The More Things Change
In the mid 1990s, a popular destination on the nascent World Wide Web was a quiz asking “Did Al Gore say it? Or was it the Unabomber?” Its successor is now online: Professor or hobo — you make the call!
Also on the Web, and free for members of Amazon Prime, is this 1966 edition of William F. Buckley’s Firing Line, with his guest, David Susskind. Hosting his own talk show, surrounded by his fellow liberals, Susskind could be a charming man — a 1970 edition of his show, with guests including Mel Brooks, David Steinberg and George Segal debating the topic of “How to be a Jewish Son” is an hour of absolute blackout comedy. But having to defend his worldview with Buckley, Susskind comes across as coarse, brittle and hectoring. (And Buckley returns the favor with acid wit, remarking, “Mr. Susskind is a staunch liberal. If there were a contest for the title Mr. Eleanor Roosevelt, he would unquestionably win it” — a reminder of how Buckley’s show earned its name, in contradistinction to WFB’s much more courtly later reputation.)
But what’s really fascinating are how the same topics we explore today in the Blogosphere were current in 1966 as well, and were batted back by Susskind with the same circular logic the left uses today: No, there’s no bias in the media at all. But if there is, it’s only because we don’t want to appeal to you troglodytic conservatives. No, there’s no indoctrination in college, none at all. But if there is, it’s only to prevent students from becoming like you cretinous reactionaries. And hey, was the half-Jewish small government admiring Barry Goldwater a total National Socialist, or what?
Though one thing has changed: Susskind intimates to Buckley that conservatism was a spent force after Goldwater was defeated in ’64. Today’s GOP? Doing remarkably well on a national level, despite the failure of its (infinitely more moderate) presidential candidate last year.
One of the more memorable debates that WFB was part of in the 60s was one in which he came away as the clear loser. The Cambridge debate between him and James Baldwin in 1965 remains fascinating viewing nearly 50 years later.
I wish I could remember which liberal of the late 1960s-early 70s said it, but their comment was basically they wished they could have somebody who debates like William F. Buckley to defend their own ideological viewpoints, instead of having to go along with what David Suskind was saying.
Even though their agreed with him ideologically, they were frustrated at his inability to logically make the liberal case compared to Buckley’s skill in articulating the conservative viewpoint (or course, they never considered that the liberal case couldn’t be made logically, but just the granting of better debating skills to WFB is a step ahead of today’s climate, where any liberal noting that, say, Ben Shapiro can out-debate Piers Morgan on gun control or George Will makes Paul Krugman look like an idiot on a regular basis on ABC’s “This Week” would be denounced as a heretic and face a though crimes trial in the digital public forum).