Comes Out June 2nd

Maybe you find yourself missing the days when one could watch Firing Line and watch people who sharply disagreed with one another have an intelligent and civil conversation.

Sam Tanenhaus was asked by William F. Buckley to write Buckley’s biography. This is a momentous effort. The book is over a thousand pages. It’s not an authorized biography. Neither Buckley nor his estate had any influence over its content.

Some of what Buckley did presaged the situation in which we find ourselves today. Buckley ran for Mayor of New York in 1965. He received 13% of the vote. (Incidentally, Buckley’s own prediction of his vote total was within 10-thousand of the actual count. There was a slightly clownish aspect to Buckley’s run. You probably know his famous response when asked, if elected, what would be the first thing he’d do as Mayor. Buckley answered, “Demand a recount.”

Buckley worked to nudge the John Birch Society out of the conservative movement Buckley was building. The Birchers believed that fluoride in the water was a Communist plot. (History does rhyme, you know.) Many of them thought Dwight Eisenhower was a closeted Communist.

Buckley was slow to adapt to racial desegregation. He also, at the behest of his father, made his sister break up with a fellow who was Jewish.

Complex character.

I recently rewatched Buckley’s Firing Line interview with Norman Mailer. (They were friends. Buckley befriended a lot of people he didn’t agree with.) Two quick minds with dueling views of the world. We don’t see those kinds of exchanges these days. It’s our loss.

I’ve made a note to head to the bookstore on 6/2. This should be a good read. Tanenhaus has been working on it for over two decades. I’m predicting it will have been worth the wait.