Favorite Political Authors in Review

Our politicolumnists take a break from the Presidential race to write about their favorite modern political authors. And please, don't call them pundits.

illustration by Ben Capozzi

William F. Buckley

by David Williams

Conservative political thinker, William F. Buckley died this February 27 from complications due to diabetes, emphysema, and John McCain receiving the Republican party nomination for president. His 82 year-old heart apparently couldn't continue to see such a belligerent moderate put forth as the best hope of the conservative cause.

Buckley's intellectual articulations sparked a renaissance in the public debate when only a remote clan of cave-dwellers were thought to still call themselves conservative. He is best remembered as founder of the political magazine, National Review, and host of the television show, Firing Line, forums which incubated a reactionary voice in the liberal-dominated post-WWII decades. He has been credited with preserving the GOP and ushering in Reagan (it is unknown whether the conservative minority became literate or acquired TV reception in their caves).

Thomas Sowell eulogizes, "Some people like to believe that objective forces shape history, but the right person in the right place at the right time can change everything... William F. Buckley revolutionized the conservative intellectual scene as much as Babe Ruth revolutionized the way baseball was played."

Readers might not expect to see such a glowing commemoration of a conservative in an arts and culture magazine, but 16 Blocks prides itself in giving unprejudiced credit where it is due.

Buckley was different. He was of the old-school Goldwater/Reagan style, distinct from the Bush/Bush neo-conservative variety. He was the kind of conservative with the integrity to not automatically endorse a Republican candidate. The kind of conservative who critiqued the Iraq war as a failure. The kind of conservative who supported decriminalizing drugs. The kind of conservative liberals could admire.

He was also the kind of conservative who would convey his positions with great eloquence, yet jokingly say of himself, "Who else has been so right so much of the time on so many of the issues?" In 1965 Buckley ran for mayor of New York receiving 13 percent of the vote. When asked what he would do if he won, he answered, "Demand a recount."

There are few in today's punditry brave enough to stand for conservativism's philosophical core—free markets, civil liberties, and sane, rational thought. It has been far too easy to get a job in talk radio and Fox News as a party line parrot pandering to the Bush administration. Without a voice like Buckley's, the current Republican party might not recover after their decimation in November.

Molly Ivins

by Pris Sears

Born in 1944, Molly Ivins had a reputation as a rascal. Irreverent and folksy, she was known for skewering politicians and other public figures in her many years of columns. She wrote for the Houston Chronicle, Minneapolis Tribune, Texas Observer, New York Times, Dallas Times Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and published as an independent, with her columns syndicated in hundreds upon hundreds of newspapers.

Contrary to the popular myth that women aren't funny, Ms. Ivins had a prodigious wit.

"I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn't actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle." (Mother Jones, May/June 1995)

She kept her sense of humor even when she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

"Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that." (Time Magazine, February 2002)

She spent a lot of time writing about the activities of Republicans, but didn't spare Democrats when they deserved it. She was not a fan of Senator Clinton.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone. This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges. (CNN, January 2006)

Her final column, dictated after she was too weak to type, included her advice for the ones left to carry on.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!" (CNN, January 2007)

Molly Ivins succumbed to breast cancer in January, 2007. You can find her columns online at Creators Syndicate, Mother Jones and Alternet, and her many books are widely available.

P.J. O'Rourke

by Amy Splitt

I used to think that politics was serious stuff. As an earnest young nerd, I pondered the marvelous self-regulating mechanism that was the American government as described by my teacher. Watching Bill Clinton accept the Presidential nomination, I prayed, "Please don't let this be bullshit." Of course, some of it was. Oh, but it hurt. I was on my way to a bleak, bitter career as a disillusioned idealist.

P. J. O'Rourke, a self-described humorist and "Republican Party Reptile," saved my sanity when he shredded that old Civics class with his 1991 book, Parliament of Whores. Key phrase: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." I threw out my old textbooks, got over my unrequited crush on government and stopped looking for Candidate Charming.

Don't let the "Republican" title fool you: O'Rourke's scathing wit spanks the left and the right. Even recently, in a 2006 article for The Weekly Standard called "What's that Smell?" he called everyone out, from the Speaker of the House ("When you see Pelosi speak, it's impossible not to think of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. I hope her campaign slogan isn't 'A New Kick-Off for America.'") to Tom De Lay ("He might as well have tied quail feathers to the GOP majority in Congress and sent it hunting with Dick Cheney.").

Being the world's funniest authority on everything that's wrong with... everything... isn't just a desk job. Read All the Trouble in the World (1995) and Holidays in Hell (2000): O'Rourke has traveled to some of the most dangerous places on the planet to find out what's got people so upset.

O'Rourke's been bombed, literally and figuratively, in discos in Beirut. He went to Somalia in the '90's and found that food wasn't scarce, but the only career that put dinner on the table was "genocidal gunman". Meanwhile, he's studied economics by interviewing gangsters in Albania (and being bored by bureaucrats in Sweden—yikes!). Researching global warming, he once crossed a rope bridge across the towering canopy of a rain forest in Rio while tripping his face off on ayahuasca.

Even when terrified for his life, he brings back a hilarious, informative story. Sometimes one way to knock the four horsemen of the apocalypse (and the more mundane bandits holding public office) out of the saddle is by pointing at and mocking them.