William F. Buckley Dead At 82

I am going to move to here a comment about WFB I posted on the "Parallel Parking from Hell" thread. I encourage some of the other posters on that thread to do the same -- there were some great "Mister FaBuckley" lines posted there earlier today.

During Buckley's 1965 run for Mayor of New York City, he was constantly attacked by his Republican opponent, John Vliet Lindsay, who -- like Buckley -- had graduated from Yale. Lindsay's complaint was that Buckley didn't even live in New York; he lived in Stamford, Connecticut. To which Buckley replied, "I don't know what John Lindsay has against the state of Connecticut, except perhaps that he was educated there and is entirely dissatisfied with the results."

Some random WFB quotes:

"The neoconservative hubris, which sort of assigns to America some kind of geo-strategic responsibility for maximizing democracy, overstretches the resources of a free country."

"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed....different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."

"Now, listen you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face. And you'll stay plastered." [1968, to Gore Vidal]

"Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could."

"The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of antimusic."

"Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square."

"The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry."

"We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down."

Stop, I'm getting all misty. Here's Bill in one of his more tolerant moments:

"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

Hell of a guy.

Here's a link: http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/07/16/specials/buckley-aids.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=login

"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

I shudder to think where Bill would want him tattooed if one is a pitcher rather than a catcher.

Conan, thanks for that!

i will miss him and his eloquence.

oh that twinkle in his eye when he would outsmart a guess on his show, firing line.
such wit, such class there will never be again.

a toast to the charming WFBuckley...who did indeed,
have the world by the reins!

All class, him.

He really nailed it on The Beatles, didn't he?

Spicoli - ewwwwwwwwwww.

you turned my misty eyes to laughter, thanks!

but again, ewwwwwwwwww! lol

(the thing about buckley, even when he was offensive he made sense and caused people to pause - what a gift. he'd drop a statement like that and then pause to observe, then twinkle...loved it)

i wish i could breathe words the way he did.

Here here, let us have 1.2 seconds of silence to celebrate, oops, I mean commemorate his death.

My parents used to watch his commentaries on TV. They rarely agreed with him but they respected his articulate delivery. How the GOP went from him to Nukuler Bush is an essay on the dumbing down of America.

William F. Buckley Jr. brought wit, style and intelligence to politics and letters alike. He also charmed even his most antagonistic ostensible adversaries, including Norman Mailer.

Against his eloquence and kindness, the measly likes of Tommyboy Traubert and sularu above can only burble enviously. We have millions of such louts to lose in the future, but there was only one WFB.

And Gore Vidal, during his stint opposite Buckley at the convention, was positively loathsome. Cowardly, too, since he discreetly stepped far, far away after Buckley called him out for his reptilian form of anti-Americanism. Paul Newman then had to rush in and angrily ask Buckley how he could say such things about such a "great" writer," to which Buckley aptly replied that the pompous creep "just deserved it."

Yes, he may have been dead wrong about the Beatles. But compare him to his critics above, who in contrast claim to appreciate the Beatles better but probably, in sad contrast, know little indeed about the likes of Dvorak, Schonberg and Britten. (As did John Lennon, come to think of it.)

Garfield mourns, right Rich?

Nobody in 1964 thought The Beatles would last -- not even they did. So I can't hold that against him.
I well remember my father railing about them and saying they were just a "flash in the pan".
Several years later, I caught him humming YESTERDAY, and he hotly denied that it was a Beatles tune. As I recall, it was a five pound bet, and he grudgingly paid off.

What a tangled thread we weave:

"Not exactly a "mentor," Ice. A real, leading conservative, yes, but also an unalloyed snob who'd never so much as mingle with the common folk. Could you really picture him buying us all a round at the Great Notch Inn?

He spoke as if he "understood" the rest of us, assumed he did in his heart, but he didn't. He was much too distanced from the genuine grit of daily existence, just like the liberal poobahs he properly disdained. (And yet, he loved hanging with the likes of Norman Mailer.)

Posted by cathar | February 27, 2008 1:15 PM"

alas buckle was write. the beatles did not last. the stones lasted, the beatles did not.

when you hear a beatles song, do you not cring? not like a stones song (except for ruby tuesday of course), which is generally still ok.

Screw Buckley. Buddy Miles died today, aged 60.

Winwood & Clapton played a stirring version of Them Changes at the Garden on Monday night (and I presume last night as well). I don't know if they knew that this was coming....

I was having trouble sleeping and just checked to see the last comments posted as something to do. I thought for a second crank's was just another stab at sarcasm, Buddy not being that old.
The music world lost a true master. I have "Band of Gypsys" playing with all the crackles and hisses an over played piece of 40 something year old vinyl makes. It sounds great.

For those of you unfamiliar with his genius and versatility:

"Buddy Miles career spans over 49 years including 70 albums, 6 World tours, Television specials, Charity events, TV commercials and Music Videos. Buddy has performed with the biggest names in music Stevie Wonder, Muddy Waters, Barry
White, David Bowie, George Clinton and Bootsy Collins.

Buddy started in music at age 12 performing with his fathers band " The Bebops" and played for the jazz-influenced combo for several years before moving on to play for The Delfonics, The Ink Spots and Wilson Pickett.

Buddy is a Co-founding father of fusion rock with the band Electric Flag. He also Co-founded the legendary Band of Gypsys, with Jimi Hendrix and Billy Cox.

Buddy recorded the California Raisins commercial featuring claymation dancing raisins. It's the most successful commercial in television history! Buddy recorded and produced and performed in 3 more California Rasins albums. Buddy produced and performed in a series of commercials for Caribbean Kiss, Cadillac and Harley Davidson just to name a few.

Currently Buddy Miles is in Session completing 3 album projects and helping to raise money for several organizations and sponsors that support Hurricane / Disaster Relief efforts and The Children's Craniofacial Association."

He was only 60.

For those of you who liked WFB and who also like sailing, here is a link to an Atlantic Monthly article he wrote in 2004, about deciding to sell his boat and sail no more...

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200407/buckley

I think posting something like "Screw Buckley" (and likely through clenched teeth) is a bit much. Even for your posting persona, crank.

I did myself see Buddy Miles live a few times. Twice with the misbegotten Electric FLag (on stage, it seemed as if they truly all hated each other) and once leading the Buddy Miles Express. The true wonder of his career and life both might be that he was able to turn both around after a long stretch in California prisons for auto theft charges (which the encomiums above to him somehow don't mention).

I'm also not one of those seeming 60's leftovers who posts as if the death of someone like Miles is a sort of cultural crossroads, a test of one's genuine capacity for grief. Buddy Miles made a lot of people happy with his music even as he once screwed up badly and came back successfully from it. This testimony to human resiliency is something that William F. Buckley (who once made a major mistake in this vein by investing his own faith in another con, Edgar Smith) would surely himself applaud.

Oh cathar, I hope you don't add me to your shit list because of my irreverent post about William F. Buckley. I was just in a mood yesterday. To be honest, I knew the name but not much else about the man until I read the articles and saw the piece on the Nightly News. Didn't seem like my cup o' tea but he was obviously brilliant and a maverick.

Wouldn't have said "Screw Buckley" earlier in the evening. Internal censor already asleep. No afterthought edits on B-net. So it goes.

I'd ask Sir Paul but I think he might have a few other things on his mind these days.

It was not my intention to hijack this thread, as so many posters do when it suits them. I was very sad as a drummer who discovered Buddy in the early 70's, to hear of his passing (even in such a disingenuous way, forgiven crank as we all get that way sometimes).

Some, who are apparently some of the damaged from the Vietnam incursion, are just as entitled to their opinions and judgments as anyone, but a few drug charges and a short stay in jail for them hardly constitutes a bad or dangerous criminal (which is what I think you were inferring) without other infractions. I'm sure you think his charity work is equally suspect. I guess some just can't appreciate talent and success without disparaging remarks.

As far as WFB Jr.: whether you agreed or disagreed with his commentary, at least he had facts to back it up. He was an admirable individual who was consistent and firm. If nothing else, his insights that led to controversy and a dialog will be missed.

Sularu and crank both, you may be amused to learn, as I just did (via a friend's prized collection of old National Review dinner programs) that the California Raisins apparently once sang at one of those dinners! Life really is strange.

But, sularu, that you'd never heard much before about WFB, there yawns a true "generation gap" twixt us. His "God and Man at Yale" was actually used by the brothers at my Catholic h.s. as a reason why I should not apply to an Ivy college, Brother Patrick raised his well-thumbed copy over my head as he informed me he wouldn't even send my grade records to Columbia. (Thankfully, one rascally James Lisbona later broke into the principal's office and liberated a copy of my transcript for me to send on myself.)

And to set the record clear, crank, I really liked the Electric Flag the two times I saw them live. They were definitely one of those 60's bands whose records did not at all reflect their sheer power onstage. But as was also typical of so many now fondly recalled 60's bands, they were not long in existence, either.

Y.A. Duck, I suspect (well, I've suspected it since your unfortunate renarks about the Hasidim you truly are simply a jerkoff.

"Damaged from the Vietnam incursion?" Well, it first wasn't any such thing, American involvement in SE Asia was the result of a request for assistance from a bona fide, non-Communist, nascent democracy ally there. And I'm actually proud of my service there, and basically recall with nothing but affection the brave people whom I served alongside there.

And to set the record straight, a "few drug charges" didn't derail Buddy Miles' musical career. But, rather, involvement in an OC-linked auto theft ring. Nor is approximately 8 years spent mainly at Chino a casual, shortish kind of stay. Nor did I ever refer above, positively or negatively, to Mills' charity work. I did, however, praise my obvious success at turning his post-incarceration life around, which you apparently missed.

Nonetheless, even after these corrections, I'm sure you remain the asshole I sensed you were when you opined that the Hasidim "smelled" badly.

Never heard of the auto theft ring stuff (apparently neither did Google) but please enlighten. The rest of the manure that you post is just that.

Well, yes, cathar, I am a proud member of Gen X with the name "Jake Ryan" burned into my pop culture subconscious.

Perhaps, though, this does not really excuse my lack of knowledge of this man. Time to put down Us Weekly, aye?

I have, however, heard of The Beatles and had an almost visceral reaction when I read WFB's thoughts on them. Blackbird is one of the best lullaby songs I have yet to sing to my young ones.

(sularu, you do know what Blackbird is about, right?)

I do believe it is about the struggle of black people in this country, specifically about the civil rights movement.

But, a quick Google search showed that there are other theories out there.

I've always been led to believe it was about blacks and civil rights.

Anyhoo, I think the Beatles' music is awesome and timeless, regardless of whether WFB liked them or not. Why should anyone get their panties in a wad about what he thought? If you like them, you like them. Who cares what someone else thinks?

Blackbird

"Blackbird," like "Imagine" and to the same, REM's "The One I Love" are funny to me as the music and chorus is saying one thing, but the lyrics are quite another.

"as Thelonious Monk said so well, 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.'"

He may have said it well, but so did many others: Steve Martin, Frank Zappa, Elvis Costello, and Martin Mull. Attribution is undetermined.

And before we start getting maudlin about Willam F. Buckley, let's remember that this insufferable plutocrat wrote a book in defense of McCarthy and that his hate-mongering magazine espoused denying the vote to "uneducated" blacks.

WFB RIP NBD

Crank...and was so wrapped up in the passing of WFB that i totally missed the death of Buddy Miles. As a big fan of Electric Flag, he was the driving force of their rhythm section. 'Another Country' on that first Electric Flag album has one of the great rock guitar solos of all time.

Maybe it would be best to ask Sir Paul what "Blackbird" is about.
Otherwise, and without that certainty, it is as Thelonious Monk said so well, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

I don't think anyone, save perhaps Sir Paul, has any good idea what "Blackbird" is really about. (Bigotry? Where'd that one come from if not the far reaches of left field?) Nice little tune, no matter. Just to have written that one would constitute a nice career, I think. Which I like to think Buckley himself would have acknowledged if one could have pulled him away from his own playing of the "Goldberg Variations," sularu.

Anyway, as Little Richard once said (in the semi-mystical vein of Thelonious Monk's quote above), "You should never try to put a tuxedo on them funky blues.")

In a Beatles documentary, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is interviewed on screen stating that he believed that the song Blackbird was about African-Americans. As with most musicians/lyricists, Paul says that it really is poesy. The individual listener can formulate their own interpretation but it doesn't make it the only one nor that of the writer.

Thanks for those Electric Flag details to cathar & the Iceman.

I stumbled onto an Electric Flag show at the original Fillmore in San Francisco in teh summer of '67. (They opened for Moby Grape, who lasted a bit longer than the Flag, & were probably SF's best live band at that time.)

I was so young & innocent then. There were all these half-asleep people sitting against the wall at the back of the auditorium. They could scarcely keep their eyes open. I kept wondering why they were so tired.

Croiagusanam
McCartney himself has said Blackbird was about the civil rights movement, just check out some of his concert footage on Youtube. But like a lot of Beatles music, there are many levels of meaning. The recording included both live and recorded bird sounds and was recorded outside the studio according to the recent book by Geoff Emerick, George Martin's recording engineer during the White Album (and others). And, of course, the fact that McCartney wrote Blackbird in India suggests that other things besides civil rights influenced his songwriting at the time.

Crank, I too saw Moby Grape, (with The Electric Flag even once opening for them). But at the Anderson Theater in NYC (where I also saw Led Zeppelin "disguised" as the YArdbirds and fulfilling Jimmy Page's old contractual requirements) and in Central Park, and one of those times was in their four-piece incarnation without Skip Spence (whom I still recalled back then as Jefferson Airplane's ex-drummer).

I could never quite get past the fact that was Loretta Young's son up there in the band (wearing white pants and a loose, flowered shirt). Other than that, however, they were a much underrated band and as you wrote, very good live. It's s always "8:05" somewhere for folks of a certain age, so to speak.

There are, as you said JP, many theories as to the meanings of these songs. I believe that McCartney, Lennon et al got so tired of "explaining" their songs --- Lucy in the Sky was LSD, Let It Be, was pot, Yellow Submarine was nembutal, The Fool On the Hill was the Rio Christ statue, and of course everything meant that Paul was dead -- that they started saying whatever would shut the questioner up at the time. I've heard the same song given 3 different stories.
So who knows? And, who cares? Its just a great tune and, in the end... that's all that matters. (and of course, the love you take is equal to the love you make).

It's s always "8:05" somewhere for folks of a certain age, so to speak.

There are a few Grape gems up on YouTube these days, including their Mike Douglas show appearance. It seems amazing that any footage of them has survived.

From the LA Times, February 28, 2008 (a publication which has notably higher standards for editorial accuracy than those that merely list the deaths of rockers), and for the edification of one nitwit otherwise known here as Y.A. Duck:

"By the late 1970s, however, Miles' career came to a halt over convictions for grand theft and auto theft. He served time in the California Institution for Men at Chino and at San Quentin State Prison. He was incarcerated until 1985 and formed bands at both prisons."

It is of course easier (especially without real knowledge), and probably even more sympathetic-sounding, to post that someone did time for jail offenses. But for Miles it is not the case. The NYTimes obit also notes the actual nature of the charges which resulted in Miles' two prison sentences; the opinion that at least the latter was in fact OC-related comes from a friend who loves rock and roll and spent 30+ years in ATF.

Variety, in its own obit, amusingly notes that Miles kept a "low profile" from about 1974 through the mid-1980s. Well, of course, a long stretch in the slammer will do that to one's career.

Again, too, the real cause for joy here is that he was able to turn his life around after stints in two such notorious havens for career criminals as Chino and San Quentin. Where, as I've heard, Y.A. Duck, the most hardened cons even revel in "smelling bad." (Though of course no one dares tell them that to their faces.)

Now, Duckie, stick it in your bill.

Anytime I'm in court, crank, I too expect to see "a big, fat, bald representative of justice" there.

Cathar, I can think of lot of things to say to you, but would only say them to you eye to eye, not on a public blog. You always did rejoinder on the theory of ten times the venom will intimidate people into submission. I remember one poster who thought you might actually track him down and be waiting to attack him physically.
I think you?re more of a Bob Grant, full of facts and hot air, all shtick and mirrors. Just a typical bully, rant away, be a "saint" in your own mind, profusely pontificate pompously, say what you will, have diarrhea of the keyboard; like anyone else (agree or disagree) I will defend your free speech. Just be careful you don't go too far, as I'm sure you will. I'll keep the light on for you.

Oh, and somewhere I misplaced the declaration of war, wait, I'm sorry we haven't needed one of those in a long time. Much more covenant that way. Guess this would sum it up:
"They can't impeach me for bombing Cambodia. The president can bomb anybody he likes."--Richard M. Nixon

Yes, I did find the LA Times obit, seems one of the few to report it, as I said your full of facts. The LA Times obit, one of the few that's out there so far, which again leads me to believe that nobody's perfect, and few do as well, so why sully the memory at this point, not exactly an Ike Turner. I have no problem agreeing with you on a correct premise..."Buddy Miles made a lot of people happy with his music even as he once screwed up badly and came back successfully from it." Your presentation, however, needs a lot of work, with a down your nose phrasing, personal attacks and general pomposity it's hard to take you as a... good debater.

Facts were the issue, Duckie. My use of them was AT issue. And stop snivelling.

I quack, I don't "snivel" nor will I.

Pompous, smart-mouthed, white, straight, rich ass. When I learned of his passing, I put my ear down to the ground, to try to hear the gates of hell slamming shut.

Good riddance. Rest in peace. May you, Mr. Buckley, soon be joined in eternity by Dinesh D'Souza.

And to think, the organist for the Dave Clark Five just passed away as well.