On your right

Any number of topics vied for attention this week, but then William F. Buckley Jr. up and died. I recently read, and was tickled by, his latest book, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription, a collection of his correspondence with National Review readers and others. (I once wrote to compliment him on one of his newspaper columns, of which he wrote more than 5,600. He promptly sent back a note in reply.)

Most of the obituaries focused on how in the 1950s and '60s WFB singlehandedly cohered and made respectable a political movement: conservatism. With National Review he created the most influential political journal of the last century. He also "invented TV punditry" (TNR) when he created Firing Line, the debate program that ran on PBS for 30 years.

But he once said he only talked about politics when he was paid to do so, and labels are no good for WFB. He was a polymath and a contrarian, even within his own movement, the sort of man of whom it is said we will not see his like again, and I was a great admirer.

He wrote more than 50 books, including detective fiction and books about faith and music and sailing. His writing was marked by a sometimes ridiculous floridity, to the point where you thought he might be putting you on. (He often was.) He was an accomplished sailor and a concert-level harpsichordist. (He wrote that he hated "rock and roll." No one's perfect).

When senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (liberal, also not worthy of labels) passed away, columnist and Buckley protege George Will wrote that Moynihan's senate seat should be draped in black velvet and never occupied again. Something—I'm not sure what—should be draped in velvet in memory of WFB.

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Word comes this week that employees at the IRS are prohibited from accessing the St. John's Hoops blog. I haven't been this proud since learning we were banned in China. (True fact: Can't access SJH inside the Middle Kingdom.) Still waiting to hear whether the ban affects the entire Treasury Dept. I've always suspected I have a following at the ATF.

Let me know if you will or will not be playing hoops at St. John's this weekend. We tip off at 9:00 a.m. Saturday, as usual.