Firing Squad
... fact check was Bob Dylan a guest on William F Buckley's "Firing Line"
There is no evidence in the provided context that Bob Dylan appeared as a guest on “Firing Line” with William F. Buckley Jr. The sources mention various guests such as Barry Goldwater, Huey Newton, Jesse Jackson, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Robert Bork, and Enoch Powell, but Bob Dylan is not listed or referenced as having appeared on the program.
... so, I just returned from the public library, where I had requested inter-library loan of Loïc Wacquant's "Urban Outcasts: A Comparative Sociology of Advanced Marginality" (2008). My blog post "Seeing Redlining," on 8/20/2025, featured the renowned sociologist Loïc Wacquant. AI search had fixed on Wacquant for his use of rhetoric similar to mine, and to my point of view, as outlined in my post. When the inter-library loan arrives, I look forward to discovering if the similarity is superficial, or integral.
Checking the new books shelf at the library, as usual, I noticed the big, new political book about William F. Buckley Jr., "The life and The Revolution that Changed America" (2025). At 1,008 numbered pages, it's even bigger than I'd been led to believe by the single review I had read of it. A glance at the index induced me to borrow the book to read at home. Buckley was on a first-name basis with everyone conservative at the time. I was just a kid, then, and my memory of people and events is spotty.
As chance would have it, the book about Buckley was almost side-by-side the new biography of Bob Dylan, "Jewish Roots, American Soul" (2025). I had recently watched the new movie about Dylan, "A Complete Unknown" (2024), and thought it an opportunity to read it, as well. Independent fact-checking. On the way home from the library I got an idea - an analogy - to be exact; it is that William F. Buckley is the Bob Dylan of politics. It was like serendipity, or Gestalt psychology.
Note the reverse is unthinkable. Dylan would never trade places with Buckley. Other than my bright idea, there's simply not that much about William F. Buckley in his new biography that we didn't already know. As I said, I'm interested in the many peripheral characters discussed in the book. At even this late date, hardly anyone living has not heard of William F Buckley, who died in 2008. The same cannot be said for many of the politicos he ran with, and whom I will not so much as mention. Buckley was, and will always be, a completely different conservative.
I argue Buckley was a conservative "rock star," or, at least, he wanted to be. It is why he reminds me of Bob Dylan. It is also why what made Dylan a success didn't work for Buckley. Buckley knew which way the wind was blowing, and wanted to be hip. Hipness was capital, in the 1960s, and atoned for a multitude of sins. Never mind Buckley was all of 16 years Dylan's senior. They were both in the same place at the right place and time, which was 1960s New York City. It was Buckley's loss he didn't book Dylan on his show, Firing Line. Buckley probably hated electric guitar.
The only "revolution" in America to speak of in this context was rock n' roll. The Red Scare only scared ninnies. If the movie is as factually accurate as the biography the whole point of Bob Dylan's success was to have shocked the bourgeoisie out its polite "folksy" complacency. I must admit I was embarrassed by Dylan's bad behavior at the Newport Folk Festival watching the film. I thought it was uncalled-for and rude. Why waste a hot, provocative new style of music on the stodgy Newport folk music audience? It was a great movie, and it had me cheering, to the consternation of the theater audience.
At the end of the day conservative politics and rock stardom don't mix. Reagan was a political success but he was a movie star, not a rock star. If you will think about it for a minute I think you will see my point. I won't name names while the paint is still wet, but rock and roll is meant to shake things up. Movies are not made to shake things up, and conservatives must await their true rock star, one who will shake things up on the Right. A great many things can be said about William F. Buckley and his conservative cohorts over the years. Rebellious is not one of them.
It is admittedly damning by faint praise, but my initial reaction to William F Buckley, Jr., as a child watching TV, was that of a mild-mannered, soft spoken gentleman (and a bore). I would have rather not watched TV at all than sit through Firing Line. That was as a child, mind you. Buckley's guest appearance of Allen Ginsberg on Firing Line, viewed as video archive, today, stands as a more important political summit than any of the innumerable Cold War summits recalled from the incessant droning of the news networks night-after-night (as a child) and, moreover, a tribute to Buckley's personal warmth and charm.
It is obvious to viewers today that Buckley liked Ginsburg, listening politely as the king of the Beat poets plays his accordion, as he chants, mesmerizingly. Buckley's eyes twinkle in that unique way of his when he was delighted. He can't hide it. I don't remember what else was on TV at the same time as Firing Line. Anyone who missed the Ginsburg interview missed out on a genuine 1960s "happening." It brings a tear to my eye. I'm afraid it isn't possible to succeed as a human being anymore, certainly not in politics. Maybe what's needed is a return to FDR's "fireside chats" approach to uniting us. That, and a war.