Boozer Buckley?

[Jonathan]

I just visited SOLOP (which, at the time, was being visited by only three others) and noticed a thread that I hadn't seen before in which James Valliant implies that William F. Buckley is a drunk. I don't know much about Buckley and I rarely read his work. Is he known for abusing alcohol?

J

[Brant Gaede]

I just visited SOLOP (which, at the time, was being visited by only three others) and noticed a thread that I hadn't seen before in which James Valliant implies that William F. Buckley is a drunk. I don't know much about Buckley and I rarely read his work. Is he known for abusing alcohol?

J

He likes wine. Once Ayn Rand got off the phone with him and said she thought he was drunk. (Sorry, I don't remember the reference.) These are not enough to constitute alcoholism. I have never read that anybody ever thought he was an alcoholic.

--Brant

[Chris Grieb]

I thought the source for the charge about Buckley being a drinker was in the Branden biographies. Buckley has been an editor of a magazine and a weekly columnist while one may not always agree that are very coherent so I think the charge has been disproved.

[Jonathan]

Not knowing much about Buckley, I thought that it was possible that others might have information that I don't. If Buckley has been frequently arrested for driving while intoxicated or has otherwise made a drunken nuisance of himself in public, or if he has publicly admitted to having a problem with alcohol, Valliant's comments might not seem so inappropriate when compared to the anger that he and other SOLOPsists express when the issue of alcohol abuse is brought up in regard to them or their heroes.

J

[Bidinotto]

Jonathan,

You are entirely correct about the hypocrisy here.

Gee, I thought the person raising this insinuation was outraged about hearsay reports about the private conduct of individuals.

Outraged, that is, when the hearsay concerned alleged conduct by Ayn Rand.

And I seem to recall a great brouhaha on that website regarding wholly unsupported claims about its owner's alleged drinking problem.

But I guess it's okay to smear people if you can dismiss them as subhumans.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

I am glad you mentioned that thread because it is a perfect example of the seedy kind of agenda-driven debating habits Valliant uses all the time. His purpose was to talk about how bad the Brandens were, not to talk about Buckley.

The overstated mention of alcohol consumption was bait. He wanted someone to object so he could talk about Frank's drinking and the corresponding section in PARC (and maybe some events involving the locals on SLOP). I have do doubt he was disappointed that this particular bait caught no fish.

But his real purpose was to compare the Brandens' books to a book like Getting it Right so he could lump the Brandens with Rand-haters. This is a normal smear technique used often in propaganda. You lump a person together with an unsavory person (or group) based on non-essential characteristics, then claim the first person has the same unsavory qualities as the second.

Racists do this all the time.

Notice that I just did that with him. I made that statement above as an example of the technique. The idea is to insinuate that, because Valliant uses a smear technique that racists use, he is also a bigot against blacks, Jews or whatever. Then nobody will read PARC out of disgust. Obviously I do not think that. I am merely showing what a dishonest person does to discredit another.

In a similar fashion, Valliant lumped the Brandens with Buckley (and, by extension, conservatives who hate Rand) using the "cult" theme as the non-essential characteristic. He showed his hand in his very first post on that thread. See here. Just for good measure, he also floated the idea that the Brandens were the cause of Buckley's poor opinion of Rand to see if it would take. Even if it didn't, it was a good prompt to bash the Brandens some more. See how the discussion played out to see this in action.

This thread actually is a pristine concrete example of the principle of smearing by lumping. One could not ask for a better one.

Where I get tickled with Valliant is in his breathtaking incompetence. Notice what Buckley's "obsession" with Rand actually is in the article. A throw-away smart-ass comment in the middle of a full article about Kim Jong Il.

It is widely noted that for all that he thinks of himself as a leader with a divine afflatus to bring to his people and the world the fruits of Juche (the North Korean variant of Leninism, with a little Ayn Rand mixed in), he is himself a man of total self-indulgence, devoted to porn, Scotch, and Daffy Duck cartoons.

Somebody should tell Valliant that Buckely was bashing Kim Jong Il, not Rand. From the way Valliant stated it, Buckley wrote the entire article to discredit Rand and give vent to his "obsession." Valliant is incompetent (outside of anything else) because, from what is clear in his online demeanor, he honestly has no clue about how ridiculous such twisted rhetoric makes him look, even to most of those who agree with him.

Instead of persuading people, he discredits himself as a bonehead. He shoots himself in the eye. (This is the cartoon character who tries to shoot a rifle and it doesn't go off. He turns it around and puts the end of the barrel up against one eye so he can look down into it. Then it goes off.)

btw - For those who have not read PARC, that book is chock full of stuff like that.

Michael

[Jonathan]

Jonathan,

I am glad you mentioned that thread because it is a perfect example of the seedy kind of agenda-driven debating habits Valliant uses all the time. His purpose was to talk about how bad the Brandens were, not to talk about Buckley.

The overstated mention of alcohol consumption was bait. He wanted someone to object so he could talk about Frank's drinking and the corresponding section in PARC (and maybe some events involving the locals on SLOP). I have do doubt he was disappointed that this particular bait caught no fish.

Okay, well now I'm confused, MSK. So, you're saying that Valliant wasn't seriously implying that Buckley is a drunk, but was just pretending to do so because he was hoping that people who think that Frank O'Connor might have been a heavy drinker would object to the comments about Buckley, and then Valliant could throw their objections back in their faces and illustrate that it's inappropriate to make such comments about both Buckley and Frank O'Connor? And the average reader is supposed to know that that's what Valliant was up to, even though the thread contains no mention of Frank or the issue of inappropriate or unsupported accusations of drunkenness?

J

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Jonathan,

To paraphrase the illustrious Valliant and use a bit of the same standard as regards his mention of Buckley's drinking (see PARC, p. 173):

Even if one day some of the Valliant's assertions are verified by more credible sources and evidence, Valliant will not have helped to establish their truth. Considerable independent research will be necessary to accomplish this. And it does not matter whether these discoveries cast Buckley in a positive or negative light.

If one day, for example, it is somehow established, to the surprise of the author, that Buckley's callous indifference to the truth and Rand-obsession drove him to excessive drinking, the current analysis will still stand, and Valliant's credibility will not have been enhanced in any way. The basis of his inferences will be no more credible and no less arbitrary.

Michael