Do Two Rights Make a Wrong?
Not this time: New mag publishers Pat Buchanan and Taki Theodoracopulos take on the neoconservatives
And what of Taki’s end-paper column? Worryingly for his fans, it sometimes feels strained, as if laboring under the weight of “gravitas” and all those Buchananite moral imperatives. (“Taki‘s been defanged,” Smith says bluntly.) What makes Taki Taki is that he is beholden to no one. In the past he was dubbed “a terrorist among the rich” because of the fearless way he assailed the moneyed and powerful. The fact that he also attacked minorities and the poor -- witness his remarks about the Puerto Rican Day parade -- only enhanced the impression of a journalist who didn’t give a damn. Now he does, with the result that too often his prose is in a straitjacket, and the ribaldry that enlivens his Spectator column dies on his keyboard.
Perhaps Taki simply respects Buchanan too much. While the magazine was in its planning stage, he promised Buchanan and his wife that he wouldn‘t cause them any embarrassment. Buchanan, of course, operates under no such constraints. One can’t imagine him approaching Mailer on bended knee, though one can certainly envision an illuminating dialogue between the two. (Mailer did, in fact, interview Buchanan for Esquire in 1996.) Moreover, by theorizing that the Republicans are now split between “value” conservatives (whom he respects) and “flag conservatives” (whom he reviles), Mailer gave a passing nod of assent to at least part of the Buchananite program. While the flag-wavers are manipulative and power-hungry, Mailer stated, value conservatives “believe in what most people think of as the standard conservative values -- family, home, faith, hard work, duty, allegiance -- dependable human virtues.”
And, as Taki says, “That‘s Pat.”
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