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Retiring line
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Dec. 16, 1999 |
My friends know this about me. That's why, when I arrived in New York to attend the final taping of William F. Buckley Jr.'s "Firing Line" and the subsequent cocktail party, the pal I was staying with greeted me with this note: "Welcome! Have a great time tonight. But in case you start to find William F. Buckley charming, remind yourself that he's a mean old right-wing elitist." I'd been warned, but not long after I arrived at HBO studios for the taping of the final "Firing Line" (April 1966-December 1999), I grew weak. As I clustered in the studio's green room with my fellow latecomers, I was treated to a montage of Buckley -- young, old, young again (but always with that strange delivery: immobile neck, reptilian tongue flicker, eye flash, Cheshire Cat grin) -- mixing it up with a stream of the "prominent liberals" who appeared on his show during its 33 years on the air. ("Firing Line" was the longest-running talk show in TV history.) The clips showed the best of Buckley through the decades: looking supremely bored by Jesse Jackson, insulting the late civil-rights attorney William Kunstler, alarming Germaine Greer ("Oh, come, come," she clucked, hand to throat, in response to some right-wing diatribe) and even -- in 1968 -- rendering Muhammad Ali speechless. "Let me say one thing. Let me just say one thing to you," said the boxer, fighting to get a word in over Buckley's glove-free verbal jabs. Ali paused. Then he smiled sheepishly and confessed, "I forgot what I was gonna say." And I forgot that I wasn't supposed to laugh. During a break in filming, my fellow green roomers and I were allowed into the intimate studio, where I found more reason for mirth. I found a seat next to Ruth Rubinstein, who'd worked for Buckley for years, recruiting studio audiences. For the invitation-only final taping, she'd brought along three friends. As the cameras rolled, the four of them kept up a running commentary -- about the food in the green room, which they really wanted me to try, and Buckley's final panelists (the Weekly Standard's William Kristol, National Review's Richard Lowry and Richard Brookhiser, New York pol Mark Green, Slate's Michael Kinsley and "Uncommon Knowledge" host Peter Robinson, to whom Buckley will pass his public-affairs TV mantle). So much for quiet on the set. "That one looks so young," one of the ladies observed loudly about 31-year-old Lowry. "So this is his last show? Why's he retiring?" asked another in the middle of Buckley's remarkably unsentimental final signoff. "He's old," Ruth nearly shouted. I loved them. Even more so after we shared a celebratory glass of bubbly ("Good champagne!" they concurred, after checking out the Moët label) and watched the crew set up for Ted Koppel's "Nightline" interview with Buckley. As Koppel and Buckley had their foreheads briskly powdered, their hair tenderly brushed and their bodies wired for sound, one of my new friends declared the former "much more handsome in real life" than she'd expected: "His hair's so nice. You can't tell that from TV. I always thought he wore a toupee. But he looks good. I'm very favorably impressed." The camera operator had moved my front row seat practically onto the stage (he needed room to swing), so I could hear nearly every word the two famous fellas uttered to each other off camera during commercial breaks. They talked books: Koppel's apparently working on a memoir -- in journal form -- "the one sort of book an editor can't really mess with"; his wife has read portions and likes it. Buckley's working on a new tome, doesn't write every day, but "envies people who do." They commiserated about short leashes: Buckley, excusing himself for checking his cell phone messages, "When you've been married as long as I've been married, Ted, you'll understand." Koppel replied, "I've been married only 37 years, and I understand." They got risky: After replaying an old segment in which Buckley hollered at Gore Vidal, "Don't call me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in the face, and you'll stay plastered," Buckley asked Koppel how he dug the clip up. "It was ABC," Koppel replied. "But it was destroyed for libel reasons ... by ABC," said Buckley. "Oh, was it?" Koppel asked, and swiped his hand dismissively. Once the show wrapped, Buckley poked at Koppel's network format: "I was going to shake your hand, but I didn't know if that would be in bad taste." The verdict from the lady next door? "He's a sweet man." I'm pretty sure she was talking about Ted Koppel. The post-wrap reception was held at the Museum of Television and Radio, and I was sad to note that the opinionated ladies were not in attendance. Would they have kvelled over how trim Rush Limbaugh looked? Would they have argued about which "60 Minutes" man was Mike Wallace and which Morley Safer? Would they have exclaimed that Chris Buckley greatly resembles his father? Loudly wondered where Henry Kissinger's accent was from? Clucked about Alistair Cooke's failure to show, onaccounta a bout of bronchitis? Theorized about how Tom Wolfe keeps his white suits clean? Stepped up to shake Ed Koch's meaty hand? Alas, we'll never know. Without them, I was forced to shed my outsider armor and mingle with the conservatives in earnest. Wall Street Journal editorial board member John Fund greeted me warmly and the National Review boys joked naughtily about Clinton. I laughed and laughed. Maybe that's why I woke up this morning feeling cheap and dirty.
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