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Slate -The Gist Podcast

Trial by Firing Line

How conservative champion William F. Buckley Jr. argued with his friends, how he argued with his foes, and why he thought there should be no argument about Donald Trump.

You didn’t have to agree with William F. Buckley Jr. to marvel at his intellect, his swiftness, and his wit. Starting in 1966, Buckley got to show off his skills every week on Firing Line, his pioneering television show devoted to debate. Heather Hendershot watched nearly 1,500 episodes of the show, and though she still doesn’t agree with Buckley, she admires how he created a place for high-minded argument. Hendershot is the author of Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line.

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The L.A. Times

The conservative rich kid who found his place on television and in politics

How’s this for a story line? Rich kid grows up on the East Coast, not far from Manhattan. He’s utterly convinced of the rightness of his ideas and not at all shy about telling people who disagree with him that they’re wrong and making it abundantly clear that he thinks he’s smarter than they are. His out-there personality draws the attention of television producers, he gets a TV show, becomes a national celebrity and runs for office as a world-class provocateur, taking on both Democrats and the leaders of his own Republican Party. Even though he has never run for anything before, he runs for the biggest office on the ballot and he is quite clearly the intimidator, not the intimidated.

That’s the premise of MIT professor Heather Hendershot’s new book, and as you’ll have immediately realized, it’s a true story. The rich kid is Bill Buckley.

Read the article: http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-ca-jc-buckley-debate-20161026-story.html

The Atlantic Monthly

In the Age of Trump, No Wonder Republicans Miss William F. Buckley

The conservative thinker’s work is a reminder of how intellectually self-satisfied politicians and cable-news have become.

William F. Buckley Jr. could have made Donald Trump quiver with impotent rage. This is a guy who sent Ayn Rand postcards in liturgical Latin just to make her mad, and then bragged about it in her obituary. In part because of his trollish panache, the founder of National Review and longtime host of the television showFiring Line was a conservative mascot in life, and he has become mythologized in death. The 2016 election has made it clear that no one quite like Buckley is working in media today: Republicans are hurting for a cocksure slayer of pseudo-conservative invaders.

No wonder two Buckley retrospectives have come out this October. Open to Debate, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology media-studies professor Heather Hendershot, examines Buckley’s tenure on Firing Line and the diverse ideologies represented on the show.

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MIT News coverage of Open To Debate

Changing the face of conservatism in the U.S.

New book by professor Heather Hendershot explores impact of William F. Buckley’s “Firing Line.”

Peter Dizikes | MIT News Office

“We are in a moment when the loudest voices seem to be the most extreme,” Hendershot says.

And as strongly as Buckley held to his conservative views, Hendershot thinks, he promoted on “Firing Line” a very different ethos of public debate than the one we have today.

“You could come to it as a conservative and become a better, smarter conservative, or come to it as a liberal and become a better, smarter liberal,” Hendershot says. “He was willing to accept that people might listen to a liberal and think, ‘That’s a good idea.’ But he thought he would win. That is a kind of model that we can take a lot from.”

Read the article here: http://news.mit.edu/2016/book-changing-face-conservatism-us-firing-line-1004