Media, has written a number of books. We met about a year ago at a a conference that was put on by the Berkeley Program at yale, and i can see that at the time she has a real affinity for trying to understand the connection between the Communications World and the media world on the one hand, and different elements of the conservative movement on theun other. So this is a natural kind of outgrowth of her previous work looking at that general area. Open to debate is the book. Heather has watched not maybe every single one of 33 yearss with the firing line episodes but pretty close to it i think. She is probably the reigning expert now on all things related to firing line. So please help a welcome heather hindershot to the podium. [applause] thanks so much. Its really great to be here, h, particularly here at the hooverr institution because the hoover was so important to the research i did on the book. I was out of stanford all the papers are and, of course, they preserved all the episodes and so on but the papers and transcripts, i really couldnt have done it without the Hoover Institution so its great to be here. The first thing people asked me about this book is why did you write it . Hy did you write it. The short, quick answer in part is this guy, i have been working on the book since 2011, about a year and half ago it became more urgent as our level of discourse seem to be deteriorating in the shouting matches be increase. It seemed like an important time to be talking about a show that really valued civil discourse and civil debate to be people who disagreed with each other. Part of the the reason was from that impulse. But the other source of the book is more personal but intellectual development. The book in 2011 whats fair on the air was about the extremist who emerged in radio and television, mostly local radio but somewhat on tv in the years following Barry Goldwaters defeat in 64, Barry Goldwater totally came out in the election, he got 10,000,000 10 million votes but he was trounced. People had a sense that the conservative movement instead, but the conservative movement blossomed in the wake of that defeat. In in some of this was on this legitimate side when oakley was advocating for but also a lot of extremism, paranoia and people like the John Birch Society emergent, that president eisenhower was a conscious, dedicated agent of a conspiracy, so these folks took to the airwaves and with their conspiratorial paranoid thinking and buckley at first was appearing on some of their tv shows, this is him in the early 60s on a show called fast form which is created by a texas Oil Billionaire so buckley was a regular guest on that show but he figured out quickly that this guy was bad for the movement, bad for the image of conservatism, he, he was an extremist and paranoid and just to tell you little bit about buckley, he emerged emerged as a National Figure 1951 with the publication of god and yell and a tack on his alma mater. This made him a minor celebrity, the book etched into the bestseller list at number 14, he became known from this book, but he really became known a few years later and 65 when he ran for mayor of new york because if you run for mayor you become a National Figure figure not just a local figure to new york city. He ran as a protest candidate on the conservative ticket. He he was protesting that john lindsay, was not conservative in any way, and buckley very famously was asked what would you do, was the first thing youll do if youre elected and he said demand a recount because it just seems so unlikely. Sure enough he he did not win but he staked a claim for conservative republicanism. And this really put him in a position to start his own tv show just one year later, because he was articulate in the media and there was a great coup for his campaign and in the middle of it all there is a newspaper strike, that met the radio and tv coverage of the campaign increase dramatically and buckley was great on tv. His great impart not only because he was articulate, smart and charming, he was not afraid to show what he really thought and felt, so here he is, john lindsay, lindsey looks upset and buckley so bored, because lindsay is not very articulate, smart and interesting and buckley complained that buckley wrote his own speeches with your playing syntax, just terrible syntax and so people wrote letters to buckley and set i disagree with you and i went out for you but thanks for being honest and pointing to how much of politics was a rigmarole. So for for example he would decline to go to parades because he was like were not going to talk about policy at parades thats just image stuff and he was really campaign parttime for mayor. So he was seen as an honest candidate even by people who thought he was much too conservative for them. So year after the campaign he started his Television Show, firing line which ran from 66 until 99 about 1500 episodes, and i want to show you a clip from that first year with david, he was a tv talk show host wellknown as a liberal, he had a show called open and, was called open and because it was openended, if the conversation was going well they would keep talking for a few hours to the end of the broadcast way, if it wasnt going well they cut it off at 30 or 45 minutes its kind of amazing this was happening at the time so he was one of the earliest guest and now show you two clips from the show to show you flavor of the program. The first time in Television History the people are interested on he who founded the program dedicated precisely to the proposition committed viewers to listen to as many as three hours at a stretch for many remain through communication with their reviews and ideas for which we are very grateful and then a staunch liberal in every context of the title, mr. Eleanor roosevelt would unquestionably when it theres nothing as a prevailing buyers, so were at the point and youre most welcome, to give us your preliminary views. Why think it was unwelcome to how you introduce me. [inaudible] on the oak asian and old programs you would bend in your [inaudible] it what a genteel disagreement right, so he is just fuming, he is such a short fuse and buckley has not always a long cute views but in this case he does, the charming meeting of people who week clearly cant really stand each other and i will show you one more clip from the same episode. Were not here to deny that by and large the surfaces have a television and they are liberal dominated. If you use it, of course i do. I think our country in the last 40 years has been a liberal in our churches, our schools and communication media,. So thats really the dominant line at the time. It points to how lunatic it would seem if it had a conservative Public Affairs talk show 1966 and people think this is a liberal country, what are you talking about so its kind of amazing. In addition to political guests, buckley also also had cultural figures, artistic figures, box specialist who is devoted to a bar can they would discuss bok and so on and i wanted to show you a clip from an episode with Norman Mailer to give you a sense of what he did outside the strictly political discussion. This conversation is not a political, is from 1968 and mailer has published armies of the night and shortly after he appeared on the show he won the Pulitzer Prize and was about the mark on the pentagon and the opening is buckley reading aloud from i believe Time Magazine, their coverage of mailer at this after more obscenity, mailer introduced law who got annoyed and requested to speak later. Ill bellow but wont do any good. By the time the mailer was perky enough to get himself arrested. He explained with some pride on the way to the lockup. So, a tech. Thats your time. Its good for the time. You were talking about maturation. I never i dont know what that means. Thats the continuing correspondence. Thats they talk of engaging in a scatological solo. Thats what you get from the idea. So the confession i made what about victorrization. Between the the intervention. You can see youre a student of the subject. Keep up with me. Trying to refocus the discussion. The Time Magazine observed okay so maybe the first and last time the word was used on american television, and really on any Television Show. Im sure all of you are very sophisticated and know what it means but is means urination. So, its a very sophisticated discussion about the scatological about a charming debate between people with very different world views but people enjoy this kind of sparring match, talking about their ideas on the show. Buckley also had the spokespeople of radical movements in 60s and 70s. He had black power folks on the shortthis Milton Henley and he is wearing a giant onc and had two security guards in fatigues behind him, who never moved throughout the whole thing, and theyre up armed but probably usually are armed. Some kind of negotiation with the producer to not have guns on she, and buckley never acknowledges theyre there. Never even makes eye contact. Just talks to milton henry. And what is radical in part about the appearance of black power on the show is that the coverage of black power elsewhere was mostly sensationalist, up so bides and nixon conveyed to the network in the early 70s they shouldnt cover back power anymore, and ignore it. He encouraged them not cover vietnam as well but the continued to cover vietnam. But the dead minimize in the coverage of black power so if wasnts to learn about black power you didnt subscribe to a newsletter, firing line was a good place to learn about it. Whether you tight it was a great idea or terrible idea. You could here the ideas expressed unedited on the show and that was remarkable. He also had heres Eldridge Cleaver on the show. He also covered the Womens Liberation Movement on the practice he had betty fer dna on early on, and he was not a very good speaker, kind of inarticulate and was not invited back for 18 years and was the voice of the mainstream liberal feminism. A better episodes with we germane greer who was published at the female eunuch and buckley enjoyed talking to her. Let me show you a clip from that encounter from the early 70s. Which appeared sometime like a contradiction in my book, i to make he and she words equal or screen out she as forever incapable of equaling he grammatically. Grammatically. You could be antifeminism by suppressing the female in a pronoun. The hierarchy. Never heard of early man, you should refer to early humans which means you cant use not only that. What it mean is is that the real attitude is going to be concealed by a form of primitive censorship, and the actual situation wont change. Its like calling people when theyre married. Doesnt change the fact of their marriage. Its hypocrisy. You think of the answers on nomenclature is preposterous. Such a trivial aspect of the real struggle and been given so much attention. Its part of the general movement to coopt the struggle for existence, really, and turn it into something okay, so, its a really interesting moment because actually the two people agree about the nonsense of the way that liberal feminism wants to change language and both agree that ms. Is a bad idea. Buckley things its not its so jarring. And she says, it doesnt change the structural relationship of marriage if you call yourself ms. , so thought she was kind of loon tack as far as trying to lunatic as far as trying to take down the family but they agreed about this issue in laing and after the show he wrote a thank you note, a as he always dade, and sacker god dam it youre good and she did not want to come back on the show but he was a terrific show. They just debated at Cambridge Student Union the week before and she had resoundingly won that debate about womens liberation bay a photo of the cambridge students so in a way this episode was a rematch after that debate. Buckley also had of course antifeminists on the show. The subject of the equal rights amendment came up and this is phyllis schlafly. The antifem is in activist and he also had Margaret Thatcher on the show twice, and this i want to show you a clip from the q a. She was not there to talk about womens liberation, did not want to talk about gender issues at all but jeff greenfield, one of the common q a guys at the time on at the questioner panel as a younge man, brought it up. And so this is their exchange. I wonder if your reputation, when you a cabinet member, the was Margaret Thatcher, no snatcher because of your ox to the program and that and your ideological stand helped you overcome the stereotypical objections to a Woman Holding office. No. Very surprised, as i said, that at home on the whole we just look at the person and not necessarily the sex. Youre limited. Youre a man. Certainly. The public the interesting thing foss mr. Is the local government has not restored the free will despite all the propaganda, but, look, i i think these questions are very trivial. You dont mind my saying so. You can sense the sweet break the sweat breaking out, just been told off by Margaret Thatcher, and buckley is great because matcher is saying gender is to answer iin uk and buckley is just poppycock, nonsense. If women are so qualified how come there rant more women in office and pushes back in an interesting way. Another great episode was he did a few episode is with clare booth luce but this one episode, she specifically asked to be on she show to talk about feminism and they were old friends and he cooperate disagree with the idea of having her on the show so he did and he gave her this long, very positive introduction, and he concluded the introduction by saying, i should like to begin by asking if you find the way that people introduce you on Television Talk shows to be condescending. Heres what she says. I thank you for that warm introduction. You will be pleased to know that i read the entire introduction, and there was only one put down. This is a high level of achievement for a man introducing a woman. You spoke of the inability on occasion to hold your tongue. Now, had you been speaking of a man who spoke out, whether he was speaking out rightly or wrongly, you would have said by what he says, he is overly candid. You might use many phrases, but women hold her tongue is a phrases that men frequently use. Opinion of the truth. No. It comes out of mans need, desire, highly successful, over the centuries to master women. So thats the beginning of the show, and then at the end of the show, as he is about to cut to the q a session he says to her, the notion that women are inferior to men is an original sin of which i am not guilty, that women are inferior to men never occurred to me. Theres different is patently obvious and i would not want to see them behind the wheel of every mac truck but you would find that insult organize would you, he is saying what do you really think. This is her response. Im much too fond of you to tell you what i really think. Perhaps one of the most charming and subtle and sophisticated of mail cough nists. I love that. Its flirty and bashful but she says, i never say it to you publicly, and obviously over a three martini lunch at his favorite Italian Restaurant you can imagine her telling him off quite a bit privately. So its a wonderful sort of public moment of friendly disagreement between these two. I warrant to read to you from the book from the introduction and then from the chapter on civil rights and black power movement, and give you a sense of the flavor of the book. Thats 20 minutes, and then we will open up to q a. All know the program was undenily his for 33 years, firing line was not his idea. Its hard to major a tv star lest interested in tv than buckley. He won an emmy for firing line in 1969 and was the longest running Public Affairs show with a single host in u. S. History. But buckley remained a tv industry outsider. It would be somewhat unfair, even uncouth, to describe buckley as a snob. He did write a fun novel about elvis presley, and if he failed to understand how anyone could consider mick jagger a good singer, his voice couldnt be better than that of every fourth person lift nest the tell dont direct hi listeneds the the beatles during sessions with hi personal trainer. But he could not stand the beatle. In 1970 he consented to be interviewed by playboy magazine. Made him practically hip. The appeared on the show, laughin, explaining didnt interview we playboy because i decided it was the only way to communicate my views to my son. And noting that he had only agreed papp on laugh insure because the producers offered to fly him out to california on an airplane with two right wings. At a press conference for buckley where henry gibson kerryed, mr. Buckley, whole youre on television youre always seated. Does this mean you cant think on your feet . Buckley responded its very hard to stand up carrying the weight of what i know. As though opinion about nudity and entertainment he tersely replied, its excessive. And asked finally whose image would be more hammered by his appearance on laughin, his or she shows, laughed and said i suppose it will make you more respect ail, coy wink, and me less so, and both probably to be desired. Manage ode play along and be a good sport and remained the dig nye identified spate of conservatism. Its doubtful the watched laughin but had a fondses areness for all in family, archie bunker he noted is the greatest anticonservative ripoff in history of modern offenses you. Dont knee karl marx. You just neil archie bunker. Son buckley once acknowledgeds that anybody who wants to understand what is going on has to watch tv. The most bookish man i ever now, whether it at the chambers, watched television uninterruptedly from seven until 11 00 every night of his life. Yet buckley also note head coulds to watch tv and had no idea who joba the hut was, admitted to never watching professional football, and during his run for mayor of new york city, he was stumped by a reference to mickey mantle, all of which toy say buckler was neither unaware of the importance of mass culture, no are deeply plugged into it him. A devoteddalitiesman and hallways coloradoist. In a tv shoulder of songs from the school of music, here