Language

William Frank Buckley Jr. (1925 – 2008) was an American conservative writer, public intellectual, and political commentator. ^{– Wikipedia.}

I was thinking of him recently (I don’t remember why exactly) and couldn’t remember his name. (I could SEE him in front of my face and HEAR his voice, but couldn’t say his name.) My husband knew who I was talking about, but couldn’t come up with his name, either. My friend Marsha mentioned him a couple of days ago, and I thought, “Ahhhhhhh, yes.”

I have always admired people who can think on their feet and express themselves well. My mom did that, getting up at city council meetings and telling the council and audience members what she thought clearly and well. She had an impressive vocabulary and used it to also express her opinions and her mood. You could tell how passionate (or angry) she was because the higher her emotions, the longer her words. She would tell people off in such an impressive manner, with subtle sarcasm, that the object of her scorn didn’t realize what had happened until they started bleeding from her verbal dressing-down. :0)

I admired William F. Buckley, Jr. because he spoke so WELL. Not being a mental giant, I many times became ‘lost’ in the beauty of his words, not really catching the MEANING of what he was saying until later. I had to look at a transcript so that I could THEN decide if I agreed with his opinion or not.

Insults of the past were an art form, so witty and well thought out – rather than the crude, blunt, knee-jerk pronouncements or labels now – but that’s a subject for another day.