Remembering Pat Buckley
Wednesday December 3, 2008
Categories: Varia
Bob Colacello's wonderful remembrance of Pat Buckley and her life with husband William F. Excerpt: As Gstaad became more and more social, in the 70s, so did the scene at the Buckleys'. Nan Kempner would show up every February and...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Sounds awfully pompous and hoity-toity to me.
"How can you not love a woman like that?"
As a person who loves and feeds squirrels, it's easy.
Fierce and imposing is certainly one way to put it.
Another way would use a particular word which rhymes with witch.
And it takes all of three comments for some guy to be calling some woman he doesn't even know a bitch online. Lovely.
I'm no fan of the Buckleys, but isn't this whole post just the celebrity culture in action? Idolatry begets trashing, which begets indignant defense, and so on and so forth. But I guess it's okay if the celebrities in question are Buckleys and Reagans. I can hardly wait till Christopher's memoir comes out. Oh! The pearl-clutching that will ensue! I must select an appropriate vintage to go with my popcorn.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, so I'll confine myself to the observation that, while it is no disgrace to be very rich and very eccentric, it's no great honor either.
Yes, it is very easy to be conservative and not believe in government intervention when your servants are making you stuffed pheasant and fois gras, and your decisions involve which wealthy friends will visit and which wealthy friends will host you. To people who don't have health care and struggle to feed their famiies government intervention isn't just a philosophical construct.
I'm trying this again, as my first attempt was "held for approval." Probably because I spelled out the beyotch word, which thomas tucker saw fit to deploy, but coyly veiled. Trying again, with decorous asterisk this time.
And it takes all of three comments for some guy to be calling some woman he doesn't even know a b*tch online. Lovely.
I'm no fan of the Buckleys, but isn't this whole post just the celebrity culture in action? Idolatry begets trashing, which begets indignant defense, and so on and so forth. But I guess it's okay if the celebrities in question are Buckleys and Reagans. I can hardly wait till Christopher's memoir comes out. Oh! The pearl-clutching that will ensue! I must select an appropriate vintage to go with my popcorn.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum, so I'll confine myself to the observation that, while it is no disgrace to be very rich and very eccentric, it's no great honor either.
My impression from this little excerpt: Pat was Sarah Palin with money.
I never met Pat, but Bill hosted me and a half-dozen conservative writers one afternoon in Austin, where he was speaking. We were bowled over by his hospitality. I mean, he'd never met any of us before, but he invited us to his suite and had wine and cheese brought in. (That's no small expense at a fine hotel.)
He and Pat were products of Old World manners and a Catholic culture. They could befriend people of any stripe or status, and they did.
Pat was an anachronism. Or, putting it more bluntly, a broad.
No one can question that Pat Buckley--zipping of to Gstaad and spending most of her time with other wealthy layabouts--also raised tons of money for charities. While her husband was being ugly towards people with AIDS, Pat was raising money for AIDS programs. She was clearly a kind hostess and warmed to people quickly. Her largesse in New York is legendary.
May Pat Buckley rest in peace.
But just how crunchy a conservative are you, Rod, that you are infatuated by this woamn? Or is the big attraction killing the squirrels (something I venture to guess you didn't get around to as a boy)? It's not like she skinned them, dressed them, and fried them up for a garden party. That would seem to be more in keeping with the conservativism you claim.
Mmmm...roast pheasant - reminds me of home on Christmas break c. 1981, picking birdshot and microthin bone-slats out of dark meat washed down with fizziest shomPONya, and forkfuls of wild rice twirled in mushroomed gravy - Marcel Proust, meat your art out!
From Niv: The Authorized Biography of David Niven by Graham Lord, two must-read pages on the Nivens, Buckleys and Galbraiths:
"He was my best friend", Pat Buckley told me, "and I still miss him", before refusing to say any more because she was so upset to think of him even nineteen years after his death."
"David and my wife had a tremendous attraction to each other", Bill Buckley, now 75, told me at his house in New York, "and at the end of his life he wrote her to say she was his closest friend on earth. He was witty and a wonderful, wonderful friend, and there wasn't a negative aspect to him."
http://tinyurl.com/5v7bd4
Speaking of Andy Warhol and his protégé, the celebrity profiler Bob Colacello, the RCC, and consecrated carbonation:
"As a graduate student in the Film department at Columbia University in New York, his first publications doubled as his class essays and homework assignments. In 1970, Colacello wrote a review of Andy Warhol's film Trash, which he hailed as a 'great Roman Catholic masterpiece'. This review garnished the attention of Warhol...At one point, Warhol suggested Colacello change his name to Bob Cola, in order to sound more 'pop.'"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Colacello
I've been reading you for about a year now, and I'm always struck by the contrast between your intelligence and warmth, and the rancid ignorance of so many people who post here. I wonder: why do they bother? Why do they read you? Why do they comment? You write a good post on a terrific couple, and your readers respond like feral animals. This site seems to attract a particularly low order of nasty class warriors, obnoxious gays, and hardened socialists, all of them marinated in an intractable ignorance.
Tom: "I'm always struck by the contrast between your intelligence and warmth, and the rancid ignorance of so many people who post here. I wonder: why do they bother? Why do they read you? Why do they comment? You write a good post on a terrific couple, and your readers respond like feral animals."
Go to the "Reformed Chicks Blabbing" blog and check out the comboxes in response to the post, "Abortion is the number one cause of death in Spain." (November 30th.)If you think these comments are nasty,those comments will put hair on your chest.
I'm not a class warrior, I'm just classy. And I don't see anything classy about dining with the likes of Taki, a crude and crass snob who brags about how macho he is and how much coke he has snorted.
Tom, thanks for saying what I was thinking.
I suspect there are many people frustrated with their day job who take it out in online forums where no one can hold them accountable.
Ah, another brief paleo appearance on the stage of our Thimple Theatre of the Greek paytoplayboyleocon Tacky Thermidorapocalypse, the Lobster Little of the French Revelation..."This guy is falling!": yes, that's just Tacky, holding his liquor in one hand and calling his staff to a tension with the other...
Scott, one of the dangers of thinking you're clever is that you might not be.
sigaliris- you are incorrect in your assumption that I never met her. I did and can testify that my impression is not an isolated one. Having said that, I'll admit that to some people the glass may seem half-empty and to others half-full.
I agree that her husband was perfectly polite and considerate, in contrast to her.
As to those who think nothing ill should be said, I suppose you'll only want to read hagiography rather than biography.
One of the blessings of attracting fans cleverer than yourself - as well as having no fear whatever of ridicule - comes in seeing confirmed truths you grasped decades ago - but persisted in ignoring once you discovered the practice of fiction was far more fun...
Infant, one moment of the ecstasy of life as we live it would strike you dead. - The Ancient, Back to Methuselah by George Bernard Shaw.
I live in terror of not being misunderstood. - Gilbert, The Critic as Artist by Oscar Wilde.
I am The Whistler. - Jethro Tull; James McNeill Whistler
I wish *I* had said that. - Oscar Wilde.
You will, Oscar, you will. - Whistler.
Sonny, when you're done with Oscar would you get back here and finish painting my portrait? - Whistler's Mother.
Coming, Mother! - Whistler; Henry Aldrich.
thomas tucker, whether or not you ever met Pat Buckley is completely irrelevant to the inappropriateness of your comment. You are incorrect in your assumption that I prefer hagiography over biography. If you were reading here when the subject of Frank Schaeffer's "Crazy for God" came up, you'd know that. I met WFB, though I was rather young when I did, and I'm aware of how he treated some conservatives to whom I'd have thought he owed more respect than he showed. I don't agree with Rod's assessment of either his character or his life's work. However, to say that is a far cry from calling him a dirty, degrading name in a public forum. I'm surprised that common decency doesn't stop you from calling a dead woman who can't defend herself a b*tch, and I'm also surprised that I, being as I said no fan of the Buckleys, am the only person willing to chide you for it. You can say she had an abrasive personality, if you like. You can say you met her and didn't like her. But you can't call her a b*tch and get any respect from me.
Ever since reading about how smart and witty and brilliant Pat Buckley was I've felt sorry for the waste of it.
All that talent focused on making sure Bill Buckley had clean shorts.
Scott, one of the dangers of thinking and being clever--as you so subtly point out by allusion above--is that dolts may drool vacantly at your wit. I prove myself no dolt by falling (like this guy, in shards of blue and wisps of purest vapor) about in laughter. Paytoplayboyleocon has got to be the best coinage issued in the dynasty of the Ragnarokons.
sigarilis- as I am sure you are aware, I don't care if I get any respect from you.
But let me ask you this, would you consider it inappropriate for me to say that she was rude, bitter, and hateful?
That is basically what I am saying by saying that she acted like a b**ch. If you don't care for it, tant pis, but that is the way it was when I met her, and the way she is described in many anecdotes.
Tom: Scott, one of the dangers of thinking you're clever is that might not be.
Tom, one of the dangers of appearing boorish is that you are.
I second Sig's comments about Scott Lahti. I never fail to laugh out loud at his very clever word plays. Pat Buckley would no doubt have revelled in his wit.
BTW, check out the "Judaism and agrarianism' and the "Dhimmi bishops strike again" threads. Several gems there. Viz. Dhimmi Moore - my favorite canned stew -- now with zero trans fatwas.
When I read that I had to go have a dhimmi-tasse of de-kaffirnated Kofi to calm down. (I know, I know, I'm no Scott Lahti!)
Upon further reflection, I'll retract my comments and say that I wish I had not made them. It was indeed a rude thing to say and I regret that. Some things are better left unsaid.
Yes, thomas tucker, I understand that you don't care whether I respect you or not, and I also understand that you retracted your comments based on your own principles and not due to anything I said. Having established that, I still feel compelled to express my respect for you. It takes some magnanimity of mind to retract a statement once made. Many people can't do it for any reason. You are one of those who can, and for that I do very much respect you.
Tom
December 3, 2008 12:45 PM
I've been reading you for about a year now, and I'm always struck by the contrast between your intelligence and warmth, and the rancid ignorance of so many people who post here. I wonder: why do they bother? Why do they read you? Why do they comment? You write a good post on a terrific couple, and your readers respond like feral animals. This site seems to attract a particularly low order of nasty class warriors, obnoxious gays, and hardened socialists, all of them marinated in an intractable ignorance.
It is also, I'll wager, one of the most highly trafficked blogs on Beliefnet.
Scott, keep the wordplay coming.
And these anecdotes about Pat Buckley make me smile. It sounds like she was quite an individual.
Sigaliris: It takes some magnanimity of mind ...
Sig, I value you highly certainly not least as an extremely creative wordsmith. But you must know that magnanimity can only be of mind i.e. magni animi. We have neither of us abandoned either Catholicism or the Classics so far as to forget our Latin heritage, have we? We remain Catholic Sceptics at heart, no?. :-)
Quibus dictis, I again second your just sentiments regarding Thomas Tucker. He has revealed himself a Gentleman and a Scholar. I hope I should have the humility and greatness of mind to admit an uncharacteristic faux pas (of which I have made legion). My compliments and my esteem is yours, Mr. Tucker. I hope to read you further here.
Thanks, Roland--I knew there was something wrong with that phrase! Your correction is appreciated. ; )
I'm all for good manners, but I think the squirrel anecdote (told in this space more than once) shows reprehensible behavior. For shame.
Thank you, gentlemen.
Sig- it was your chastisement that brought me to my senses. In fact, I thought twice about posting my original comment and should have listened to my better instincts. I was wrong to say what I did and it was most uncharitable. There is too much incivility in this world as it is, and I am sorry that I added any more.
Sorry- that post should have been under my name.
I doubt anyone is still reading this, but thomas tucker, I wasn't chastising you. I found the act of shooting the squirrels reprehensible, not your earlier comment. I like decorous behavior, but I think your elaborate apologies weren't really necessary.
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