That once thats perfected, and there would be a push to do that, then there it is. Potassium bromide, the people bash toll. Weve got it for the elderly. There it is, now we have it for lethal injections. Right. So, again, this is the question about well have a reliable technology, and well be able to use it in lethal injection. But remember, the problems of lethal injection are not just problems of the drug content. Theyre problems of its administration and whos going to administer it. And these injections are administered under lets say difficult and trying circumstances. So i dont think its just a matter of could we find a drug cocktail which this some way would seem to us to be reliable, i think its a question of how that drug cocktail is going to be administered, by whom and to whom and under what circumstances. The truth of the matter, whats happening with lethal injection today is a form of human experimentation. Thats what happened in oklahoma. They were trying a drug cocktail that really had not been previously used. And states now because of the reluctance of european, european manufacturers to supply chemicals that would be used in execution in the United States, states are desperately searching for chemicals that they can use or going to socalled compounding pharmacies. And some states now using a new threedrug cocktail, other states trying to use a massive dosage of a single barbiturate. And, by way, im not claiming that by the way, im not claiming that you cant produce a technology of execution that will get it right most of the time. The question is whether an error rate of 3 or 7 is end bl is acceptable. Is acceptable when the state takes life and when the state promises that it will take life in a way which imposes no more pain that is necessary and amounts to the mere extinguishment of life. So this is our last question. Make it good. Oh, boy. No pressure. [laughter] so on that topic of the acceptable amount, the percentage of botched executions, can you talk a little bit about any Legal Precedents and how that plays into the cultural perception in the Abolitionist Movement . Right. So theres no, theres no Legal Standard for what the acceptable error rate is. With respect to, with respect to guilt, the United StatesSupreme Court was con fronted with a case in which the allegation was that the person that was going to be executed was actually innocent. And the United StatesSupreme Court roughly said actual innocence doesnt matter. The perp had a fair trial. The person had a fair trial. And with respect to botched executions, what the courts have said isnt that you have to get it perfect in every case. What the courts have said is that execution can impose no more pain than is necessary. Thats why i believe that issue of Capital Punishment is appropriately an issue of democratic decision. Its appropriately an issue for the people of the United States, through their elected representatives, to resolve. And the people of the United States are resolving it. Now, again, i cant say as new jersey goes, so goes america. But what happened in new jersey and in connecticut and in maryland and in illinois and almost in new hampshire, i think, is going to happen in state after state. Remember, the United States has a Death Penalty, but very few places impose it, and very few places now execute. So there is no Legal Standard that says it cant be more than 3 in order for the Death Penalty to be constitutional. That question of whether 3 is an acceptable error rate, thats a question for us as a people to decide. And may i just say i hope we get it right. So thank you very much. [applause] thanks for coming. [inaudible] [inaudible conversations] wed like to hear from you. Tweet us your feedback, twitter. Com booktv. Christopher buckley appeared at the 2014 book festival in columbia, South Carolina, to talk about his book, a collection of essays. You can watch that now on booktv. Were in for a celebration of what critics call the rare contribution of big ideas and truly fun writing. A new yorker by birth, christopher graduated cum laude from yale. By 24 he was managing editor of esquire magazine. By 29, chief speech writer to George Herbert walker bush, the thenVice President of the United States and later the Founding Editor of forbes fyi. His great books have great titles, and i think thats important. And they include the white house mess, good title, no way to treat a first lady. Not about you, patricia, i dont think. [laughter] Supreme Courtship, what a great name, and thank you for smoking, by the way. His literary circle is reminiscent of that great algonquin round table, that celebrated group of new yorkers that met regularly for lunch during the 1920s. The likes of Robert Benchly, ruth hale, George Kaufman and dorothy parker. The inheritors of that tradition included christopher buckley, but also the late joseph heller, the late Christopher Hitchens and martin amos. One can only imagine what those lunches were like. So, ladies and gentlemen, its my pleasure to introduce the author of but enough about you, a storyteller, a cultural critic and, if i may say, irreverent historian, mr. Christopher buckley. Lets welcome him. [applause] hello. Would you please turn your cell phones back on . [laughter] what an honor to be introduced by dr. Pastides. Ive had the pleasure for some years now of getting to know him and his delightful and very beautiful wife, patricia, your first lady, who is a connecticut girl i point out with no small pride being a connecticut yankee myself. And she is also an author as, and you will be hearing from her at, later on at this festival. I, having identified myself as a connecticut yankee, i hasten to point out that i have can you hear me in the cheap seats back there . How much did you pay for those . [laughter] i hasten to point out that i have South Carolina connections. My grandparents moved to camden in 1938, so i spent a lot of time growing up there. Growing up is, in my case, an ongoing process. [laughter] my uncle reid lived in camden. He passed away just a month ago. And i miss him greatly. He ran the public the Buckley School of public speaking. And lastly and perhaps, yes, certainly most importantly though i have the very good sense to marry a South Carolina girl who is with us, sitting demurely by the exit. [laughter] whether katie showed good sense in marrying me is, well, lets not go there. Katie went to medical school here in columbia, and her grandfather was a very distinguished south carolinian. His name was elliott springs, and he was from fort mill. He was a classmate of the aforementioned f. Scott fitzgerald at princeton. A yankee institution of allegedly higher education. [laughter] and when the great war broke out, he volunteered as a Fighter Pilot and shot down a considerable number of huns. Fockers. Thats a technical airplane term. [laughter] eleven kills, actually, to be precise. And then he came home and wrote a novel about it called warbirds, and it became a huge bestseller. But he was cleverer than most writers which is to say he did not continue to be a writer. [laughter] he, wanting to afford the finer things in life, he went into the family business, textiles. And made a far better living, i suspect, than he would have had he remained a writer. So hows that for South Carolina connections . Does that suffice . [applause] but, you know, even so, even so my inlaws still refer to me as that yankee katie went and done married. [laughter] but enough about them. As a matter of fact, the title of my new book is, indeed, but enough about you. Im not going to bore you by telling you how truly wonderful it is other than to say that its attractively packaged. [laughter] and reasonably priced. [laughter] the, its, you know, author introductions make me think of the about the author paragraph on the back flap of books. Youre familiar with them. I know patricia is. These are the paragraphs that authors pretend they didnt write. [laughter] you know . Considered the leading voice of his generation. Considered the greatest writer since f. Scott fitzgerald. No, i didnt write that. Well, after a number of books, ty or six five or six, i sort of got bored with the about the author paragraph. There wasnt really anything more to say, hadnt been much to say to begin with. So i just started making them up. [laughter] and the about the author paragraph in this book said that he has been an adviser to every american president since William Howard taft. [laughter] why not, right . So i was on about day ten of a book tour. Book tours are, you know, instead of waterboarding and sending Seal Team Six [laughter] they ought really just to send terrorists on book tours. You know, wed have found out where bin laden was hiding much faster. [laughter] so you get a little punchy. And i was walking into, i was in boston on about day ten, and i was walking into an am drive time radio interview. And these are not generally occasions of socratic dialogue. [laughter] thats a greek term. [laughter] you know, theres sort of a hierarchy out there in radio land. Out here you have npr and terry gross, fresh air, and down here you have the am drive time radio interview which consists of some ignoramus barking ignoramus questions at you between the traffic reports. So i walked into the studio, and the host to use a sort of a generous construction was, i saw him hunched oaf the about over the about the author paragraph with beetling brow. And i knew, by way, this was all he would know about me. [laughter] and he looked up at me. His brow is now sort of beetling into kind of a cromagnon aspect. And he said, you were an adviser to William Howard taft . [laughter] and i said, yeah. [laughter] and now the brow is, you know, something was not right, but he was going to go with it. He said, so we could talk about that . I said, yeah, we can talk about that. [laughter] and we did. [laughter] i havent been invited back, but [laughter] it was kind of worth it. [laughter] dr. Pastides mentioned book titles. I thought id talk a little bit about those. Theyre anyone hazard a guess how many books are published in the United States every year . Its about a million. Im not sure they all get read. Most of them, anyway, are by joyce carol oates. [laughter] and the others are all titled 50 shades of grey. [laughter] i think, you know, titles are very important. A title is a brand name, and, you know, you go into a bookstore you remember bookstores . You know, there are one or two left. And, you know, you see this vast array in front of you. So i think its important to, you know, catch the, try to catch the attention. Of the reader before he goes and buys another volume of 50 shades of grey. But, you know, literature is full of some titles that almost came into being. F. Scott fitzgerald, whose papers reside here, famously wanted to call the great gatsby trimalchial in east egg. Pretty catchy. [laughter] i dont need to tell this audience that, of course, thats the rich patron in [inaudible] because you already knew that, right . [laughter] or you could take another influential writer of the 20th century, adolf hitler. Hitlers original title for mein kampf, that lighthearted romp, was my four and a half year struggle against lies, stupidity and cowardice. You know, would you have wanted to be the fiewr records editor . Tell him the title sucks. [laughter] no, you tell him. [laughter] sometimes titles get into trouble when theyre translated into other languages. This them promy happened to john them promy happened to John Steinbeck when his novel, the grapes of wrath appeared in japan under the title angry raisins. [laughter] you wonder how moby dick would have made out. [laughter] really angry whale. [laughter] speaking of fish, peter benchly, the grandson of Robert Benchly he of the algonquin round table had a hard time coming up for the title of his famous book. Come on, we need a title. And they had gotten it down to three choices, the jaws of death, leviathan rising and the shark. So you probably be figured out what book were talking about here. And his father, nathaniel benchly, mischievously proposed why dont you call it whos that noshing on my leg . [laughter] you can imagine the opening bars in the movie finish. Whos that noshing on many i leg . On my leg . Slightly undercut it. So anyway, you know, titles are problematic. Joe hellers catch 22 was originally titled catch 18 for the eight years that he was working on it. It was catch 18. And then just before catch 22 was to be published in august of 1961, his publisher called him and said, well, theres this guy leon whos bringing out a novel called mila 18. Okay, so we cant have two books with the number 18 in them. And joe was, you know, he was beside himself. So thats why you didnt have a catch 18 experience today at the department of motor vehicles. [laughter] some this book is, this very reasonably priced book is called with but enough about you. My first collection some years ago, its always a big moment in any writers life when you have enough to recycle old stuff. Publishers hate collections because they dont sell, but im sure today youre going to prove them wrong. [laughter] anyway, being a, you know, having enough for a collection is a big deal for every writer, so i was very puffed up and full of selfimportance. As opposed to, say, now. [laughter] i i was much younger then. And so i said, well, lets call it oovre to you. [laughter] get it . That being the classic french word for oov. [laughter] the only, the trouble is when an american pronounces this world, it sounds like a prelude to vomit. [laughter] and this was not the random house idea of a selling point, you know, the vomitory aspect. So they said, no, lets not call it that. So there was a piece in the book about an experience i had. I said lets call it want to buy a dead dictator. And they said it requires some explanation. In 1991 i found myself, i was the editor of a magazine at forbes, and i had a readership of 900,000 forbes readers. And communism had just fallen, the soviet union had fallen. Those days Boris Yeltsin remember dont you miss Boris Yeltsin . [laughter] god, he was such an improvement on what we have now. But he was always having to get up and stand on tanks and prevent, you know, a coup. And i became sort of obsessed with the fact that the russians had gotten rid of communism. They still had lenins embalmed corpse on red scare, the Sleeping Beauty from hell. Although the lines to view it are much shorter now. [laughter] there are actually alternatives now on saturday night, you know . What do you want to do tonight . Lets go see lenins body again. [laughter] perfect date, you know . So i thought, well, lets see if we can give mr. Lenin a push. So i wrote with up a hoax i wrote up a hoax article saying that we had just received some very hot information that the russians were so strapped for hard currency that they were going to auction off lenins corpse. [laughter] they were very concerned that this be done in a dignified hander. [laughter] manner. And the corpse could not be used for crass commercial purposes. You know, underarm deodorant ads or floor wax. [laughter] and that it would be, the auction would be conducted by sealed bids. So then i had to figure out what the opening bid would be for a dictator. And this was preebay. Now wed know in ten seconds, you know . [laughter] it would be so i thought 15 million sort of felt right. So i said 15 million. And so we, one night about 4 30 in the afternoon when, you know, news organizations this is, you know, before the 24 7 news cycle. Those good, old, blessed days. [laughter] so we faxed it out to about 40 or 50 news outlets thinking maybe well get an ap wire story. And the switchboard lit up like a christmas tree, so we went home. [laughter] so we wouldnt have to lie. [laughter] were journalists. We have ethics, you know . [laughter] so a couple of hours later im at home on the nordic track ski, you know, ski machine, my evercontinuing battle of the bulge, and i was watching Peter Jennings world news tonight, and up came lenins embalmed face. [laughter] i thought, oh chit. [laughter] it was funny, kind of like being remember when you were a kid and you put a rock on the railroad track, you know, and the next day the grownups are talking about the derailment . [laughter] ah. So the next morning at about six my phone rang, and it was steve forbes, the [laughter] and this was a little earlier than steve typically called me. [laughter] in fact, steve had never called me. [laughter] in fact, steve never called me ever again. [laughter] and he said the russians have gone ballistic. And it was like that scene in the movie dr. Strangelove, you remember they come in to say, mr. President , its premier kissoff on the hotline, and hes hopping mad. [laughter] and the minister of the interior had had to, had broken into russian tv programming, into the russian oprah. The mind boggles. Oprah with a wart in the middle of her forehead. [laughter] i always wondered about the soviet union. Heres a country with 30,000 Nuclear Warheads and no dermatologists. [laughter] everyone had a wart. [laughter] and then we got gorbachev, and he had, you know, that whole thing. [laughter] anyway, he had broken into russian programming to reassure an anxious nation that he was not planning secretly to auction off the corpse of lenin, and he took pains to denounce me personally [laughter] as a brazen liar and an international provocateur. [laughter] i thought, cool. [laughter] so eventually everyone got their sense of humor back. Maybe except the interior minist