The Odd Couple

 I'm talking about Margaret Hoover and William F. Buckley Jr.

First, this from PBS:

"About Firing Line

Firing Line with Margaret Hoover is a refreshing reprisal of William F. Buckley’s iconic PBS program, a smart, civil and engaging contest of ideas. The series maintains the character of the original, providing a platform that is diligent in its commitment to civility and the rigorous exchange of opinion."

and:

 

Describing Buckley's version of Firing Line as "a smart, civil and engaging contest of ideas" is just pure fantasy.  During Hoover's program there is always a clip from Buckley's performance on the original Firing Line, and that shows nothing but Buckley's always snide attitude toward everyone and every issue.

The question that immediately comes to mind in watching Hoover's version of the program is how "an author, feminist, and gay rights activist" can permit herself to be seen as having some kind of intellectual or political connection to Buckley.

I watched the original Firing Line pretty often in the '60s and '70s.  I was always put off by Buckley's snooty demeanor, but I was not really aware at the time of his deep connections to far right politics.  A thorough examination of those connections was provided recently in an article in The Nation by Robert Sherrill.  Here is just the beginning:

If it is true that the evil men do lives after them, William Francis Buckley can be assured a certain kind of immortality. Or perhaps it is going too far to say that he did evil. That is probably too active a word. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he lived off evil, as mold lives off garbage.

The garbage he is particularly associated with is that which began accumulating in the right-wing alley about forty years ago: McCarthyism, which Buckley took part in by writing speeches for Senator Joe and by praising with majesterial clichés (“McCarthyism is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks”); and the long-forgotten manifestoes of the Young Americans for Freedom, a frenzied campus movement which he helped found in 1960; and his pious defense of the kooks of the John Birch Society as “some of the most morally energetic self-sacrificing and dedicated anti-Communists in America.” In those days Buckley lent his name–as adviser or supporter or officer–to virtually every major crackpot right-wing movement in America, and his ideological soulmates were a group that long ago were banished to history’s padded cell: people like Maj. Gen. Edwin Walker, the Rev. Carl McIntire, Dan Smoot, Dr. Fred Schwarz, Revilo P. Oliver, the Rev. Billy James Hargis, James L. Wick and similar names, which, if you are a genteel person under the age of 45, have probably never passed your lips.

Read the whole article.