His previous thoughts on McCain include, "He is extremely stupid and he's a slow study—you can't teach him anything."

He doesn't seem to be a big fan of Obama, either, mystifyingly referring to "the United States of America, as Mr. Obama likes to call it."

On George W. Bush? "Bush is a thug."

On George H.W. Bush:

"...yes, [George W.] is very dumb, but his father's dumber. Poppy. When I was at Exeter, Poppy was at Andover, and Poppy's son George W. also went to Andover, where he was a cheerleader. A very distinguished cheerleader.

What about Reagan? Vidal once called him "a triumph of the embalmer's art." He also used to refer to Reagan as "the acting president," which is pretty funny.

On one of the nation's founding fathers, John Adams? He "waddled into history."

• "There was more of a flow to my output of writing in the past, certainly. Having no contemporaries left means you cannot say, 'Well, so-and-so will like this,' which you do when you’re younger. You realize there is no so-and-so anymore. You are your own so-and-so. There is a bleak side to it."
• "My general response to boarding school was: anything to get away from that fucking mother of mine. She was a monster."
• "When I was young, I was bored shitless with being desired by others. I don’t look in the mirror anymore."
• "I lived with Howard for fifty years, but what we had was certainly not romantic love, not passionate love. And it certainly was nonsexual. Try and explain that to the fags."
• "Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country."
• "When she was running for the Senate, Hillary’s psephologists discovered that the one group that really hated her was white, middle-aged men of property. She got the whole thing immediately — I heard she said, “I remind them of their first wife.” [Esquire via Hollywood-Elsewhere]

We're glad these two didn't die like Jefferson and Adams, on the same day, long having made up with each other. The other nice thing is that now that Buckley's dead, he can't sue Vidal for libel anymore, as he did when Esquire published Vidal's prose account of their most famous televised battle. ("Esquire cravenly agreed to settle with him for a few paragraphs worth of free advertising for his weird little magazine," Vidal reports.)

(That battle took place on ABC during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, a scene of civil disobedience and gross police brutality as Mayor Daley's cops beat the shit out of the yippies and hippies assembled to witness the party's coronation of miserable old Hubert Humphrey. The violence escalated, Buckley and Vidal's arguments became more heated. Buckley defended the cops, someone compared the demonstrators to Nazis, and Vidal said that the only crypto-Nazi he knew of in the room was Buckley. Over the cross-talk, Buckley called Vidal a "queer" and threatened to punch Vidal in the "goddamn face." The video is readily available.)

Vidal has, it seems not forgiven Buckley; either for the insults or for his role in ushering in the 20th century's conservative ascendancy. The accusations pile up: "Although Buckley was often drunk and out of control, he was always a spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude." That's how you remember the dead.

Vidal is unsatisfied with Newsweek's characterization of that television event, in which he is painted as one in a series of "bullies" that Buckley would not suffer. The offending passage, with Vidal's annotations in brackets:

Buckley bridled at bullies [we are assured]. But one of the rare times he lost his temper was debating Gore Vidal, who "got under his skin," says son Chris. When Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi," Buckley responded, "Now listen, you queer, you stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." But usually his public manners were genteel [I think they mean gentile]. With "Firing Line" guests who seemed nervous or over their heads, Buckley was gentle. Behind the scenes, he could show remarkable kindness. In 1980, a rising conservative star, Congressman Bob Bauman, was soliciting a 16-year-old [male] for oral sex. Bauman had been a gay-basher, and he instantly became a pariah. The next day, knowing what lay ahead for the disgraced congressman, Buckley quietly gave him an envelope containing $10,000. "He was a knightly man," says Chris.

And Vidal's response:

Next, the loyal son, suspecting that the pejorative use of "queer" is politically incorrect in mag-land, Christopher rambles into a story about his father's kindness to a Mr. Bauman who had lost his seat in Congress after the congressman had been caught while soliciting Oral Sex from a 16-year-old male (note how prurient Newsweek's prose is, in describing undesirable people). Chris weeps into his computer as he describes how Dad gave the poor sinner of the flesh an envelope containing $10,000 (I bet?) in cash adding, mysteriously, "He was a knightly man": Who was—the cocksucker recipient of Buckley's charity? Or his admirer, Mr. Buckley himself?—Bauman was very right wing, it is said. RIP WFB—in hell.

"RIP WFB—in hell." Not quite epigrammatic, but decidedly economical.

If you're thirsting for more, the Vidal article that got Esquire sued is, naturally, available on the internet, despite being wiped from the Esquire archives. (The portion that led to the libel suit is when Vidal accuses a young Buckley of vandalizing a church as payback for the minister allowing Jews to move into their neighborhood.) It's chock-full of quality zingers, such as this, from when Vidal recounts how Buckley accused him of being a degenerate due to the outrageous content of Vidal's Myra Breckenridge: "Simply to go by their books, Agatha Christie is a mass murderess, while William Buckley is a practicing Christian."

Hah. It's too bad all of Vidal's enemies are now dead. President Bush is scarcely a worthy adversary. It's a shame how he seems to get along with Christopher Hitchens.

Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead [TruthDig]

Buckley was born in New York City, to a wealthy Irish Catholic and a Southerner. The family moved to Connecticut, he was schooled in Paris and London, and he attended Yale—the perfect resume for a man who'd become a caricature of condescending East Coast snobbishness before that was turned into a Liberal trait. It was a caricature Buckley happily lived up to, dropping ten-dollar words into his prose with obvious obnoxious glee, tempting lesser writers to imitate his parody-of-erudition style at their peril. It's a perilous task because few can match his skill with a biting quip:

Ten years ago [Gore Vidal] wrote in The Nation an essay denouncing pro-Israeli activity in the United States as divided loyalty. The article and its implications were denounced by Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, as "the most blatantly anti-Semitic outburst to have appeared in a respectable American periodical since World War II." Mr. Vidal retorted by questioning the patriotism of Mr. Podhoretz and his wife, the author Midge Decter, and reacted to another critic of his article, a rabbi, with the sigh, "Luckily, I am used to being lied about." I commented at the time that anyone who lies about Mr. Vidal is doing him a kindness.

ZING, Gore!

Buckley zinged liberal-leaning author/essayist/blue-blooded creep Gore Vidal many times in his lengthy career, though not always with such class. In what is still arguably the greatest live TV moment ever, Buckley and Vidal got into a heated exchange on ABC news in 1968 that quickly turned personal (and AWESOME):

Listen to that dueling received pronunciation! In case you missed the meat of the debate in the crosstalk, Vidal called Buckley a "cypto-Nazi" (which Vidal later, accurately, corrected to "crypto-fascist"), and Buckley responded with, "listen you queer ['quee-ah'], stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll pop you in the goddamn face and you'll stay plastered."

Buckley and Vidal later repeatedly sued and counter-sued each other for libel and such, which was the style at the time.

Buckley founded The National Review in 1955, when the New Deal and World War II had basically made "true" conservativism temporarily obsolete in American letters and thought. He championed the candidacy of MAVERICK ARIZONA SENATOR Barry Goldwater, a dangerous nut who lost in a landslide, but whose followers and ideas would eventually come to dominate the nation's political scene.

The National Review still exists, Goldwater Republicans are still enjoying the fruits of their eventual success, and the conservative movement as a whole has seized upon the culture wars with such fervor that a high-falutin' fancy-talkin' New York college boy like Buckley would never, ever achieve such prominence in the movement he nurtured, should he come around today. Because he'd obviously be a big stupid quee-ah.

So fuck him for foisting upon us this anti-intellectual bullshit mess of a nation we've become, but we're glad that his followers helped destroy the intellectual heart of his ideology.

Buckley is survived by his hip satirical novelist son Christopher, his pale imitation of its former self magazine, and George Will's wardrobe and middle initial.

William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead At 82 [NYT]

"I got there about 7:30 and the front hall of the Natural History Museum was packed. First sighting: Tina Brown talking to Steve Kroft from 60 minutes. They were in a group of 4-5 people, but I didn't recognize any of the others. I couldn't really hear what they were talking about, but when I walked by to get past them Kroft was making a joke about someone needing media training. Tina looked good—she was in older-fancy-lady chic: the pseudo men's white shirt with a stiff pulled up collar, and an ankle length slim black skirt. I saw at least two other ladies wearing a similar outfit (how embarrassing). Jhumpa Lahiri, one of PEN's VP's, was also there and looking lovely in a little black dress. Saw Lloyd Grove (I'm pretty sure it was him) towering over some lady. Fran Leibowitz walked past—she looked really bored. Tim Russert was gabbing away, looking jovial and ruddy-faced (He was the event emcee). David Remnick was also in attendance, wearing a suit, not a tux. Alex Kuczynski had a gorgeous flowy dress. It was black with red details on top, and patterned on the bottom. Her body was bangin' but her face looked cryptkeeperish. I saw her again later when I went down to the dinner. She was rearranging the place cards at her table before the other guests got there." (Bad manners!)

"Tina Brown, as one of the Gala Chairs, started off the event. She made some joke about Scooter Libby which nobody laughed at because they were too busy completely ignoring her. Seriously, people were so rude this year, like even ruder than usual. They talked throughout almost the entire thing. They stopped talking only twice. The first time was to listen to Gore Vidal, who won, from what I could gather, a Lifetime Achievement type award. He looked pretty dapper in his shiny wheelchair, and gave a rambling speech that befits his age and station. He got a laugh when he described the current administration as "leprous." He got a collective muted gasp when he said "The New Yorker was a good magazine when Tina Brown was heading it..." But then went on to say "And now (insert incredibly long pregnant pause) it's even better." It was a real Tina Brown love-fest for Gore, though. He called her "the best editor to hit this little island." And also said, "If I had the money I'd buy her a mag." (He said mag, I'm not just being a lazy typist). Kissing up, huh. Wonder what Gore's last advance was?"

"I will get this part out really quickly cause I know it'll be boring to you soulless fucks, but I was really moved by the story of the Freedom to Write award recipient, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, who couldn't be in attendance because he was IN JAIL IN CUBA. Seriously. His crime was writing articles criticizing the Cuban government. His mom came instead, and she got a standing ovation. (Her speech was the second instance of the crowd shutting up). It was really cool that PEN was honoring this man, but it would have been even cooler if they had used the thousands of dollars they undoubtedly spent on the "gala" towards maybe getting proper legal help to this guy (or something more useful). They did raise $1 million dollars, though. Wonder if that's before or after party expenses? Also the food was gross (some really nasty cold green creamy soup that tasted minty, with what was essentially two potato chips and a little caviar to start; filet mignon, corn, and some unidentified light yellow mush underneath. It wasn't mashed potatoes. Not sure exactly what it was.) I left before dessert."

Along came in the '20s a bunch of near-illiterates, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, who couldn't spell. Max Perkins, his hack editor at Scribner, would help him turn his prose into recognizable English. Somehow in the world of hackdom it's got out that every writer needs a stern person as teacher behind him, who will tell him 'i before e except after c.' I've never known a good writer who needed an editor. Many of them have been destroyed by good editors. Luckily, no one knows how to edit anymore either, so I think that phase is over.

[The Reading Experience via Maud Newton]