Sunday, October 12, 2008

Sorry Chris Buckley...Your Dad Would Hurl

Chris Buckley, son of the late Wiliam F. Buckley, the founder of the National Review wrote a column in something called the Daily Beast entitled `Sorry, Dad, I'm voting for Obama'.

Buckley's reasons, neatly summarized, go something like this; Sarah Palin is a redneck yahoo breeder who represents a kook fringe in America, and John McCain is a nice guy but he was ape poopy to pick her as his vice president:

"My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.” {...}

Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best.(...)

John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994 “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?"


He then goes on to refer to Obama as having first class temperament and intellect.

Let me make this as plain as possible. Buckley's entitled to vote for anyone he pleases. And as a matter of fact, I agree with his characterization of McCain as making some unrealistic promises - the word pander comes to mind - and changing his positions in an unseemly way...but is he seriously trying to suggest that Obama hasn't been guilty of the same things, only more so? And to underline Buckley's intellectual dishonesty, he as much as admits that in the last part of his piece.

Nah...for Buckley, it's all about Sarah Palin.

I expect Chris Buckley doesn't remember this, since he was probably quite young or perhaps merely a future event at the time, but Bill Buckley's chief achievement in 'separating the Right from kooks', as he puts it, was to drum racists and Jew haters out of the conservative movement and to marginalize them. William F. Buckley acknowledged that goal on a number of occasions, and had the courage to make it happen. That's an historical part of what the National Review was all about, back at its' beginnings.

And yet, Chris Buckley is proud to endorse a man who sat in a racist and anti-Semitic church for two decades without saying a word, who's hero was the arch anti-Semite Malcolm X,who participated in the Nation of Islam's Million Man march and said nothing while Louis Farakhan demonized Jews from the stage? Somebody with long standing connections to the Nation of Islam and the Saudis?

And he has the nerve to accuse Sarah Palin of being part of the 'kook fringe?'

My, my. Such sloppy, biased thinking.

Mr. Buckley, your late father would be embarrassed for you.I know I am.


6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Chris Buckley, like his father, is far smarter than the Republicans that would vote for a potted plant before crossing party lines. The sins of Obama's pastor are not his, and the repeated guilt-by-association diatribe is as old as it is ineffective--as the polls clearly indicate. Meanwhile, Palin's willing participation in an exorcism done by a witch doctor speaks volumes about her, because it is her actions (rather than an associate's) that we judge her by. Chris Buckley understands this fundamental difference, while you, apparently, do not. I hope the police start writing you up for your neighbor's speeding, then perhaps you'll understand the injustice you are propagating...

Freedom Fighter said...

Hello Anonymous 8:35,
So, Democrats are not partisan, eh?
Puh-leeze.

As for guilt by association, tell me..if McCain had sat in a church for two decades where the pastor was a member of the Klan, would you have something to say about it? You bet you would.G-d knows the Obama-ites find anything that disagrees with the Chosen One to be racism, no?

As a matter of fact, speaking of guilt by association, haven't you provided us with a superb example by accusing Sarah Palin of `participating in an exorcism'?

You're talkiing about her gracious acceptance of a Kenyan pastor's prayer for her that including a line about protection form evil spirits (like you, for example).

The nerve of them Christians!!

I've seen the video, bubba, and your characterization of it is false and misleading, to say the least.

You also don't address the other instances of Obama's tacit acceptance of racism and anti-Semitism I mentioned aside from Trinity, so we'll assume those stand.

Thanks for dropping by.

ff

Anonymous said...

Buckley must be supremely happy that now the biggest news story attached to his name is no longer one about a soul-less man who decides not to increase the child support of his disinherited and mentally disabled son. While the mother will still likely follow her claim for more support with a veracity that will rival Anna Nicole Smith's bogus pursuit of a piece of the Marshall estate, Buckley has distracted the media with this announcement. However, taking the heat off from one source is likely to invite it from another, the Right will butcher him from their outlets but I am sure he decided to grin and bear it before he "came out."

Freedom Fighter said...

I suppose this is what you're talking about, Bellicoso.

I guess what bothers me most about this is the kid not having a dad, but perhaps he's better off,given that his father wants nothing to do with him..

However, it does explain why Buckley hates Sarah Palin. Her special needs kid is a loved and valued member of her family to her, while to Buckley his special needs son born out of wedlock is an embarrassment and an inconveniece to him...guilt on his part, maybe?

ff

Anonymous said...

No doubt Biden’s womanizing and lack of intelligence was just far superior to Palin’s. Obama also showed his ability for pragmatism and compromise in his own words I have my pen and my phone. What he forgot was executive orders have no standing authority his arrogance prevented what he could have been. Very soon it became quite clear Obama couldn’t carry on intelligent conversation unless the teleprompter was on then it was ah ah ah. A man who saw a father who possessed the greatest oratory I’ve ever seen had a son who imagined something in a presidential candidate who obviously didn’t possess it.

Anonymous said...

Nearly 12 years since it’s a decision he regrets over and over. How could I allow myself to support a man who could speak without a teleprompter? How could a I pick a Vice President with beginning stages of dementia? How could I waste my time on a man who clearly wasn’t ready for the job? Simple Chris because you along with a small 8% of the party bought into the Obama BS that he was dynamic in truth he was an empty suit who once the curtain was opened. Other then pet executive orders to chum his base he orchestrated the most anemic recovery in history. Obama in his own words had his boot on the neck of the recovery. In his party economic success is dangerous it leads to free citizens in no need of government