They Eat Their Own

Christopher Buckley made an appearance on the Daily Show last week. He’s actually quite an entertaining fellow and not at all arrogant and full of himself like his father (was). His father—William F. Buckley—was very intelligent and had an enviably large vocabulary, but behaved like an ass whenever he dared to speak to anyone just as intelligent who was simultaneously in possession of irrefutable facts that contradicted his deeply-held beliefs (check YouTube for interviews with Noam Chomsky or Gore Vidal). Though he is (was; see below) a back-page columnist for The National Review, he published the article “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama by Christopher Buckley (The Beast)” in a completely different magazine.

To his surprise, the understanding subscribers of the The National Review were not amused and called for his head. His offer to resign was gladly accepted by the ideologically inflexible management, as detailed in the follow-up article, “Buckley Bows Out of National Review by Christopher Buckley (The Beast)” (in a display of humor, he apparently originally titled it “Sorry, Dad, I Was Fired”). He summed up his feelings thusly:

“I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal.”

That’s the thing about anti-intellectual movements: no room for difference of opinion.