Comments on: Mark Judge ponders what happened to Bill Kristol – and so do I

By: miguel cervantes

miguel cervantes — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:14:28 +0000

brought buckley fils up, because he embodied that serpents tooth aphorism, as well as willing to incur the wrath of his formerboss, and father in law, donald gregg, who was a company man, like his father,

By: Cappy

Cappy — Mon, 12 Jun 2023 14:06:43 +0000

I’d be interested in Mike Judge commenting on Billy Crystal.

By: Gordon

Gordon — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 19:10:41 +0000

Back in 2016, when Trump was emerging as a serious candidate, Jonah Goldberg recounted some of the warring back and forth he had done with Trump over the years. He concluded by saying that he would never vote for Donald Trump. I think at the time Goldberg did not believe Trump could win the nomination, much less the presidency.

By: Ann in L.A.

Ann in L.A. — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 21:54:24 +0000

How does a child born to people of frequently true brilliance manage to thrive, when they themselves are ordinary?

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 19:08:16 +0000

And why should conservative pundits care about that? People don’t throw money at solved problems.
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Pundits may be in danger of being out of work, but it will never be due to ‘solved problems’ unless they only right about one thing.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 19:06:46 +0000

In re Christopher Buckley’s gush, there’s no indication Obama ever had a first class temperament or a first class intellect.
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(There is no such thing as a 1st class temperament. Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Richard Nixon had first class intellects, and we all had to suck it up).

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 19:00:53 +0000

Kristol has led a charmed life. His father’s connections got him work for Moynihan, and his father’s fame got him jobs in Reagan’s and then Bush’s administration. From there it’s been think tanks, advocacy groups, and the magazine. Trump’s election and the loss of the magazine must have been bitter blows to him.
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Kristol has a research degree and had the chops for an academic career. He completed his dissertation at a time when history faculties were still willing to hire non-liberals. He could have done other things with his life than what he did.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 18:50:55 +0000

Young Buckley’s view of Obama is a lot like the general view of Biden in 2020. Whether he was right or wrong about Obama, the general view of Biden was definitely wrong.
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Christopher Buckley was 56 years old in 2008. He hasn’t been young in a while.
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WFB hired Richard Brookiser in 1977 with the idea in his head that Brookhiser might be just the person to pass the magazine on to when he was ready to retire. He’d already decided when CB was 25 years old that his son would never be suitable to the task. (He evidently found no one among his 40 odd shirtails he thought it suitable to recruit, either). Eleven years later, he told Brookhiser that the editor’s chair would not be his and he turned it over to John O’Sullivan two years later. He ejected O’Sullivan in 1997 and replaced him with Richard Lowry, who was always inadequate.
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I once attempted to assemble a bibliography of Christopher Buckley’s writing. Just using Reader’s Guide, I found about 300 indexed articles over the period running from 1975 to 2010. Like his books, his magazine articles consisted of humor and travel writing. He placed a couple of articles in The Weekly Standard shortly after it began publication; otherwise, the only organ of the starboard press in which he ever published was his father’s. His contributions tended to be found in the back of the magazine – book reviews, diary entries, and the like. Humor, travel, belles-lettres &c. were his subjects. He’s produced very little topical commentary. He’s had one or two stints working in the White House for Republican officials in the PR apparat writing speeches. To the extent he ever had a political perspective, it was an identification with the pre-Reagan Republican establishment. He’s atypical in a glaring respect: he got his politics and religion not from his father but from his mother. The curious thing about that is that he didn’t much care for his mother.

By: Abraxas

Abraxas — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 18:47:12 +0000

“Delayed adolescent rebellion”? Perhaps. How much it’s a rebellion specifically against his father and how much it’s a delayed adolescent kicking over the traces, a 70-year-old’s Rumspringa, I don’t know. Trump’s been accused of wanting to “burn it all down,” but some anti-Trumpers (the Lincoln Project, for example) also have that mentality.

By: Frederick

Frederick — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 18:45:00 +0000

@stan:But anyone who saw Hillary as better on policy or character was on drugs. And every time they wrote about it, they confirmed their “thinking” was wacked.

I don’t think their thinking, their REAL thinking, was wacked. It was that they couldn’t say what their not-wacked thinking was, without giving the grift away.

The real thinking was that Hillary was an insider and was going to continue to drop slop in the trough for the hogs, and that Trump was an outsider and no one knew what he was going to do. Big business hates uncertainty and prefers bad certainty to uncertainty.

And why should conservative pundits care about that? People don’t throw money at solved problems. There are conservative pundits who really believe in their principles and put that ahead of how they make a living. (I’d put Mark Steyn in this category.) But the less committed ones aren’t going to want to eliminate the status quo in Washington anymore than activists for the homeless really want homelessness solved, or the SPLC really wants racism and anti-Semitism solved, and the March of Dimes didn’t close down when polio disappeared.

Because conservative punditry is not a “product” sold to “consumers”. It’s either done by amateurs like our gracious hostess, or it’s funded by non-profits and corporations, and given away to “consumers”. A world in which people like Trump get elected is not a world that listens to conservative punditry and so non-profits and corporations are going to put their money elsewhere to achieve their goals.

So the less-principled pundits first tried to destroy Trump, then when that didn’t work, just went over to the side willing to throw them money.