 | edt4 (99)
02/03/2006 |  I always thought he was a pompous old vampire, but considering that conservatives today are represented by the likes of Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, he assumes the proportions of an intellectual giant, a titan of conservative thought and philosophy. He's not entirely predictable, unlike his philosophical and spiritual descendants. He once admitted that he had a certain respect, even admiration, for Che Guevara...can you imagine Vicodin-Piggy Rush Limbaugh admitting to such a thing? I don't mean this as a pejorative reference, but being I was born and raised in NJ, I always found his connection with murderer Edgar Smith fascinating. In the late 50's, Smith, a young psychopath, bludgeoned to death teenager Victoria Zielinski after she refused to have sex with him in an isolated sandpit in the town of Mahwah. Although he claimed he was innocent, Smith was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death. However, he was a brilliant and manipulative man, and was able to convince several prominent people, including Buckley, that he was in fact innocent and had been framed (Buckley wrote the preface for one of the books Smith wrote while he was on Death Row in Trenton). Ultimately, Smith was spared the death penalty and was released from prison. He moved to California, where he later attempted to abduct another young woman, who luckily escaped. Taken into custody, Smith admitted his guilt, and also confessed that he had in fact killed Zielinski. This time, he was sentenced to life imprisonment (a few years ago, he was denied parole when he applied for it). Like I said, that's no indictment of Buckley; Norman Mailer put himself pretty much in the same kind of position when he sponsored the freedom of murderer Jack Henry Abbott, who inevitably murdered again. But it is an interesting story about a man that many people, including myself, generally find insufferably boring.
(4 voted this helpful, 0 funny and 0 agree) |
