William F. Buckley, Jr was indeed a one of a kind. He definitely stood head & shoulders above everyone else in the world of journalism. He will certainly be missed.

I'll miss him, too. The NY Times ran a nice obit with several photos (I saw the print version). Sesquipedalian Spark of Right. And they ran an admiring editorial by Robert Semple: William F. Buckley Jr. Excerpt:

quote:

There are not many issues on which Mr. Buckley and this page agreed or would agree — except, perhaps, the war in Iraq, which Mr. Buckley regretted as “unrealistic” and “anything but conservative.” Yet despite his uncompromising beliefs, Mr. Buckley was firmly committed to civil discourse and showed little appetite for the shrillness that plagues far too much of today’s political discourse.

His famously quirky facial and vocal mannerisms were often parodied by comics -- I found him entertaining even when I had no idea what he was talking about. You couldn't help but expand your vocabulary. Buckley's run as host of a continuously-produced tv show ("Firing Line") lasted longer than Johnny Carson's -- or so I read somewhere.

Even a cursory comparison of WFB's "Firing Line" with what today passes for interview shows demonstrates how vapid the latter have become.