Nat'l Review Boots Buckley's son.

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Nat'l Review Boots Buckley's son.
4
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 7:57am

Christopher Buckley owns part of National Review.


National Review Boots Buckley Son For Obama Boost


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/14/AR2008101402492.html?nav=hcmodule


Christopher Buckley knew he was venturing into treacherous territory when he endorsed Barack Obama: "It's a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They'd cut off my allowance," he wrote.


The penalty turned out to be more severe. William F. Buckley Jr.'s son said yesterday that he had lost his back-page column in National Review, the conservative bible founded by his father.


"Within hours, poor NR was being swamped with furious mail, 'Cancel my subscription, this is betrayal, Judas, Benedict Arnold,' " Buckley, 56, said in an interview. "I thought the decent thing to do would be to offer to resign the column. Well, they accepted it."


Buckley can't be completely disappeared; the Washington author owns one-seventh of National Review and serves on the magazine's board. But he is the latest right-leaning pundit to be slammed by his side for criticizing or breaking with John McCain.


National Review editor Rich Lowry, a Bill Buckley protege, told readers in a posting that the younger Buckley had been writing the column for several months on a trial basis, although Buckley believed it was permanent.


"Chris says that his Obama endorsement has generated a 'tsunami,' that e-mail at NRO has been running 'oh, 700-to-1' against him, and that there's a debate about whether to boil him in oil or shoot him. Chris is either misinformed or exercising poetic license," Lowry writes. "We have gotten about 100 e-mails, if that , and threats of cancellations in the single digits."


Buckley delivered his endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee last Thursday in the cyberpages of the Daily Beast, a new, blog-heavy Web site launched by Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. "I went out of my way to spare NR from being associated with this endorsement," Buckley said.


In that piece, Buckley said that he has known McCain since 1982 and once wrote a speech for him but that the senator has changed, airing "mean-spirited and pointless" attack ads and -- "What on earth can he have been thinking?" -- picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. While the result was "genuinely saddening" and even "tragic" for the country, Buckley wrote, he had concluded that Obama has a "first-class temperament and a first-class intellect" and could be a great president. That is, "assuming anyone gives a fig" about his views.


Buckley noted that columnist Kathleen Parker, after a National Review Online piece declaring Palin unqualified to be vice president, had received 12,000 hostile e-mails. Parker, who is syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group, described the reaction in her next column: "I am a traitor and an idiot. Also, my mother should have aborted me and left me in a dumpster, but since she didn't, I should 'off' myself."


In his embrace of Obama, Buckley quoted his father as saying, "You know, I've spent my entire lifetime separating the Right from the kooks."


That didn't sit especially well with Lowry, who declined to be interviewed. "No doubt part of what upset these readers was the dim view Chris expressed of them in his first Daily Beast post," he wrote. "So it goes. It's an intense election season and emotions are running high. We continue to have the highest regard for Chris's talent and wit, and extend to him warmest regards and understanding."


Buckley, who said his proffered resignation was "briskly" accepted by Lowry on Saturday, declined to criticize the magazine: "I'm very fond of NR and I'm sorry this happened." But as he wrote in a follow-up Beast essay, "It's pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land."


Buckley noted that his father was unpredictable, had endorsed such Democrats as Joe Lieberman and wrote in 1969 that it was time America had a black president. "He would let you say anything you wanted as long as it was argued."


Were his pup still alive, Buckley said, "what my dear old dad probably would have done is taken out two pages and had me roundly denounced, carcass tossed out on the sidewalk. It would have been journalism. It would have been interesting."

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-14-2008
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 8:44am
Yep. Buckley's old magazine is now in the hands of the Jonah Goldbergs and the K-Los of the world (oh, and Rich "Little Starbursts" Lowry, LOL). The inmates have taken over. Hope they bought enough paste to satisfy their appetites through the end of the election.

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-25-2006
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 8:52am

<<"Within hours, poor NR was being swamped with furious mail, 'Cancel my subscription, this is betrayal, Judas, Benedict Arnold,' " Buckley, 56, said in an interview. "I thought the decent thing to do would be to offer to resign the column. Well, they accepted it.">>

No surprise there. The hate tactics are the all the right has left. I admire those who, like Buckley, can vote their conscience rather than their pocketbook.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 07-04-2008
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 10:39am

>>Buckley, who said his proffered resignation was "briskly" accepted by Lowry on Saturday, declined to criticize the magazine: "I'm very fond of NR and I'm sorry this happened."<<

I saw him interviewed last night on Hardball. After all the nasty emails sent to the Nat'l Review he wanted to distance himself for the good of NR. I really don't think that he was expecting them to accept his resignation.

I mean, they talk about the first amendment and freedom of the press and then turn around and accept a resignation when things get a little hot? What a bunch of hypocrites. If he had endorsed McCain and wrote a scathing article about Obama/Biden I guess it would've just been business as usual. Apparently over at the NR they don't respect freedom of speech or difference of opinion. This is just them showing their true colors.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 10-15-2008 - 11:24am
Yet

 


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