Right, I know, he just died so we have to pretend we did not loath him for a least two weeks. But I have the sense that William Buckley would not give me that courtesy, so forget that.I am reminded that Buckley is often quoted as having said words to these effect:<\/p>\n
I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2000 people on the faculty at Harvard University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What a dummy.The most recent instance in which I’ve seen the man with my own eyes, and heard him with my own ears, saying this (on TV, not in real life … because he’s dead and all) was moments ago on Meet the Press. Tim was replaying an old MTP tape from October 17th, 1965. In that tape, Buckley says what I quoted above, but he precedes it with the phrase “I’m often quoted as having said.” … so, since he was quoting himself, I suppose we cannot be sure of the exact phrasing, but you get the point.I heard this quote for the first time in the 1980s when I was at Harvard, and of course I could not leave it alone. Now, what you have to understand is that it is well known that this was not simply a dig on Harvard, but also, a racist remark disparaging of the Irish. “The Boston Phone Book” is a euphemism for the “Hoards of Irish Immigrants and their Spawn.” So, Buckley was saying that he would prefer to have the our society managed by a random selection of subhuman and presumably inebriated Irishmen than the Harvard Liberal Establishment. This is clear.(I’m reminded of a similar remark made by the intellectual leader of the Minnesota Independence Party, Jesse The Body<\/em> Ventura, in reference to Saint Paul. Jesse claimed that the streets of Saint Paul were laid out by a gang of drunk Irishmen.)So, when I heard this back then, I had a look at the first 2000 names in the Boston Phone book that were people (the white pages do include non-humans) to see what I could see. I found two things.First, there are no Irish people listed in the Boston Phone Book’s first 2000 humans. ‘A’ is a very uncommon name for an Irish person. ‘A,’ however, does begin a lot of other names, like Aaron, Abrams, Abramson, and so on. In other words, Aleph isn’t just a Hebrew letter handy for crossword puzzles. ‘A’ starting a last name was, at least back in the 1980s, commonly correlated with being Jewish in Boston.Given the moderately disproportionate share of Jews on the Harvard faculty in those days, I could have guessed that there would be a disproportionate share of Harvard Faculty members among those 2000 names. But I checked anyway.This turns out to be difficult, as I recall, because a lot of people have similar or identical names, especially when many use only a first initial or two. I was unable to establish very many direct connections with total certainty (there were a number of faculty that I knew, and knew where they lived), but I do remember that when I reached 30 matches (in name, not necessarily an exact person match) between the two phone books, at just under 200 listings, I stopped, comfortable with a 10 percent sample and the knowledge that Buckley was a dork.I should add this, however: When Buckley first made these remarks, back in the 1960s there were probably not quite as many Jews on the Harvard faculty. I suspect the British still had a stronger hold on that particular institution, but I can’t be sure.Anybody out there have an old phone book collection handy?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Right, I know, he just died so we have to pretend we did not loath him for a least two weeks. But I have the sense that William Buckley would not give me that courtesy, so forget that.I am reminded that Buckley is often quoted as having said words to these effect: I would rather … Continue reading The World’s Smartest Conservative Was a Dope<\/span>