I always see this as a shame. But understandable. Often I think about a deceased singer and how lovely it would be hear them sing something that was composed after they passed away. I think like this often when listening to Nat King Cole. But we're just not going to hear him sing 'Michelle' unless someone does a voice synthesizer and gets past all the copyright hurdles there surely would be.
Luckily, there are the recordings of the songs these people did sing, so we're at least left with something. The same goes for people who have been a source of great quotations. Winston Churchill stopped giving the world his frameable utterances the moment he died. As did William F. Buckley Jr. But we have their writings, and other people's memories of what they said or wrote.
Ever since William F. Buckley Jr. ran for mayor of New York City in 1965 and remarked he would "demand a recount" when asked what he would do if he actually won the election, From then on, I knew he was someone I would always enjoy listening to. To me, his answer has continued to be one of the all-time great responses to what was probably really a silly question. No matter, the response was golden.
The tongue-thrashings that he and Gore Vidal had on the TV show 'The Firing Line' were the stuff of legend. No split screens heads talking to the camera, but two people actually on the same stage at the same time. Two verbal-grandmasters against the TV clock, vying for the last, best word. When Bill Buckley passed away in 2008, at least two obituaries used the same word to describe the type of man who had just passed away: a "sesquipedalian."
So imagine how nice I thought it was that in yesterday's NYT Arts section a reporter led off their story about an emerging conservative quarterly publication with something WFB had said. Jennifer Schuessler reminds us of something he once said about his preference to being governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book, rather than by the faculty of Harvard.
As with anything WFB said, you had to look where he was planting his tongue. I know nothing about the context of this remark. You might think it disparages Harvard because he went to Yale, but I doubt it. His 1951 book, 'God and Man at Yale' wasn't too kind to the school he had graduated from only the year before.
I suppose WFB was saying, in what would certainly be his way, that being governed by 2,000 people, as terrible as that sounds, would be far better than if the government were comprised of Harvard academics. Die a thousand deaths, type of thing. Never mind that all Harvard academics probably didn't have unlisted numbers, and might therefore perhaps be amongst those first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book, with Boston being next door to Cambridge. Sometimes, you just can't get away from the enemy.
The quote is a terrific lede to a story about the launching of a conservative quarterly, 'American Affairs' that was announced at the Harvard Club toward the end of February. Bill Buckley founded the conservative 'National Review' in 1955, and was considered a founder of the Conservative party. Bill Buckley's crowning moment came when Ronald Reagan captured the presidency for two terms, 1981-1989.
Apparently, there is someone named Julius Krein, pictured above, who has started the quarterly as its founder and editor. Mr. Krein is a 31 year-old Harvard educated political philosophy major who barely looks a day past 12. But then again, Mr. Buckley, in 1955 was 30 years-old, and presented a similar clean-shaven, youthful, unwrinkled look. Given authentic id, Mr. Krein should be able to be served in New York State.
There are those who speculate what WFB would think of the Trump presidency, but that's all it can ever be: speculation. In 2017, we don't get to hear from someone who passed away in 2008. But it is still nice to hear what they did say cleverly placed in a contemporary context.
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