Universal Press Syndicate Remembers Bill Buckley

Kansas City, MO (02/27/2008) John McMeel, president of Andrews McMeel Universal (AMU) and long-time friend of William F. Buckley called him a journalist of insight and intellect.

Breaking news on the New York Times Web site this morning at 11:04 a.m. ET reported that William F. Buckley Jr. died at 82. Buckley's office later confirmed this.

"I'll always remember Bill as a great man of words with a tremendous sense of humor," says McMeel. AMU's syndicate division, Universal Press Syndicate, distributed Buckley's "National Review" columns for almost 30 years. "He had such presence when he walked into a room and a grasp of history and current events unsurpassed by few. In fact, I always had to prepare for a couple of hours before meeting with Bill, like I was cramming for a college exam. His intellect and insight were incredible and I'll never forget his talent. If I could say anything to him now, it would simply be: 'Thank you.'"

Buckley's long-time UPS Editor Alan McDermott has his memories, too. "I recall once asking Frances Bronson, Bill Buckley's delightful longtime assistant, about an unusual turn of phrase in one of Bill's columns. 'Oh, darling,' she said with a laugh, 'that's a Buckleyism.' How privileged I have been for more than two decades to have edited so many columns full of 'Buckleyisms.' Editing his column was similar to having a spirited conversation with a witty, insightful acquaintance. I sat up a little straighter when I was working on his column and discussing any questions I had with Bill's editors at National Review. He made us rise to the occasion. His keen mind and elegant prose created an inimitable column," says McDermott.

Universal Press Syndicate prepared a Q&A with Buckley in honor of his 25th year of syndication with UPS that was published on Sept. 20, 2004. Buckley celebrated a distinguished career that has greatly influenced American conservatism and how the subject of politics is covered.

Also, just posted on The National Review's Web site:

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) [by Kathryn Jean Lopez]

I'm devastated to report that our dear friend, mentor, leader, and founder William F. Buckley Jr., died this morning in his study in Stamford, Connecticut.

He died while at work; if he had been given a choice on how to depart this world, I suspect that would have been exactly it. At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.

As you might expect, we'll have much more to say here and in NR in the coming days and weeks and months. For now: Thank you, Bill. God bless you, now with your dear Pat. Our deepest condolences to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. And our fervent prayer that we continue to do WFB's life's work justice.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Samples

FOWLERSPEAK-GOODSPEAK

In the debate last night, Hillary Clinton pronounced herself glad that Barack Obama had brought up the subject of foreign affairs. The technique is common. It says to the audience that Clinton is aware of a deficiency in Obama and intends to exploit it for all it is worth. The danger is that it gives Obama an opportunity to turn the score on Clinton by saying that he just happens to have made his living for three years by writing on foreign affairs for the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

These verbal traps are widely used and widely counter-used. The best collection of them appears in the last few pages of Fowler's "Modern English Usage," but of course that section is only a small part of his great work. It is worth acquainting the reader with the teeming harvest of Fowler's analysis.

He offers us, for instance, a list of words owing their vogue to the joy of showing that one has acquired them: allergic, ambience, ambivalent, catalyst, complex, equate, global, idiosyncrasy, protagonist, repercussion, seminal, streamlined.

He gives another list of words taken up merely as novel variants on a more common word: adumbrate for sketch, blueprint for plan, breakthrough for achievement, built-in for solid, ceiling for limit, claim for assert, integrate for combine, intrigue for interest, liquidate for destroy, reaction for opinion, optimistic for hopeful, redundant for superfluous, rewarding for satisfying, significant for important, sabotage for wreck, target for objective, smear for calumny.

And there are words owing their vogue to some particular occasion, plus "popularized technicalities" (words legitimately used in some scientific discipline, but brought carelessly into general use): acid test, coexistence, exponential growth, geometric progression, iron curtain, psychological moment, winds of change. And words of rhetorical appeal: archetypal, challenging, dedicated, fabulous, fantastic, massive, overtones, sensational, unthinkable.

My reluctance to quote at such length from the great Fowler is mitigated by my serious wish that students of the English language would themselves take the initiative of familiarizing themselves with the profundities and niceties of the points being made by Mr. Fowler.

So Sen. Clinton will tell us that Sen. Obama has no first-hand executive experience. Obama in turn will imply that the kind of experience one gets as first lady is not of the same order as one gets as president, and that he has felt as keenly as she the pulse beat that resonates only in Congress, not in executive offices.

The viewer will have noted that it is expressions of this kind -- i.e., personalized derogation and hauteur -- that elicit the most vivid response from the audience. Presidential candidates no longer even try to sound like the Lincoln-Douglas debates, yet it is not bad occasionally to subject them to such analysis, to learn what it is that is not being said.

The matter of health care that has been primary in Mrs. Clinton's public career lends itself to special attention. She put forth an ambitious program when her husband was in his first term as president. But there were serious defects in that program, which her opponents were able to locate precisely because of their experience in the practical world of politics that she sought to gainsay. Those opponents, led by Rep. Newt Gingrich, were able to derail the program the Clinton administration had billed as its most important domestic initiative. And yet in Thursday night's debate Mrs. Clinton cited that plan -- which she implied she would revive unchanged -- as one of her principal claims to the presidency.

The two performers in the debate struck the observant conservative as intelligent, resourceful and absolutely uninterested in the vector of political force. Both contenders should spend time on the problem of omnipotent government, and both, while entitled to criticize what has happened under President Bush, are obliged to an alert audience to speak the kind of language Fowler preached and preached in.

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