What the fuck?

Historians rarely have much to say about the role of charm in public affairs. But it matters, and sometimes it matters a lot. William F. Buckley Jr. founded and spent thirty-five years editing National Review, published some fifty-odd books, hosted 1,429 episodes of Firing Line, and wrote a syndicated newspaper column from 1962 until the day of his death in 2008. Yet anyone who seeks to explain the nature of his contribution to American political life must start by pointing out something else that those who knew Buckley took for granted, which is that he was an irresistibly charming man. Whatever your political beliefs, you couldn’t spend five minutes in his company without liking him, or feeling that he liked you…

This is pure rubbish. Buckley? Likeable to the max? Please watch the “Baldwin vs. Buckley” video and tell me who is really likeable:

Buckley is just a bore (“the negro lacks that energy“). As for Baldwin? He is not a man you like; he is a man you love.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

23 replies on “Buckley Vs. Baldwin”

  1. Your insensitivity to his putative charm might be due to that “…in his company…” that you conveniently overlooked in your rebuttal.

  3. I met Buckley many, many years ago. “Likeable” would never be how I’d describe him. “Pompous ass” would be much closer.

  4. Yes, because if ever there was a performance in which someone else was more charismatic than Buckley, it means that Buckley cannot be considered charismatic in general.

    It’s even more embarrassing when you post lamebrained attempts at argument, Charles. Please just toss out the words of putative wisdom; the more you write, the more you weaken your argument with nonsense and fallacies.

  5. Just this morning, as I was driving my daughter to school, I was thinking about how the quality of Charles’ posts had increased since the referendum on his position at The Stranger. Naturally, this is the day he backslides a bit.

    (I know it wasn’t a serious referendum. Come on….)

  8. That was a beautiful bit of debate on Baldwin’s part.

    Buckley: “The engines of concern are working” must have comforted so many.

  11. I was just reading this yesterday in Esquire and thought you’d appreciate, Mr. Mudede.
    from The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy: Norman Mailer by James Baldwin

    “The thing that most people seem to imagine that they can salvage from the storm of life are really, in sum, their innocence. It was this commodity precisely which I had to get rid of at once, literally, on pain of death. I am afraid that most of the white people I have ever known impressed me as being in the grip of a weird nostalgia, dreaming of a vanished state of security and order, against which dream, unfailingly and unconsciously, they tested and very often lost their lives. It is a terrible thing to say, but I am afraid that for a very long time the troubles of white people failed to impress me as being real trouble. They put me in mind of children crying because the breast has been taken away. Time and love have modified my tough-boy lack of charity, but the attitude sketched above was my first attitude and I am sure there is a great deal to it.”

    Buckley was charming to the 1%, so he will be reported as universally charming.

  12. The only thing you can say positive about Buckley is that he eventually renounced his White Supremacist views, hated Ayn Rand, had a great vocabulary, and his maid really knew how to iron crisp lines into his slacks.

  16. Charles,
    I never met Baldwin or Buckley. I read a biography of Buckley and know he had lifelong friends of the Left (I believe Hitchens knew him well) and Right. He was a graduate of Yale, a sailor, spoke Spanish & French and a bon vivant. Yes, he was pompous and had an English vocabulary that was intimidating. I believe he had to be to debate the likes of Vidal & Chomsky. So, no I don’t think he was a bore or boor. I do believe charm played a role in his life.

    I know very little nor have read anything of James Baldwin. But, I will read “Notes on a Native Son”. I know he’s an important American writer.

  17. Come on, even if you disagree with him, you have to admit Buckley had charm. Now that the Republican party is dominated by demagogues and empty suits, I feel some nostalgia for his brand of effete conservatism.

  19. Yes, Buckley’s charm ws quite evident when in the early days of AIDS, he suggested that all known homosexuals be rounded up and tattooed with “AIDS” on their buttocks. That sort of response worked so well as a party joke for his coterie and helped foster the neglect which allowed a relatively small outbreak to flourish as a public health disater.

  21. I don’t know much about Buckley. What I do know is that James Baldwin is one of the most beautiful people ever to have graced this planet. And he is sorely underappreciated.

  22. Buckley has such a stereotypical blueblood accent. That has got to be an affectation. Or maybe I’m being naive; does anyone really talk like that?

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