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CounterPunch: Liberals Sniffle at Buckley's Passing (3/4/08) by Alexander Cockburn
The independent editor relates how, upon arrival in 1972 U.S., he "was astonished to find that the conservative cold warrior William Buckley had a television channel paid for out of public funds and reserved for his exclusive use," while, "in an effort at balance, PBS offered the left's point of view in Sesame Street." Cockburn finds the modern-day "left" faring little better:It's astonishing to read the funeral paeans from liberals, flush with homages to Buckley's "urbane civility." Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, issues a warm eulogy in Newsweek. John Nichols echoes these kindly sentiments in the Nation['s website] itself. The supposedly left Portside site promptly reprints Nichols. What are these people thinking? All this is evidence of the decay of liberalism. Do they have any memory?... Coulter and the other yahoos descend in part from him. Here's Buckley confronting the AIDS crisis with an advisory of Nazi lineage: "Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals."
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