Posted on 04/27/2009 1:23:01 AM PDT by nickcarraway
To the extent that this story has a dimension beyond the purely personal, I suppose it’s an account of becoming an orphan. My mother and father died within 11 months of each other in 2007 and 2008. I do realize that “orphan” sounds like an overdramatic term for becoming parentless at age 55, but I was struck by the number of times the word occurred in the 800 or more condolence letters I received after my father died. I hadn’t, until about the seventh or eighth reference, thought of myself as an “orphan.” Now you’re an orphan. . . . I know the pain myself of being an orphan. . . . You must feel so lonely, being an orphan. . . . When I became an orphan it felt like the earth dropping out from under me. . . . A certain chill began to encroach, until I was jolted out of my thousand-yard stare by an e-mail message from my old pal Leon Wieseltier, to whom I’d written that I was headed off to Arizona for some R and R: “May your orphanhood be tanned.”
One realization does dawn upon the death of the second parent, namely that you’ve now moved into the green room to the River Styx. You’re next. Another thing about parental mortality: No matter how much you’ve prepared for the moment, when it comes, it comes at you hot, hard and unrehearsed.
The nurse buzzed me into the Critical Care Unit. The chic and stunning Mrs. William F. Buckley — the society columnists used to call her that — lay on her bed, shrunken, open-eyed, unseeing, a thick plastic respirator tube protruding from her mouth, making a loud, rhythmic bellows noise as it pumped and withdrew air from her lungs.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sorry, I’m not going to give the NY Slimes the hit, especially to read that wanker Buckley’s work.
Care to summarize any salient points coming out of this? From the excerpt, I can already see that he chooses to paint the corporeal aspects of dying in most embarrassing terms for his proud mother.
I was thinking if Chris’s love child loses his mother he’ll be an orphan too.
He makes an interesting confession at the end, a sense of curiosity whether his devout father was right after all, after an attempt to make naught of death.
You want us to read it for you?
To save you from what?
But it is okay for us not to be as “delicate” as you?
Again, the litmus test is to ask their opinions of Sarah Palin.
Any qualification at all, and you have your answer whether anything else they say is worth your time.
Learned to parrot his father's talent to then use it for what Ben Stein calls "journey into self-obsession."
Give me a break - if you've been around here and paying attention for more than 3 seconds, you'd know that a) web sites get money by site visits, b) we don't want the Times to get any more money, and c) Buckley decided to back Barack the Muslim Marxist for President.
If wanting to put the hurt on the Times and Obama supporters is being "delicate", well, guilty as charged.... /s
Buckley supported Obama.
What more do you need to know?
This "interesting confession" is either a Lucy-and-the-football attempt re-establish himself on the right, so he can betray us again, or it is an admission that he is an idiot.
Either way, I don't find it all that interesting. I already know he's an idiot.
So you go read it and report to us lazybones!
ANd that way we will maintain our superior attitude and not wade in the much.
FYI I read it yesterday but I am not gonna tell you a thing,,you can do the same reading I did. Perhaps it will do you go to exercise your reading rather than your all knowing contempt for others.
I say interesting in that it seems to be a candid reflection on human nature.
You can bet that Chrissy made sure his substantial inheritance check cleared before publishing his Mommy and Daddy Dearest screed.
Ka-ching!
He strikes me as one of those people born to parents who worked like the devil to get ahead. But it backfired. Their work produced so much wealth that he ended up a “trust baby.” Which has the opposite result. He in the inverse of what his parents wanted. Never had to work a day in his life, which is why he doesn’t value or understand work or economics.
While he can be batty at times, this is one of those situations that make Warren Buffet seem sane.
This Buckley kid sure is milking his 15 minutes.
A 55 year old orphan? I guess that when one considers that Christopher Buckley was, is and will be absolutely nothing without his pedigree, then I do suppose the term fits.
I just find it so predictable...
How could such a great man produce such a sniveling piss ant?
He'd make a good Limey atheist.
Cheers!
Here is a link that will give you an idea of what this sorry fellow has written about his parents who he seems never to have forgiven for whatever faults he perceived they had.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/04/023421.php
LLS
A 55 year old orphan?
He should be thanking God...it must be awesome to be 55 & still have your folks.
If Christopher Buckley were gay, he would have been fonder of his mother.
Amen to that! An acquaintance of mine is 65, still has two parents; one of them, age 88, still does her own yard work, including a push mower, and for difficult stuff like roof patching she can call one of her brothers (they are in their 80's also!) I often wonder if they realize how blessed they are, to be together so long. Many of us have lost parents when we were very young. I never knew my father, never had a brother, may never have a husband. Ah, well; life is full of promise, not guarantees.
No, his parents were born rich, too. That didn't keep WFB from working very hard at his writing, publishing, and political activism, but it wasn't for the pay. Perhaps the previous generation, or the one before that, actually had to earn a living.
life is full of promise...
And it’s all just a prelude.
Keep your chin up!
I’m sorry, and it may be cruel to say so, but Buckley may have failed as badly as a father as Reagan and Nancy did with their two.
I’m sorry, and it may be cruel to say so, but Buckley may have failed as badly as a father as Reagan and Nancy did with their two.
Let me correct myself... he is able to bat both left and right handed.
LLS
“One excerpt portrays Bill Buckley’s physical decline culminating in death. When Buckley attends his father as his condition weakens, he finds him dependent on stimulants and depressants like a latter-day Elvis Presley (coincidentally, the subject of Bill Buckley’s Elvis in the Morning).
Buckley’s mother Pat fares even worse. She comes across in the excerpts as something of a mean drunk, guilty of numerous outrages over the years.”
I read the entire piece, and this was my impression, too. The Elvis reference reminds me of all of the sleazy tell alls published about him by his so-called friends. Buckley’s book, at least the excerpts, reads the same way.
At least Lisa Marie, for all of her nuttiness, never ripped her father in a book.
He needs to be beaten with a thesaurus. His father, when he use ‘big words’ it never felt like he was waiting for us to congratulate him on his brilliance but by the second page, it was all I could imagine jr. doing.
Horrible!
Thanks for the link. It’s a fascinating story, especially to those of us who followed his father for, in my case, 35 years. I’m not sure why some people are seemingly so angry at you for posting it—they must be or they wouldn’t excoriate you for posting it. Anyway, thanks.
Let’s see. Pat Buckley had a few drinks and insulted Bobby Kennedy’s granddaughter by mentioning her convict cousin, Michael Skakel. Bill Buckley liked to channel surf. The horror, the horror.
Is it verboten to mention the “dy” word?
If the memoirs aren’t faked on this point, seems Pat had a bit of a problem with Munchhausen as well. I can see how that would be irritating to Chris, feeling forced to play along with that. And what the heck is a devout Christian man doing marrying a non-Christian woman? (Unless Bill got religion later.) Sounds like Chris never had an independent manhood.
He strikes me as one of those people born to parents who worked like the devil to get ahead. But it backfired. Their work produced so much wealth that he ended up a “trust baby.”
The Buckly’s came from a few generations of opulent and classy wealth. Buckly sr was a trustfunder
Still it reads like a “Mummy and Daddy Dearest”
Can’t argue about the needless lack of respect shown in a book of this kind. But voyeurism sells.
Can’t argue about the needless lack of respect shown in a book of this kind. But voyeurism sells.
Christo has more money than God.
I do hate when children of famous parents decide it important to tell of every slight their parents committed against them. These children think that it tells a lot about their parents, but it actually tells a lot about them.
“In Depth: Christopher Buckley” on BookTV
Watch the whole 3 hours online or replay on Saturday May 9
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=10165&SectionName=In%20Depth
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