Dead. Which is fine.

Anyone else find this line from the Times obit just a little flip?

Mr. Buckley irrevocably proved that his brand of candor did not lend itself to public life when an Op-Ed article he wrote for The New York Times offered a partial cure for the AIDS epidemic: “Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of homosexuals,” he wrote.

Let’s just play with that, shall we?

Public safety commissioner Theophilus “Bull” Connor irrevocably proved that his brand of candor did not lend itself to public life when…..

Atlanta Braves relief pitcher John Rocker irrevocably proved that his brand of candor did not lend itself to public life when.….

Please. Bill Buckley might have endeared himself to the intelligentsia with his swashbuckling lifestyle (the result of inherited money), his prolific writing, and his extensive vocabulary.

But is there a civil rights issue in the last sixty years—McCarthy, segregation, anti-gay discrimination—on which he did not first take the wrong stand?