WFB's passing glory

K-Lo sees continuity between Bill Buckley's passing and Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" hitting No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller's list (which is, it must be said, an achievement my book didn't remotely come close to doing, so hat's off to Jonah). James Poulos, though, sees this sort of thing as evidence of decline. First, though, remarks by Ezra Klein:

As a slightly more general point, in the last two or three years, a whole host of giants have passed away, men who were political thinkers at a time when that made you a cultural figure. John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Norman Mailer, and now, William F. Buckley Jr. Gore Vidal is just about the last of their number left. And that's a shame. They would write serious books of political analysis and sell millions of copies -- they were the writers you had to read to call yourself an actual political junkie. Now, the space they inhabited in the discourse is held by the Coulters and O'Reilly's of the world. Where we once prized a tremendous facility for wit, we're now elevating those with a tremendous storehouse for anger. Run a search on quotes from Galbraith, Buckley, or Friedman, then do the same for O'Reilly and Coulter. We're really losing something here. And we don't even have Molly Ivins around to wrest it back.

To which Poulos says:

'We' are not producing tremendous storehouses of wit, because 'we' are not producing intellectual aristocrats as we once did -- a generations-long project that actually cannot be preplanned and gamed out and effectively managed by any kind of hive mind or professional organization. At the same time, 'we' are not even producing an audience for intellectual aristocrats as we once did -- a generations-long project, etc., etc. I would point out that rarely nowadays do the professionally angry make it big without also having an immense talent for public sarcasm. The incredible opportunity provided to the lowbrow by a public taste for being able to mean something and not mean it at the same time has more or less directly resulted in fame and fortune for the Snark Class, who have fanned out across the entire infotainment world.

Snark sells. Anger sells. Denunciation sells. If Bill Buckley, or Russell Kirk, or any number of great men (and women) of a previous generation of public intellectual showed up today, nobody would give them a hearing. Go back and watch some of those old "Firing Line" discussions on YouTube. I did so last night, and had two reactions: 1) Wow, this is amazing -- how is it that political chat TV used to be so complex and elegant; and later 2) Man this is making me jumpy.

It made me jumpy because I've been conditioned, as have we all, to the quick-cut repartee of contemporary television. When I lived in NYC and worked for the NYPost and later, NR, I did a fair amount of television. I found it a frustrating experience. I'd prepare for these things, but in the event realize that preparation actually hurt one's appearance. The producers didn't want you to do anything more than present a point of view, quickly, sharply and forcefully. And when you were challenged by the Other Guy, your job was to jump in -- "don't worry about interrupting," I was often told -- and restate your point of view even more forcefully. Quick in, quick out, done. If you stopped to listen to what your opponent was saying, and respond thoughtfully, you gave the impression that you had lost the point. You looked weak.

This is one reason why there's such an audience for screed-books: TV conditioning. Keep It Simple, Stupid. And now, as Poulos goes on to say, we reward a different kind of "smart." The smart public commentator is one who knows how to market him or herself. It's cleverness substituting for wisdom. Entertainment substituting for learning. Of course one should be careful not to assume that writing something turgid and dull that nobody wants to read is a sign of virtue, and that whatever's popular must by that fact be crap. Still, who's writing the big smart books for a general readership these days?

I have to say, too, that as much as I love blogs -- and I hope you do too -- they really aren't conducive to producing important thought, and making a lasting contribution to the culture. A friend of mine who is a well-known intellectual and prominent magazine writer once brought up the idea of his doing a blog. I told him not to do it. It becomes difficult to maintain the kind of long stretches of contemplation necessary to produce thought that has lasting impact. I told him that my blog, this blog, is a real pleasure to write, but that it has been impossible for me to get my second book off the ground. It's not only the work on the blog that eats into my time, but also the fact that I'm always reading blogs, and reading new books to find something to blog about (and write my column about). The blogging medium is training my mind to focus on the quick hit, the immediate. And its making my output as a writer as ephemeral as it is prodigious. I advised my friend to stick with writing books and long-form magazine articles, which can't be dashed off, and which produce habits of mind and of craftsmanship that produce work that endures.

Then again, if you can write good, important books, significant journalism and produce a lively, well-read blog, you are an Ubermensch.