William F. Buckley and I disagreed on everything from politics to religion to the Beatles (he called them "the crowned heads of antimusic), but we did share a passion for words, and that made him ok by me. I loved The Lexicon: A Cornucopia of Wonderful Words for the Inquisitive Word Lover and I will miss his clever columns.
This from Julia Keller's Chicago Trib obit:
So dapper with that noblesse oblige, so jaunty with that certain je ne sais quoi, he was that rare thing: an intellectual who morphed into a celebrity, so much so that he was the subject of good-natured parodies on TV shows such as "Sesame Street" and "The Smothers Brothers" and the movie "Aladdin."
Yet William F. Buckley Jr., 82, who died Wednesday, was the guiding spirit of a conservative movement that stuck a stick in the spokes of post-New Deal liberalism and pushed Ronald Reagan into the White House.
"Conservatism in the 1950s was in disarray. He cleaned it up," said his son, author Christopher Buckley. "He not only made it intellectually sound—but because of his personal style, he made it cool."
“I get satisfaction of three kinds," said Buckley. "One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven't just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.”
True that. And peace out, Mr. B.
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