Bill, Sue, and Me

William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away yesterday. Glenn Greenwald did a good write-up in the wake of the news which talked about his life, his views, and describes how conservatism left him and not the other way around. He died an opponent of, as he called it, our venture in Iraq. Although I differed with Buckley more often than finding agreement, I've had a soft spot for him for many years. As a kid in the first half of the 1980s I watched his program Firing Line on Sundays. (Which were sometimes followed by those excellent roundtable discussions hosted by Fred Friendly.) As Greenwald notes, the show featured Buckley and guest engaging in "erudite and civil debates" which were, at times, quite formal. (Well, mostly civil as I believe the arch-Conservative once threatened to punch Gore Vidal in the face.) Despite not understanding every topic and Buckley's sesquipedalian ways forcing me to head to a dictionary frequently, I enjoyed the show quite a bit.

At the time I was a student at Luther Burbank Elementary School in Chicago and was in the Gifted & Talented program there which was modeled on the classical liberal education of English public schools. Hence, we were taught Latin and how to play the recorder. (This is perhaps why I love Jethro Tull's "Mother Goose" with its descant & alto recorders so much.) We also had a Logic & Philosophy class and took field trips to the Goodman Theater and Orchestra Hall.

The G&T program had kids bussed in from around much of the city. However, there was also what was called the "regular" part of the school. This just meant that Burbank was also the local school for neighborhood kids. Unsurprisingly, there was tension between us and them. I suspect some of this was provoked by haughtiness on our part while some was unprovoked. Regardless, there was resentment and it often played out at recess during matches of Kill the Guy With the Ball. One major effect this tension/conflict had on us in the G&T program was that we became acutely aware that there were people out there who disliked us merely because we were smart.

And so as a lad watching Firing Line, I found that I really admired Buckley, not only for his intelligence, but also because he didn't try to hide it or dumb anything down. He, along with my father, helped reinforce that being smart and well-read is a virtue, not a vice. Sure, Buckley had patrician airs that annoyed people, but he wasn't putting them on – that's how he was. I appreciated that he was himself and told people to take it or leave it. As I said above, I didn't agree with Buckley on much. But, as an 11 or 12 year-old who faced resentment at school much of the time for being an intellectually-inspiring nerd, it was really nice to see the presence of someone on television which reassured me that learning and being a dork were good things.

OK, tangent time. But it is somewhat related.

Susan Jacoby has a new book out called The Age of American Unreason. I haven't read it but I have read her recent column in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review called "A nation of dunces" and saw her appearance on Bill Moyers' Journal. From her website:

Throughout our culture, disdain for logic and evidence is fostered by the infotainment media from television to the Web; aggressive anti-rational religious fundamentalism; poor public education; the intense politicization of intellectuals themselves; and—above all—a lazy and credulous public increasingly unwilling or unable to distinguish between fact and opinion.

Bill Buckley's Firing Line wouldn't stand a chance today – even on PBS. While I agree with much of what I've heard her say, I must admit that I do get a sour taste in my mouth when she says things like: "the triumph of video culture over print culture" and "First and foremost among the vectors of the new anti-intellectualism is video. The decline of book, newspaper and magazine reading is by now an old story." I guess having grown up when video culture surpassed print culture, I feel the need to defend it.

At about the time I started watching Firing Line, I also began plundering my dad's bookshelf, specifically the 10-volume Prelude to the Great Books of the Western World, which included John Erskine's The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent". Written in 1914/15, he recognizes anti-intellectualism in American life. Such attitudes as those Jacoby describes are nothing new and she admits as much. So what's genuinely new about our situation now? I'd like to read the book and find if she gives any proof for linking the rise of video culture to the current age of unreason. If not, how to tell if she's merely engaging in Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

I am always weary of "better in my day" screeds, with those of Thomas Reeves of the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute being a particular peeve of mine. Such commentaries tend to romanticize certain eras and whitewash any reasons why changes since then may have come to fruition. Reeves loves to eulogize the 1950s and portray it as some prelapsarian time. Straight white Christians collected in nuclear families all lived together in harmony and didn't have to think too much about the folks at the back of the bus; queers stayed in the closet and people who didn't share his particular delusion about the myth of a deity named Yahweh kept it to themselves.

As for Jacoby, I have to wonder if there was ever a time when print culture meant that everyone engaged their faculty of reason to the highest degree. Just because folks read newspapers back in the day doesn't mean that the Hearst family ensured the quality of the reporting. In addition, people today might be reading less newspapers but they might be reading the same material online. I sympathize with her notion that discourse has moved from the slow, deliberate side of the spectrum to short, get-'er-done side where most of what we get is merely quanta of superficiality. But I think it's unfair of her to demonize technology by using the lowest common denominator to stand in place of the whole enterprise. She is right to say that people waste time on YouTube watching videos of teenaged skateboarders planting their faces in the concrete. But it's a disservice not to mention that one can also go to YouTube and watch & hear a performance of Beethoven's 9th or a Richard Feynman lecture. I can go to my local independent bookseller and get Ms. Jacoby's book or I can download an e-book copy of it. (For free, if I'm so inclined.)

While utopian predictions about the Internet becoming a panacea for the worst aspects of the video age have surely been proven false, people now have access to more information, more learning opportunities, and more chances for informed debate with others. The problem is you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. Sure, there are more ways to waste time today, but I remain unconvinced that there was some time in our past when a significantly large portion of the population devoted itself to reason and learning.