (and not last) encountered it in one of your books. If it was used derisively about you, I can only infer that the reviewer's brain was set a-humming by a) his failure to follow your illaqueating (ensnaring) logic, b) his dizzied awe at your manifold talents, and/or c) his inability to distinguish lexiphanicism (the use of pretentious words) from lectio divina. I say, keep it up. We could all do with more brain vibrations.")
  16. ^ William F. Buckley, Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography. Early chapters recount his early education and mastery of languages.
  17. ^ "seattlepi.nwsource.com/fun/mallard.asp?date=20061124". Retrieved 2007-07-27.

References

  • Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of American Writers. Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster. 2001.
  • Contemporary Authors. Farmington Hills, Michigan: The Gale Group. 2003.
  • Bridges, Linda (2007). Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement. New York: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated. ISBN 0471758175.
  • Buckley, Reid (1999). Strictly Speaking. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-134610-4.
  • Lamb, Brian (2001). Booknotes: Stories from American History. New York: Penguin. ISBN 1-58648-083-9.
  • Gottfried, Paul (1993). The Conservative Movement. ISBN 0-8057-9749-1
  • John B. Judis (1990). William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives. New York: Touchstone. (full-scale biography). ISBN 0-671-69593-2
  • George H. Nash. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (2006)
  • Winchell, Mark Royden (1984). William F. Buckley, Jr. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company. ISBN 0-8057-7431-9.
  • Smith, W. Thomas, Jr. (2003). Encyclopedia of the Central Intelligence Agency. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 0-8160-4667-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  • Straus, Tamara (1997). The Literary Almanac: The Best of the Printed Word: 1900 to the Present. New York: High Tide Press. ISBN 1-56731-328-0.
  • "William F. Buckley, Jr". C-Span American Writers II. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |1= (help); Unknown parameter |accessmonthday= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |accessyear= ignored (|access-date= suggested) (help)
  • Bridges, Linda and Coyne, John (2003) "Strictly Right: William F. Buckley and the Conservative Movement"
  • Miller, David (1990). Chairman Bill: A Biography of William F. Buckley, Jr.. New York
  • Meehan, William F. III (1990). William F. Buckley Jr: A Bibliography. New York
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