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October 14, 2008
Christopher Buckley Offers Resignation to NR After Endorsing Obama; It's "Briskly" Accepted
Allah's bothered by the enforcement of orthodoxy.
Eh, sucks. But in defense of NR, hey, they fired Ann Coulter for damaging their brand. Brand's important. And let's face it: I am unaware of anyone I know quoting Christopher Buckley on virtually anything at all. The last thing I can even remember him maybe writing was a book review about something or other. Pretty sure of that, actually, but what did he say? What books? No idea.
People actually read Ann Coulter. So, she has that over Christopher Buckley.
So I guess I'm kinda-sorta saying that when your usefulness to a company is low, and in fact is frankly primarily a nepotistic courtesy, maybe you ought to refrain from upping your net negatives any further.
The H.L. Mencken quote on the masthead I actually got from a disposable and lame Christopher Buckley "thriller" called Wet Works. It appeared as the book's epigraph, and is the only thing I took away from it. The book, I'm saying, did not demonstrate the rara avis Chris Buckley finds so compelling in Barack Obama's ghostwritten books.
And frankly, I just don't believe that any sort of conservative would actually endorse a radical and socialist. So it seems to me a rather important qualification for an NR gig -- actually being a conservative -- is unmet here.
His father did not declare that the mission of conservatism was to stand athwart history yelling "Go Obama, Go!"
Christopher Buckley is entitled to his personal political journey from soft right to soft (?) left. But he isn't necessarily entitled to have a column in a prestigious conservative magazine.
I don't believe he has any corrupt agenda here. But let's face it -- no one was talking about Christopher Buckley before this endorsement, and we all now know he will become a fixture on television and get a great book deal and syndicated column from... well, every liberal MSM outlet. Conservatives hate that, the sudden elevation of the David Brocks and John Deans to national prominence, always at our expense, and always because it's at our expense.
So I really don't fear the Stalinism angle here. He's about to become a star, baby, a thought I'm quite sure has occurred to him since this imbroglio (if not before). It's not like anyone's denying him his daily bread.
TomV--
Did anyone read his piece? It was ridiculous.
It was basically this: McCain is stupid to know that what he proposes will not happen and Obama is too smart to actually try to do what he says he will.
Seriously. That was his reasoning.
It was a joke.
To answer the question: I for one didn't. But then, again, the last time I read Buckley was just for a book review; I didn't even know he was the writer when I clicked over to it.
JackStraw--
Buckley embodies the cringeworthy combination of inherited wealth, elite prep school indoctrination and lack of any personal accomplishments that infests too much of the Republican party. If you substitute affirmative action school and work freebees for inherited wealth, this generation of Buckley is a lot closer to Obama than to his dad. They both live in a bubble that is rarely intruded upon by the real world and where witty prose is all.
Don't let the door hit you on the way out, Chris.
Ouch, baby. Very ouch.