Transcripts For CSPAN2 A Torch Kept Lit 20161030

Good morning. Good morning. Proving once again that if you want a nice crowd, servant some food. But we do have a great crowd here, thank you for everyone for coming. On behalf of the National Review institute, its president mc craig and my fellow trustees including here and now rich lowry and if ive forgotten anyone, let me know later. I would like to welcome you to this special conversation about an important book, an important new book. A torch kept lit great lives of the twentieth century. My name is jack fowler and im the publisher of the National Review. [applause] we will applaud National Review. The institute is our sister organization, a nonprofit educational entity founded 25 years ago by William F Buckley junior. [applause] its mission, is to advance the conservative principles bill champion, complement the mission of the magazine, supports the National Reviews best talent, preserve and promote the buckley legacy. Indeed, the institute has formally launched its bodily legacy project and there is literature here explaining his plan and vision. In this last year, the institute through this project has celebrated the anniversaries of two important and lasting aspects of the buckley legacy. Bills 1965 mayoral run, brilliantly captured in this now recently republished campaign memoir, the unmaking of the mayor and in 1966 launch of bills marvelous interview program. The buckley legacy is why we are here today. To discuss bill, the writer and specificallybill, the observer of men and women , public and private, giants and small fries. Before i introduce our participants, related anecdote. 25 years ago, my predecessor and get tonto who is here today and to whom National Review owes so much. [applause] that will be 10 bucks ahead. Had a terrific idea. Lets publish a collection of bills obits. We collected them all, consulted priscilla buckley, bills beloved sister agreed, terrific idea. Already we approached bill. He couldnt say no fast enough. For a long time after, ed and i remained perplexed. The idea was a surefire success area and why . Because we believed then as we believe now and as we see now through this marvelous book james rosen has edited that among bills many talents , this one, where he remembered the recent dead for posterity with deep insight and elegant prose would be embraced not only by National Review readers but by the public at large. Bill was no dont. He knew what we knew. So ed and i eventually deduced that bill was courting the rip is for his own collection and did sprinkles on in ensuing books including nearer my god, miles gone by and others but there are so many of these that the thought of a necessary collection remained valid over the years. Along comes 2014 and along comes rosen. Through a conversation about another idea, james raised this. Id like to do acollection of bills eulogies, remembrances, obituaries and rips. What do you think . It was like asking me if i wanted a bag of peanut m ms. Of course, i said. So did Christopher Buckley who oversees all things literary for the buckley estate, practically all things of the buckley estate but we were off to the races. Morton and the good people at crown forum also agreed that here and now we have this wonderful book. I have not had this conversation with campbell but i cant help but think he knows what we all know, that although he left us eight years ago, bill buckley in many ways still looms very large. The song asks where have you gone joe dimaggio . Likewise, a conservative america asks the same about bill. There is a long name and the appetite for his wisdom remains very strong. Coming up next, a conversation about bill buckley, a man of prose and who wrote history person by person through his particular talent. Not the conversation about politics, elections or the often dismaying game of if bill buckley were alive today , what would he say about blank . But at the end of the conversation, questions will be entertained. You will find cards on the table. If you will agree to write down your question, we will collect your questions and handed them to the moderator who will pick and choose. About the moderator , he is my friend and colleague, a very big brain, transfer. He is executive editor of the National Review and a policy fellow of the National Review institute. He is the coauthor of a Brandnew Party how conservatives can win the working class and save the American Dream and he has a book coming out in early 2017 on immigration. I look forward to the conversation about that book next year. Another friend, loved one, dear one and we are so pleased to have him with us this morning is Christopher Buckley. His approval of this project and his and suing encouragement of a torch kept lit are sogenuine and deeply appreciated. The only son of bill and pat buckley, christopher was educated at portsmouth abbey and graduated, loud. He is the former managing editor of esquire magazine and was the Founding Editor of forbes fyi. He knows a thing or two about books, having written 16 or so, many of them exceptional satires. And i must really encourage you to read his most recent, the relic master. It is amarvelous novel that centers on scams and the shroud of turin. If you laugh, we will need concessions. And a personal aside, i went to bed alone last night because my wife was up till the wii hours reading, laughing at a 22yearold christopherbuckley novel. Around this bio out by saying he was chief speechwriter for the Vice President of the United States, George Hw Bush and has received Washington Irving prize for literary excellence , the thurber prize for american literature. It lasted not least, the man who inspired this book and who is as big a contributor to its in beautiful prose as was bill buckley and that is james rosen. The chief washington correspondent for fox news, james covered the white house and state department and reported from capitol hill, the pentagon, Supreme Court nearly all 57 states or 50, yuck yuck. 40 Foreign Countries across five continents. Rosens articles and essays have appeared in the unique New York Times, wall street journal, washington post, harpers and National Review. This is not his first book. James is the author of the strong man, John Mitchell and the secrets of watergate. Also cheney, oneonone. Friends of bill and not only the 12 step kind should know this man is a walking, talking buckley legacy project. His knowledge about bill, his belief in bills lasting importance and relevance and how we need to realize that immense power for good thrives in the buckley legacy is second to none. It has been a delight to work with him and i congratulate james not only for the excellent book he assembled but also for his own smart prose providing the context in which all of bills collected remembrances are said, a torch kept lit. On that note, gentlemen, reihan salam. [applause] thanks very much jack for that kind introduction and thank all of my institute colleagues for helping put together this event. I am honored to be here with two of the most established writers and thinkers in america today. You kid but its true. James, i wanted to ask you what on earth led a perfectly healthy sane person to become so obsessed with bill buckley and second, this project in particular . Thank everyone for coming this morning and to all of my friends at National Review and the National Review institute and to christopher for hosting this event. I have to tell you i feel a little like being up here at all and to have my name on the same jacket is bill buckley feels kind of surreal for me so thats not just full humility. Humility with an asterisk perhaps. But i learned about bill buckley from the first time from the tonight show. Seeing him with Johnny Carson and here was this guy who had this range accent but was very goodlooking and seemed to be treating johnny as an equal as opposed to most people who went on the tonight show who were just very grateful to be there. On that occasion and ive tried to find the date and the tape of it, i think it was around 1985. Johnny said to him bill, why is it wherever you come here on the set i feel like him im in the peoples office . I thought i want to be like that guy and so commenced an obsession. My wife who was here today and just say hi to everyone, this is my lovely wife sarah joyce. [applause] who is the unsung suffering heroine of all of my exploits. She has seen that i have many obsessions and im intense about them. And in the case of bill buckley, i know so many people christopher who said barnes and other people, who said the same thing. I want to be like that guy. In any case, this book began a few years ago. I was writing something for National Review out about Richard Nixon and i was trying to find peace bill had done about him call is bill one of us . I knew it was from 1971 but i was laboring under the misapprehension that it appeared in National Review. I consulted a book called william f junior a bibliography when bill was alive. Its an annotated collection or listing of all his works and therein i learned it has been in times magazine. The editor of that volume said someday, someone should do a book of billet eulogies because they areeloquent and often shattering works. I thought with a smidgen of spa, why not me . And im grateful to be associated. Im going to jump in. I was asked to give a blurred for the book and at the height of vanity to quote ones own blurb. Its such a good blurb, i cant resist. William f buckley junior was a master of many things. This collection of obituaries and eulogies he wrote over the course of his ordinary career admirably curated and eloquently introduced by james rosen may well establish usb as the modern master of this literary form. I have read every single one of my fathers 60 odd books. Do not exaggerate to propose this may prove to be William F Buckleys finest book ever. And i mean that. Thank youso much. [applause] thank you. I mean, i had read a lot of these as they came out and i was never, i never failed to be moved. But it wasnt until i saw them all in toto that it came to me that i think this is William F Buckleys most eloquent typing. You started with being pulled from 250 obituaries and eulogies published in the National Review, in a syndicated column but also eric square. Some delivered as actual eulogies. I think you and it up with 52. On the subway, unlike my father, i once mentioned the word subway to him. But on the way down in the subway i did a count of the 52 in the table of contents and put a check next to each person that heknew personally. When it came out to 33, 33 out of 52 and these are pretty big people. Question to them including tap buckley. He knew buckley. In a biblical sense as well. I suppose i have proof. And we had here with us one of the people, talks best friend dangalbraith. We have her right here. Its an extraordinary collection and is punctuated, a very good start. Not only because it is such a good book and by the way, your introductions to each one of the 52 pieces are many masterpieces. You may know this guy mostly as a fox news tv guide but let me tell you, this son of a gun can write. Is cspan getting this . In part because of james being a very household name out there in tv land, the book is off to a brilliant start and he was on bill oreilly gave it a very nice plug a couple days ago and i did something i dont do a lot. I went to amazon to affect the sales ranking. But i thought it was legit to check someone else and it was number two. [applause] ive emailed james and james became a tadaloof. He says i dont have a lot of time looking at my amazon sales rating. This morning, on megan kelly last night he said to me its number one. Good for you. Thank you i first mentioned a moment ago ago that you called these obituaries from source material. Tell us a bit about how you discipline yourself and how you made your selection . This spencer do to the great folks at crown publishing. Everybody needs an editor and they were great in helping me focus so we found about 220 eulogies and obituaries and remembrances that bill wrote. We have a whole section in the book but unfortunately for space reasons we had to exercise. That was just devoted to movement derivatives and we mentioned rescued a few of those people like Barry Goldwater and russell kirk and we cast them into a diaspora where they went into some of the other chapters that were named. What we wanted to do was break it down by types of people he was remembering so theres a section for president s of the United States. Theres a section for bills own family members. Theres eulogies for his mother, his father, his wife and brotherinlaw. Theres a section for arts and letters figures. Id like to say that a torch kept lit is the only place in the world where you will find Milton Friedman rubbing elbows with jerry garcia. Also in arts and letters, and this speaks to build buckleys breadth of interest and intellectual curiosity, there are eulogies for jerry garcia and john lennon and Elvis Presley. He was an elvis man, bill buckley. He went to graceland and wrote an entire novel about Elvis Presley late in his career. Not all of the people in the friends section are household names. Some are people only known to the buckley family, i would imagine and one of the things about this book ithink , recurring theme is friendship. I always think bill buckley would have chop the term genius. He would have been in a rare moment of modesty he would have recoiled but everyone who knew him. [laughter] there is only one expert on the stage about bill buckley. Everyone ive spoken to new him well has attested that bill buckley had a genius for friendship and he was very passionate about his friends and he maintained friendships as he can attest that in some cases lasted over 60 years in time. The last eulogy he published was for Van Galbraith who has been his friend and they died within a short time of each other for 60 years. And he cultivated friendships, he invested in them and care deeply about them. I daresay the giving of this book to a friend for whatever occasion will deepen ones connection to those friends. Lastly, theres a section called nemesis and i have to confess this is my favorite section because these are eulogies and obituaries for people who predeceased bill and with whom he had done battle over the course of his career. People like alger hess, people like John B Lindsay and theres a spectrum of awfulness and arthur schlesinger, Eleanor Roosevelt and the fun in this chapter is watching bill struggle to find something nice to say about these people who are alternatively not bothering him. One last word about this, these are pieces that were often written on deadline and in situations where the writer himself, because he knew 33 of the 50 people was himself wracked with guilt, grief is what i meant to say. He was himself morning the people in these spaces and that he put together such brilliant pros, literal pros about these people who he personally knew when he was himself suffering from grief after a loss speaks a lot to his discipline. He was a man of devout faith as we all know and that is the eulogy which i believe is not a part of the catholic mass. Bill venerated something called apatrimony which was the inherited corpus of truth , earthly and celestial that is passed down through the millennia and which are knowable and conservatives believe an objective truth. One of them is that people died but god endures and that infuses his writing as well i have a question for you as a writer. Both of you, i do want to hear your perspective. Bill buckley was both americas most celebrated public intellectual, yet he was also a writer in the figure of independent mind and was also the architect of a Political Movement and as such it occurs to me that sometimes one might be political in how one is describing other figures and how its navigating this larger landscape. Do you feel as though he ever pulled his punches in deference to his responsibilities as a leader of the movement . Im curious to hear your thoughts. As james was talking, it occurred to me i was sorry that he didnt do board of it all and i like to have read that obituary. I dont think, heres one of the remarkable things. You all know growing up buckleys history with gordy doll. Some of you have seen the celebrated documentary, best enemies about the exchange of 68. Which precipitated lawsuits and all sorts of things. Buckley let go of gordy doll. The only time ive ever mentioned gordy doll at the dinner table or whatever was in the context of his recidivism that he had rendered. You remember, gore vidal was giving the election to the American Academy and others but his reply to them was i already have a diners card. He thought it was the wittiest saying he ever heard. I have not seen the documentary but apparently gore vidal was obsessed with these functions and it came up all the time and when he had friends over at dinner, afterwards he would bring in the debate in 1968. In the documentary they use a clip from the movie sunset boulevard where Norma Desmond played by gloria clark is sitting there watching her old movie, one old queen measured against another. But to sams point about box genius for friendship, even as you point out in your brilliant introduction, even in these dozen odd nemesis categories, you can see but struggling to find something nice to say. And this i think came from his deep, deep, deep sense of christianity which was so animated. If i can jump in, to the point of whether he pulled punches, these remembrances are strictly celebratory. Even in the case of lionized figures. And people who are iconic in the conservative movement. So for example, his eulogy for Winston Churchill whom buckley had gone to see speak personally in 1949 is not hagiographic for Winston Churchill. He celebrates the accomplishments of churchill up to and including the victory in world war ii but then falls churchill for continuing to stay in office when he didnt have the stamina to prosecute the cold war properly. With the ensuing result that one third of the world people at the time wound up behind the iron curtain. Similarly for Martin Luther king who in todays landscape we conceive of an almost gauzy terms. When bill block buckley wrote his remembrance of Martin Luther king after the assassination, buckley wrote a column that was tough on Martin Luther king. Celebratory of his accomplishments in civil rights but at the same time condemned tory of some statements that Martin Luther king had made about america at the height of the vietnam war and its role in the world that he thought were utterly inappropriate. So he didnt always pull his punches. Even when he was discussing people were lionized on the right and that speaks i think two bills intellectual integrity. Was this to some degree a hawkish contrariness them, the sense that some figures are too big, too overlarge, celebrated inappropriately or was it purely a sense that i must set the record right. I think its the latter. One of the themes within this book under the general rubric of friendship was his relationship with arguably the leading liberal intellectual of our time, John Kenneth Galbraith. This was friendship that david in 1966 and John Galbraith met with an elevator at the plaza hotel on their way, truman capotes famous black ball. The party of the century. The party of the century as you point out in your essay again, brilliant. You can say it as often as you want. I cannot say this enough. You read this book for one reason, read it for the introduction. You gone too far. I know Kenneth Dahlgren would have agreed on the time of day but this became one of his deep friendships and as ken died, i think he was in his 90s and he had been bedridden for years. Every three weeks, but would get on the train in sanford and go up to boston to have a certain point, kenwas no longer conversational. The last trip i made with trump was to john kenneth goldbergs memorial service. And their relationship was teasing on a mutually teasing level. When nixonresigned , nixons resignation was inconvenient for bob because he was going sailing. And, this is 1974. His phone started ringing and they all wanted comments. He said im going sailing. And cbs and abc said what mark. After his landing, i dont have a platform. So his syndicated column that ran after nixons resignation was a canned column, this is what columnists dowhen they go on vacation, they write a column. And so can, next week wrote something that said well bill, i think it just warrants that after the most important events in american political history that you chose to write your column about peanut butter. He said ken, you dont understand. When i relax, i write columns about the water. When you relax, you write economic textbooks. And i think it, may i say one more time, in your brilliant introduction you quote john kerry in the context of this friendship with John Kenneth Galbraith and john kerry, no conservative there. And apropos the friendship you say thats what it is in politics today. And it is. You mentioned in passing james about the breadth of sir buckleys interests including his interest in pop culture, something that would be a little bit surprising to those only knew him as this arch traditionalist. Tell us about his encounters with the world ofpop. Will buckley wrote a column in 1964 as the beatles arrived in america on the and sullivan show announcing them not just awful but godawful. And saying in essence that it was so horribly antimusical that they would go down in history with respect to music the way that antipopes were recorded in politics. To this day there are, and not a huge beatles freak, my sons middle names are lennon and mccartney. This is evidence of our patients. If you want a girl, please dont name her yoko. Deal. And there are collections of writings about the beatles and buckley column is routinely included in them as sort of a jewel of early philistines and contraband. He later committed to one of the most spectacular reversals of his career for which probably 99 percent of the credit is due to christopher. In a column in 1968 called how i came to rock. In which he acknowledged that there is simply an exuberance about the beatles that is unmatched and one cannot resist them. And when we come to perhaps a little later in the discussion i would like to know how you converted buckley on the subject of the beatles but in writing that first column where you pronounce them godawful he said , i like Elvis Presley and in fact he later in his career, buckley pronounced that elvis had the most beautifulsinging voice of any person on earth. There is an attempt by buckley to engage with the counterculture. And in turn, he wanted to know what it was all about. In the eulogy for jerry garcia he recounts that as a young man worked for the National Review was an out and out deadhead and he begins the column and heres where im going to slip in the impersonation i think which i vowed not to do. If i ever heard the song played by the grateful dead,i was unaware of it he said. Not bad, right . But he saw the deterioration in this young man, not only his upkeep but his reliability and so forth and he pondered in the eulogy for jerry garcia the influence on influences of young people at cruising speed which was an account of one week in bills life that is entertaining, published in 1971, he recounts going with pat buckley and another friend of his, to go see give me shelter, the documentary about the Rolling Stones and the horrific concert in altamont. One wonders how many leading conservative voices would go see a documentary like give me shelter . So he cared about it and he engaged with it over a long period of time and when john lennon was killed in 1980, began his column about it, his eulogy for 11 that he had been critical in the 1970s when leno was spouting off on this and that, by quoting christopher who said imagine if arturo toast and 80 had jumped in shock, how would you have thoughts . And buckley wrote that john lennon didnt me. He said for those of us who are unmoved by his work, we gaze upon the crowds of 100,000 people weaving in central park with candles and we must acknowledge the grief is real. So he had a real interest in pop culture even if it didnt always him directly. To footnotes, in 1964, my father and i were on a commercial flight from copenhagen. Copenhagen to geneva and we were in the front row and guess who boarded the plane just before kickoff . TheRolling Stones. I was 12 years old. To quote my 28yearold daughter now. And they were sitting right behind us. They were heavily perfumed. With the cologne of the era. And he sort of went. [laughter] youre missing the point. Another footnote 2, yoko, i believe i said this right, yoko which you remember at one point the United States was going to expel john lennon. They were going to revoke his green card on the grounds that he had done drugs somewhere in the past. Its so rare. , that drug violation. Yoko came and asked him if he would write a letter to the relevant authority. On john lennons behalf, he did. Did she come to see in your house . I believe it was National Review. And, i dont know if this was possibly the Tipping Point and there were obviously other letters but a letter from bill buckley to a nixon ruled government agent that would not have been done influential. Timeout. Cspan timeout. Im a news guy, thats what i do for a living. We just got news, folks. Yoko ono visited the offices of National Review. Thats worth the price of admission today alone. That bargain. [laughter] but i guess a footnote to, when lennon was assassinated, i like many of my generation went into an actual depression. This was staggering and pop noticed, i would sit there at the dinner table and not speak. But i had to write a column that night and he came over to my garage apartment and said why dont you write my column . And i said, i couldnt do that. I couldnt do it. And i remember, what he wrote is in this splendid and attractive what packaged and recently placedbook. But it concludes that he says john, what i now realize is john lennon had gravitas. Gravitas was greatly esteemed. So there you have the evolution, the education of William F Buckley. From the 1960s to 1980. Can i have one more footnote to this, i wanted to include this in the introduction but i have ran out of space. In 1970, john lennon gave a massively long and bilious interview to Rolling Stone magazine, probably to the point when he was at his most bitter area and its a landmark in terms of the literature of the beatles. He was very negative and all the beatles were the biggest bathrooms on earth and it was full of acid about paul and Everything Else and bill buckley read the entire interview from start to finish and i think it was Something Like 50,000 words, over two issues of Rolling Stone magazine and he devoted a column to it. He said that john lennons autobiography should be entitled how direct my life and how i can help you wreck yours. He talked about the solipsism of john lennon and i think if john lennon had lived longer he would look back with some regret over some of the comments in that interview but in writing about the interview in his column, buckley at one point used a number device where number one, number two and holding various things john lennon had said that a certain point the way buckley put it, he said something to the effect of, genre and all the good songs, not so paul. They went on to other numbered points and what struck me about it was even bill buckley fell prey to beatlemania in a sense because he was referring to them by their first names the way the rest of the world does. Paul. I dont think theres any record of him ever having uttered the word ringo. [laughter] heres a scholarly project. I want to get to questions from the audience. Before i do however, james, might you have any questions for christopher . Yes. Can you tell us again how brilliant i am . Have i mentioned how brilliant you are . Christopher and i have only met once before today about 10 or 12 years ago and that was his first work and i should point out to that at no point after providing his assent that the project should go forward did he seek any input or control until the very end, and there was one eulogy that we looked at and for space reasons, not included that he asked to be included and we did so. But there was no attempt to control here. Theres a lady whos written half a dozen wellregarded biographies and then she wrote her own memoir and it was about a lesson to aspiring biographers and the total title of that metaphor was shoot the widow. At the very first piece of business that any aspiring biographers should do when they are in their first work is the widow. Because with yoko ono at the archetype, they see to control the narrative and so forth and christopher engaged in that. So this is really properly speaking my first meeting with him is a great thrill for me. There were a couple of questions, sort of questions that i had that i have not shared with him in advance but let me take out the piece here. First of all, phils handwriting was terrible. His handwriting was so bad that yale in the late 1940s, he actually was given permission to take his exams. If you remember the blue book, blue exam books, the mention of which still makes me freak out. All the professors said yes, for gods sake, let him go into an adjoining classroom while everyone else was scribbling and bang out his exams. Heres another, its orthographical. Toward the end, pop because it became very casual in his plasma, he would say his fingers on the keyboard. He would just sort of put them down anywhere. With the result that his emails resembled the enigma code. I kid you not. It would be fun to put together a collection of those. That would be a challenge for your brilliant introduction. I, quite literally. Dear krista would be spelled jkx for parentheses. And i have to call him up. And its a pop, i really want to know what you had in mind here. I exchanged emails with bill a few times and they truly were , they look like something sort of like one of those jumbles you are supposed to unscramble and at the bottom he said yes, im not drunk, i just typed this way. Carries that email. The number once explicitly give you any advice about the craft of writing . Sure. Sure. His first bit of advice, i think i was 14, he said christo, dont ever become a professional writer. He it was a saturday, the weekend and dinner was over and he was heading back to study to bang out a 10,000 word article that was due monday and i did not take that advice. You know, it occurs to me another theme with pop aside from his genius for the craft was his genius for mentor them. I think its accurate to say that the two great Magazine Editor mentors of our time were Charlie Peters of the washington mudslinging whose list of alumnis were john meacham, james follows, Michael Kingsley and William F Buckley. If you look at the list of people who started the National Review, david brooks , by the way, did you know david brooks pulled in a column after but died called remembering mentors. But he wrote a book called overdrive which was a sequel if you will to one of the best books which is cruising speed which he published in 1973 which was a week in his very busy life. It was a marvelous way of, pop never did a memoir but he did to memoirs of two weeks of his life. Overdrive, 1983 was not particularly well received. There was a little bit too much about this limousine and you know, but a statement but brilliant parody of it was written by david brooks for the university newspaper. But happened the next week to be speaking at the university of chicago. And hes up there on stage and he reads this scathing parody of his book aloud. In toto, verbatim. Then looks up and says if david brooks is in the audience, id like to offer him a job. David related that story. Im willing to shame david brooks. David brooks is a wellregarded New York Times columnist and author in his own right. I have a friend in washington who collects all kinds of memorabilia and gives them to me often and he recently gave me a beautiful handsome copy of the hardcover edition of one of bills books called on the firing line which was his memoir of the firing line, the show and it is autographed by bill buckley to david brooks. I dont know how that happened but david got some explaining to do. One last point i would make about bill buckleys mentor ship as a Magazine Editor, imgrateful to have with us today rich lowry, editorinchief of the National Review. [applause] my last question for christopher. Okay. One, too. One of which is a practical question. It is often the case in the writing of obituaries that many obituaries will be prewritten. That seems rather morbid but it happens to be a fact of the business. Is that something that bill buckley would do from time to time . For example the obituary of Dwight Eisenhower was written as eisenhower was dying. There are a few places i should mention, National Review opened up its digital archive to me so i can research all these pieces. The Hoover Institution maintains the firing line archives in california and i relied on their synopsis and translated various episodes but hillsdale college, on his website had the complete works of William F Buckley junior, each column and they are in pdf form so you can see the tight manuscripts that went off to newspapers area and there are instructions on the ones for example where it says if eisenhower has not yet died by the x then run this, if he has incorrectparagraph three where hes speaking in a different sense. And for Alastair Cook who was a great towering literary figure and broadcasting figure and a friend of buckleys for 30 years, he wrote three eulogies and obituaries and one of them he wrote before cook died and actually sent it to Alastair Cook who returned to buckley on open and unread. One more question. Is there one of obituary you absolutely hate your editors at crown for forcing you to leave that out of the book . There were so many worthy people that we had to excise and four of whom i prepared preparatory introductions like Daniel Patrick moynihan area. I wondered why that wasnt in there. William slowed calling. He was a larynx. Claire loose. Uber comfrey. I must interject. Enough of you go out and buy this book, you increase the chances ofthere being a sequel. Thats with all the obituaries and eulogies, we will not have room to include. Unfortunately, we are not quite there. Please join me in thanking james rosen and Christopher Buckley. [applause] thank you all very much for coming. Im a sprague of the institute and as jack said we are grateful to all of youfor your support. Letting us bring programs like this. Thank you james, we really appreciate it, christopher, we love having you come to our events and participating in them, obviously you are a dear friend, thank you and reihan, another great moderating job. [applause] [inaudible conversation] to look at authors recently featured on book tvs after words, our weekly Author Interview program. Former Goldman Sachs Vice President police are i say talked about her experiences as an undocumented immigrant. Temple University Professor sarah grab described solutions to Rising College tuition costs and former state Department Official Mary Thompson johns discussed her investigation of thousands of cables. In the coming weeks on afterwards, o cofounder Edward Connor will argue that income inequality contributes to economic growth. Aragon, editor at large for the guardian will discuss the investigation of gun violence in america and this weekend, Columbia University law professor tim wu explains the ways society has been affected by advertising. This is great point. We have amos and andy, as i said cohorts gathered around the radio in rapt attention who is able to outcompete in dinner conversation or even people playing musicat home. Before that, radio and then sort of a background thing. There the music in the background, jazz or classical music, politely playing. This was something different. And this is nbc and later cvs said we have the audience in their homes listening and utterly opening the portal of judgment to you. This is a perfect way to reach your customers. After words airs on book tv every saturday at 10 pm and sunday at 9 pm eastern. Watch all previous after words programs on our website, booktv. Org. smessage conveyed through the tabloids boiled down to this. Get out of the crowd loser which is not of course how satire works. The target, having set himself up, doesnt get a say over the end,. Trump had already become the Gold Standard for big honking hubris and to ignore him would have been comedy malpractice. In new york city he practically owed the 80s, rocking to the top as the big apples loudest and most visible acyl. Knocking off bigleague rivals like ed koch and steve rubio. For those of us in the ridicule industry, he was dubbed as the short fingered for gary was a gift beyond imagining and we made him a permanent part of our business plan. The earliest strips mocking trumps first president ial trial balloon began in the fall of 1987. People tell me i should be flattered, trump told newspeople but there was nothing remotely flattering about the portrayal. He soon became confused, then irritated. All the more as i was drawing him in a way that suggests i was unaware of how goodlooking he was. By the end of the week, it was game on. Trump moved along and i have a new recurring character, one whose reallife counterpart could be counted on to react in real time. I was one lucky car baby and remained so for years. I had plenty of company. Google trump and third rate and you will come across the names of most of the countries first rated comedians. And no matter how many wise guys wanted a piece of him, it was always more than enough for the big fella to go around, and embarrassment of follies. After this first president ial fake it was the trump princes, and luxury yacht whose owners fear of ocean travel it more often scaling casinos and then came the extramarital affairs, both real and imagined, conducted on the klieglights, followed in rapid succession by the highprofile bankruptcy, is a chance to tear down a Family Restaurant bill the parking lot for limos , is areas televised spectacles, the most storiedof which featured in firing celebrities who were already out of work. His creepy sexual fantasies about his own daughter, the truth of that debacle is filled product line went on and on like you wouldnt believe the best was yet to come. As from bore down on his 70th year, he needed a new neighborhood to ruin so after 30 years of lusting after a tear down on 1600pennsylvania avenue, he made good on his threat and actually ran for president. Rested and ready to not so much. More like words, hyperactive and breathtakingly unprepared. When his physician declared that trump would be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency, trump publicly jacob bornstein, his doctorsfather been dead since 2010. You cant make this stuff up so i try . Some people feel that trump is beyond satire professionals know he is satire, pure and uncut, for all to use and enjoy and for that we are not ungrateful. For our country go, we can only me. Watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Cspan, where history unfolds daily. 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