Halberstam too.

I don't disagree, but there is also something good in the end of that model. Even in the mainstream (Time, the Nobel Committee), people are starting to realize that the era of Great Men who guide our cultural advancement is coming to a close, and that it is a good thing. That's why the IPCC got the Peace Prize along with Al Gore, and why "You!" were Time's man of the year.

O'Reilly and Edward R. Murrow couldn't be more different, but they both fit into a top-down media culture and a top-down political culture that asks us to passively look to these men as leaders. I think we won't see many more men like Galbraith or Friedman or Murrow, or Martin Luther King Jr. for that matter. It is sad, but it is also undoubtedly a good thing that our culture is shifting towards a model where a few intellectuals, a few journalists, and a few leaders no longer dominate our cultural and political arena. Because, lets be honest, for every man of intellect and integrity like Murrow, there was a Joe McCarthy bringing out what is ugliest in all of us.

Anger is not confined to the right. Someone standing there, waving a paper in the air and slapping it against her thigh, while seething, "shame on you, shame on you." ... that's not an angry person, by you?

Great Men who guide our cultural advancement is coming to a close, and that it is a good thing. That's why the IPCC got the Peace Prize along with Al Gore, and why "You!" were Time's man of the year.

??

Isn't this poster just espousing his tendency as a 'collectivist' by trusting institutions rather than individuals? And why would anyone think marginalizing the individual is a good thing?

Sam L -- what we've lost though, is a filter. I can respect a thinker like a Buckley, a Friedman, someone with whom I'd likely disagree on most if not all issues, because I would have some respect for the rigor of their thought. Of course, an ideology will always be the foundation for "rigor" -- who's to say whether Buckley's support for the Southern segregationists was animated by a belief in states' rights or a dislike for black people? But one would have to concede there's a real intellectual gap between a Buckley vs. Hitchens (back in the day) debate on "Firing Line" and a flight of idiocy from a Glenn Beck. The other difference is that the "old thinkers" were willing to engage with the other side, itself a sign of mutual respect.

RIP, conservative curmudgeon.

Perlstein's young and talented: I think the future of political writing belongs to people like him rather than the Jonahs and Coulters.

Buckley hired Hugh Kenner, who died in 2003, another titan of his field. The obit that Buckley wrote is as purple as you'd expect -- quite different from Kenner's own prose style -- but worth the read.

And why would anyone think marginalizing the individual is a good thing?

I don't know which "Anonymous" you are. They're so hard to tell apart, and, for the most part, they're incoherent.

Anyway, what Sam L is saying is something that i think is lost on Ayn Randians who talk about "the individual." The era in which we had a few public "celebrity thinkers" was one which, in fact, devalued the individual by implicitly claiming that only a few sources of public thought were acceptable. And yes, we had Norman Mailer, but we also had Joe McCarthy. You can complain about Bill O'Reilly, but in the end, his reach doesn't extend much further than the cranky-over-60 demographic. People like "Anonymous 1:57" are not lamenting the marginalization of the individual-- catering to individual tastes and supporting individual creation is at an all time high. "Anonymous 1:57" is lamenting that no individual can now dominate the cultural landscape and demand that our national dialog shift in his direction based on the power of his will.

Though I do have a certain nostalgia for the days when writer/thinkers like Susan Sontag were considered sexy celebrities you wanted to hang out with.

Tyro says" the era in which we had a few public celebrity thinkers...devalued the individual. ..And yes, we had Norman Mailer but we also had Joe McCarthy." ??? The second sentence is unrelated to the first, in spite of the implication of "and yes..." Yet you call anonymi incoherent?

Anonymous, because Normal Mailer was objectively good a good thing, but as Sam L mentions above, the public discourse became just as vulnerable to Joe McCarthys (McCarthies?).

It's people like Sam L and I who are much more interested in the individual than you are. It is he and I who could look at Mailer, Sontag, and Murrow and think, "the existence of these people is good for me, the individual," while you, "Anonymous 1:57/2:28", say, "Mailer and McCarthy are both good because they show the power that an individual can have over the masses." I'm willing to realize that the latter is a problem and consider that maybe it's worth trading away that latter problem in exchange for accepting that we no longer have "celebrity intellectuals," even if they're celebrity intellectuals I actually admire.

A little different, perhaps, but I think you forgot to add Daniel Patrick Moynihan to the list.

I think you need to make room for Noam Chomsky, for a start.

"Now, the space they inhabited in the discourse is held by the Coulters and O'Reilly's of the world."

Could there be some sort of connection between this fact and the ideology promoted by someone like, precisely, Buckley? To a large extent, we now live in the world that Buckley (and Friedman) made. Personally, I could do without that kind of "giants."

We're talking about the same WFB, right? The one who wrote this:

"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."

This is the guy that basically spawned the fubar place we all live in today. Why are so many bidding him such kind and fond farewells?

Going on and on about his verbosity, and clever nature is overlooking his immoral stance and overwhelmingly negative impact he had on everything from civil-rights to war.

As a side note, wasn't Clement Greenberg called something like America's "dictator of taste"? It was ok because he actually did have taste, but a lot of people given such soap boxes are idiots.

Volum, while I agree that this quote from Buckley is distasteful (and actually quite fascist), let's be real. If that were actually done, lives would be saved. There were many people with AIDS who infected other people indiscriminately.

Whoa, you spoke the truth there, but it's the unspeakable truth. Blood supplies also infected by people with AIDS and many many fatalities occurred from transfusions. To tie this to Tyro's earlier claim that I "don't care about the individual", this is a case where group rights and entitlements have stomped over the unfortunate individuals who got the short end of the straw in the form of tainted blood transfusions. Oh well.

If that were actually done, lives would be saved. There were many people with AIDS who infected other people indiscriminately.

May I just gently point out that where HIV transfer is concerned, the guy taking it up the butt isn't the one giving HIV, he's the one getting it? So Buckley's tattoo suggestion was not just odious and fascistic, it was ignorant and uninformed. Way to go Bill!

I notice you left out the nastiest of the current crop, Keith Olberman. The guy should go back to ESPN---oh, yeah, I forgot, they hate him there!