William F. Buckley: The F is for Funny

Nicholas Desai has begun blogging over at The American Scene and breaks out of the gate with a review of Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.

I tried very hard to remember my own favorite Buckleyism, and eventually resorted to looking it up:

If there is a key to the problem of racial and tribal tensions, and James Baldwin has it, certainly we should make it a part of our foreign aid program for export abroad, but remember that the Nazis in occupied France had all the laws and all the machine guns on their side, and still they couldn't get the French to treat them like human beings. 18 June 1963

On that note: anyone interested in what the face of modern racism does and doesn't look like should await with bated breath the December issue of Yale's Finest Publication, which hits stands tomorrow. The cover story criticizes Yale's sensationalizing coverage of an isolated incident of racist graffiti. Tantalizing caption from page five: "When I was a freshman, I based most of my life philosphy on things I gleaned from bathroom stall etchings and alley graffiti."

We thought about including staffer TB's retort to a sign which quoted a Yale freshman as saying that the inhospitable racial atmosphere here made her want to go home: "Go home then. There are a hundred people on a waiting list who'd love your spot." But we figured it was a little too on the nose.

The new issue also includes an interview with Ron Paul in which he answers the question "How would the Paul administration respond to a nuclear terrorist attack in a major American city?" Hint: his answer is not "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."