I'm planning a post on National Review founder and editor William F. (Bill) Buckley's many achievements that I think earn him a place on a Greatest Americans list. I hope to post it by Sunday.
Meanwhile, I can't resist sharing a few samples of his humor. The first two are from memory; the last two from a Jeff Jacoby column.
Buckley once said that given a choice between being governed by the Harvard faculty or a Congress composed of the first 500 people listed in the Boston phone directory, he'd opt for the phone directory.
He received a letter from an irate National Review reader telling him in great detail what a miserable editor he was. The letter ended with "cancel my subscription."
Buckley wrote back that he knew he had shortcomings and would work hard at doing better. But as for canceling the subscription, he told the reader, "Dammit, cancel it yourself."
When asked why Robert Kennedy was refusing to appear on his Firing Line interview program, Buckley replied, "Why does baloney resist the meat grinder?"
A National Review editorial comment began: "The attempted assassination of Sukarno last week had all the earmarks of a CIA operation. Everyone in the room was killed except Sukarno."
BTW - Shortly after graduating from Yale, Buckley served in the CIA.
Comments about Buckley are welcome.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
William F. (Bill) Buckley's humor
Posted by JWM at 2:12 PM
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3 comments:
detritus and claque - Two words in the vocabularly compliments of Mr Buckley. Granted, I don't use them much day-to-day, e.g., when I'm in the checkout line at the Dollar General or at Lowe's.
But still, I have slipped them into a comment or conversation over the years and they've never failed me. In fact, just the other day, I managed to poke a PhD in the eye with a reference to his "claque". I didn't change his mind, but I believe he viewed me with an increased wariness after that thrust. Take that, you Poly Sci elitist!
There's more, but those two came readily to mind after reading the Jacoby link and the vocabulary nuggets that he's collected from Bill Buckley.
Buckley had a liberal on his show, and the liberal opened with a story about he and Bill flying on the same airplane the night before. The flight attendant handed the liberal a cigar, with a note from Buckley that said, "To enjoy with your last meal."
The liberal looks out to the studio audience and said, "And I was surprised, because it wasn't a very good cigar."
Buckley's reply, delivered dryly, of course, "It would have been a havana if you liberals hadn't screwed up the Bay of Pigs."
Buckley was being interviewed by Charlie Rose years ago during the spotted owl era. During the chat, Rose got agitated at Buckley's rather dismissive view of the spotted owl's future on this planet. Rose blurted out something like "Can we in good conscience reduce the population of spotted owls significantly? Even to extinction? To extinction???" To which Buckley calmly replied "An estimated 500 million species have become extinct...and here we are."
Like butter!
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