Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line

Hendershot (What’s Fair on the Air?), an MIT film and media professor, tells the story of Firing Line, William F. Buckley’s legendary television show, which ran from 1966 to 1999. In her view, Buckley was the “major conservative public intellectual” of post-WWII America, and Firing Line is “a model for what smart political TV once was,” contrasting with today’s on-air incivility. After starting small in New York City, Firing Line became must-see public television for millions nationwide in the 1970s. Stylish and eloquent, Buckley offered smart, telegenic points of view on themes such as communism, the Black Power movement, and feminism, all of which he strongly contested. A parade of public figures came to talk and debate. Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Reagan joined him, as did Barry Goldwater, Margaret Thatcher, John Kenneth Galbraith, Betty Friedan, Eldridge Cleaver, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg, to name only a few. Long before cable splintered television audiences, helping to bring Firing Line to an end, Buckley feared televised political theater and its impact on quality programming. Using interviews and transcripts, Hendershot does more than tell the history of a uniquely influential show and personality; her thorough, compelling, and very readable book provides a three-decade journey through the center of the nation’s intellectual life. (Oct.)