One can be sorry that Hunter Thompson died as he did, but not sorry, surely, that he stopped writing.
- William F. Buckley
Apparently the correct way to write is to dress up a thinly veiled version of yourself as an action hero, give him the name of a gay pirate and have him navigate 300 pages of blunt implausibilities to save the Queen of England-punctuating the plot along the way with the tweedy aphorisms of your favorite Yale professor…
With the smug pompous racist dead at the ripe old age of 82, who will we turn to now for socially acceptable hate and condescension and empty threats of violence against anyone who questions political conservatism?
To Gore Vidal: “Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll knock you in the God-damned teeth.”
“I pray every Negro will not be given the vote in South Carolina tomorrow,” Buckley wrote in a private letter to Douglas Stewart dated October 10, 1961.
Oh, to this guy: “Great man, great leader. Great conservative ahead of his time, articulate and entertaining,” said U.S. Sen. John McCain. Meh.
+JMJ+
Sorry Jon,
WFB unfortunately imbibed many principles of internationalist liberalism during his exposure to the intelligentia of the world. Though he was nominally Catholic, he shared more in common with mercantilist, country club Republicans than he might have liked to admit. The reason he was upset at being called a “crypto-Nazi” is that it was equivalent to being called a “crypto-liberal”, and that may have hit too close to the mark for his comfort. Still, he gave good lip service to some truths and was entertainingly droll. Unlike McCarthy, I’ll miss him more as a figurehead than as a political idealist. Yet I will still raise a pipe to him, but what blend…? F&T’s Cut VA Plug would be perfect: elegant, reserved, slightly pretentious, and expensive.
In Christ,
Steven Ciesicki
Gore Vidal provides an excellent rejoinder to the fawning obits so far.