Super-liberal reaches the end of the road . . . or does he?

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Back in the 1970s, a pair of polar opposites hit the American scene. One, the super-conservative, was William F. Buckley, the owner and publisher of the National Review, the country's first conservative magazine, who had written a book, "God and Man at Yale," shortly after he'd graduated from that college. He had an oily voice, but on TV he put across an argument or counterargument with aplomb, and could never be said to lose a debate. You could be a political arch-liberal, but as you listened to Buckley he so gradually won you over that soon you could vote to have the English king take over the United States again. He appeared frequently to break the sanctimoniousness of Sunday morning TV shows, and it was a treat to watch and listen to him tear apart his opponents. Which he invariably did, of course. The theme song of his own TV show was, naturally, one of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos. How's that for pandering to the American TV audience!

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