Mr Hoffman, thank you for your article. I read it with great interest. We are hosting granddaughters this summer whose choice of swimwear is immodest. This has motivated me to question my own choice of daily clothing so for a week now I have worn a skirt everyday and I can sense a change in my attitude towards myself. I cleaned out my closet of shorts. I researched the history of immodest swimwear-the bikini was invented by a French MAN, who tried to hire models to advertise his invention, all of whom refused. He found a French prostitute who agreed to model the scandalous swim attire which made its way into films, magazines, and television, and finally acceptance by the culture. I’ve even witnessed young teens wearing “booty” shorts at the Holy Sacrifice. When asked by my friend, the priest refused to address immodest clothing saying this was for the “bushas” (grandmas in Polish) and the mamas. We desperately need a revival of modesty and reverence. And I sincerely regret and repent of my own immodesty and vow to make reparation by my own example without judging or looking down on others. Thank you for suggesting this movie. I’m looking forward to watching it.
Thanks for the movie tip. The description reminds me of David Lynch's The Straight Story, a critic and fan favorite but a dud in my opinion (a snoozer you're supposed to appreciate for the artistry but his depiction of midwest weirdness is too, well, unbelievably Lynchian). Interestingly, in "Pilgrimage" the Brit walks 627 miles. In "Straight Story" the American rides a lawnmower 240 miles.
Didn't our buildings and destinations get ugly first. and we followed, dressing accordingly? The English don't have to go far for inspiring architecture. In the US we dress for pilgrimages to our 2 mega-churches, Walmart and Costco. Many still dress respectfully at funerals held in cemeteries. That old world's disappearing though, for ceremonies like the 'brothers' taking Billy Fullthrottle's cremains to his favorite biker bar and flushing them down the toilet, (which [upside] deprives Anubis of a client). We dress for the concrete, drywall, steel, and florescent & led lighting, where we're watched over by security cameras, not God, angels, or holy saints.
Yesterday Mr. Ozzie Osbourne passed away. He of the "Hail Satan" commercial brand, no doubt advanced for strictly commercial reasons. Nonetheless, as an apparent marketing tool he spread the meme of devil worship. Years later he felt no duty of repair. There was no repentance or mea culpa, as far as I am aware. In death he's rehabilitated by the media as a gentle family man.
He boosted capitalism while posing no threat to the Cryptocracy and thus he's mourned on TV and in newspapers coast to coast. It's a lesson in how seriously confused and double-minded is our culture.
And Ozzie and Black Sabbath were superstitiously fond of crosses, (crosses not crucifixes, far as I can tell). Reminds me of when Alice Cooper got golf buddy Pat Boone to dress like the character Stanley in the movie The Ninth Configuration (A sexually bent brute, Satan. Another character, Richard, seemed to be Lucifer, the brains -- a useful device in a movie about doubles.). Pat Boone wrote the words to the Exodus movie song. Confusion is an understatement.
Susa, Katya here yet again because now I can't get the Exodus song out of my head: as a youngster I had my parents buy the music, learned to play it and sing it, taught my sisters to sing it, and now my husband Roscoe from the most purely Christian and conservative background I thought possible, tells me that his family bought the record and played it constantly! How Judaized we were, we who thought we were purely Christian, and I had no idea that Pat Boone, whom I always loathed, wrote the words -- tho, of course his name would have been on the score which I still owned until a few years ago. This is Maimonides, the subtle programming of the goyim, the buried material in Christians' lives, and why we silently go along with the supremacy of Israel. And Black Sabbath--the stuff I never paid attention to --did that become elevator music? How deeply and undetectedly does all this lie in our buried, profoundly passive to evil, too busy to notice, lives? I can't bear it that I so loved the Exodus music. Sal Mineo, Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman -- what was not to love?! --had to get that off my mind, sorry.
It was gratifying to read Michael's comments on Pat Buchanan, who twice within the Republican party in 1992 and 1996, sought the nomination in the Presidential race and in 2000 ran as an independent. He was correct on three big issues: he opposed the off shoring our manufacturing, endless military intervention in other parts of the world (what Harry Elmer Barnes called "perpetual war for perpetual peace") and unrestricted immigration.
Of course, the Republican party would not stand for this. In December 1991, National Review (a silly rag that long ago appointed itself as the keeper of the Overton Window as to just exactly what opinions "conservatives" are allowed to express) basically devoted the entire issue to giving William F. Buckley Jr. free rein in the hatchet job of asking "is Pat Buchanan an anti-semite?" This later spun off a book, "In Search of Anti-Semitism," which Nathan Glazer reviewed in the New York Times and from which the following excerpt is taken.
"Two passages suggest he is edging toward this conclusion. Mr. Buckley argues that anti-Semitism morally disqualifies a person from seeking public office, and then asks, Would anti-Catholicism disqualify a candidate? A Catholic himself, Mr. Buckley says no: "There is no geographical promontory out there, populated by Catholics who are exposed to terminal persecution. . . . I am ready to concede that in our world, in our time, Jews have inherited distinctive immunities." And again, going even further, he says: "Anyone who gives voice, especially if this is done repeatedly, to opinions distinctively, even uniquely, offensive to the security of settled Jewish sentiment involving religious or ethnic or tribal pride engages in anti-Semitic activity."
In his scathing obituary of Buckley, "William F. Buckley Jr., RIP--Sort Of," Peter Brimelow suggested that,
"I do know that Buckley's political ambitions were not merely symbolic. After his race against Lindsay, he convened a private meeting including F. Clifton White and long-time National Review Publisher Bill Rusher, both veterans of the Draft Goldwater movement, to discuss the question of how he could run for president. They assured him, very unimaginatively I believe, that it was unthinkable. So Buckley stepped aside. But had he and not James won the Senate race in 1970, he would have been a contender. It was a fatal mistake. Conceivably, it could have broken his heart.
"Unquestionably, in my view, it explains the fratricidal savagery of Buckley's 1992 attack on Pat Buchanan, a fellow Irish Catholic conservative who had dared to make the jump from pundit to presidential candidate. As a much-celebrated Catholic, Buckley must have known that Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But that does not mean he was immune."
Buchanan, a gracious, intelligent man with a sense of humor and with decent instincts, never stood a chance in a party that likes mean spirited people: the Bushes, Dole, McCain, Romney, Trump. But I am grateful that he made the effort.
Well said, Roscoe. Buckley pursued Buchanan and also led an in-house inquisition against his own senior editor at "National Review," Joseph Sobran. A special issue of the magazine was devoted to it. Hugh Kenner, the literary authority and friend of Ezra Pound was permitted to write in and say that he wished Abe Foxman (then head of the ADL) would "moderate his frenzies." Sobran eventually defended himself in the Catholic "Wanderer" newspaper where he wrote an erudite weeky column, making readers aware of Buckley's contempt for working class Catholics.
Mr. Buckley worked behind the scenes to elect Democrat Joseph Lieberman to the US Senate in CT. Buckley was a former CIA agent, and a member of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. A virtuoso con man possessed of impressive polemical skills (though James Baldwin wiped the floor with him at Oxford). Reruns of his TV show "Firing Line" continue to fascinate. He was a skilled sailor, harpsichord player and man of letters. Most of his potential was of course squandered in service to our enemies.
His statement, which you reference, "I am ready to concede that in our world, in our time, Jews have inherited distinctive immunities" is vintage Talmudism. It is pandering of a particularly ignominious type, and remains in force in Gaza ,where the genocidalists proceed to perpetrate atrocities immune to interdiction by their American enablers.
Thank you Michael for the amplification in regard to WFB jr's capacity for knavery and treachery. Joseph Sobran was another who should have watched his back.
Overpraised as a writer by people who should have known better and apparently believing every word of it, Buckley's prose was often elliptical and vague. Buchanan was the better writer, often achieving eloquence by not striving for it.
Many years ago, after any appreciation I might have had for Buckley had worn off, I was given a subscription to National Review by my mother (bless her). I plodded though each of them looking in vain for something worthwhile and it was only with every other issue, when "The Misanthrope's Corner" by Florence King appeared, that I was rewarded. Buckley was outclassed even in his own publication.
Whew. I thought it meant I was stupid finding Buckley's spy novels boring. They did-- maybe -- help glue two words, "insouciant" and "tatterdemalion", to America's verbal map; and it's been a flag since to wonder if & how those fond of them have passed through his verbal fields. Then there was the fun waiting to see if his chair would tip over backwards.
Katya chiming in behind my husband, Roscoe, who not only brought Pat Buchanan into my life, but also, just yesterday, educated me regarding Ozzie Osborne, of whom I can say with joy I had never heard.
But simply, following the Copeland theme with “Fanfare for the Common Man”, composed at a time when America was so filled with hope, I want to suggest to readers the books of a fairly obscure Catholic writer, Stephen Faulkner. His theme is also Pilgrimage: just a few years ago, with almost no money, he took his teenaged son to retrace the route of Father Jacques Marquette by canoe from St. Ignace, at the northernmost tip of Lake Michigan, all the way to St. Louis, MO, all by hand-paddling, no motors, an absolutely extraordinary contemporary pilgrimage through a forgotten current of American history, providing such balm to our minds so overworked today by the incessant assembly line of dire news. He and his son manage to find a Catholic Church nearly every Sunday, climbing from the banks of their shoreline camps, to attend Mass. A pilgrimage of two months, of spirit, of history, of reflection, of what we might be capable of without our machines, of time out of mind —all with very little money. The book is called “Waterwalk” and is filled with stories of Pere Marquette, with poetry, Augustine, Scripture, and the cruel pressures of modern life.
Faulkner’s second book, called “Bitterroot,” describes father and son’s overland trip to trace the route of Father De Smet through the West. They do as much on foot as they can manage in our highway covered land, which is another of the loud but invisible tyrannies of our lives.
These books by an obscure Catholic writer are contemporary chronicles of “decency and hope,” of faith and commitment, as Michael describes. I believe a movie was made of “Waterwalk,” but the books are a very restful and inspiring read. So that we might remember who we are and where we came from, and how much we actually owe to our forgotten holy Fathers Marquette and De Smet. My plan is to send Steven Faulkner a copy of Hoffman’s “The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome,” or maybe “Usury in Christendom” for Christmas this year. Such reading will be a pilgrimage, maybe even like running and capsizing in a rapids. (They’ll be maytagged, says Roscoe! I’ll leave the politics to him.)
Via Katya here, author Faulkner has rekindled the memory of the intrepid Frs. Marquette and DeSmet, the latter having had a huge impact in the Idaho wilderness. Watching Hollywood cowboy movies one would think that it was mainly Protestant parsons who ministered in the Wild West. Narcissa and Marcus Prentiss lost their lives in the course of their missionary efforts in Washington state, and other Protestant evangelists were equally heroic. The Catholic missionary effort however, is largely overlooked. Yet travel to western Montana and observe the Catholic names of many frontier-era towns, including St. Ignatius and St. Regis. Observe the Catholic cathedral in Helena. In Cataldo, Idaho visit the oldest building in the state, a Catholic Church, and the resplendent Priest Lake region to the north, named for the Catholic clerics who long ago labored for the salvation of souls there. The recovery of historical memory is paramount.
Katya just adding that so much of the Midwest is/was Catholic, especially in Wisconsin where Fr. Marquette canoed (with fur trapper Joliet, a Catholic, and his crew) from Lake Michigan down the Fox River from Green Bay to Oshkosh and on down (against the current) to the Wisconsin, which flows into the Mississippi. The memory of Marquette was everywhere, and there used to be many roadside shrines to Mother Mary. Just a quote from a Russian-Georgian Orthodox who was killed by the new atheists outside of Tbilisi in 1907: "A nation that forgets its own history is like a beggar who knows neither his past nor where he is going." And, "A nation whose language is corrupted can no longer exist as a nation." Ilia Chavchavadze, whose son helped restore churches ruined by the Soviets, and then later in Grozny, Chechnya. The Catholic and Apostolic church history seems especially under attack.
I learned a lot about the Catholic history of especially the American southwest in the book, “After the Boston Heresy Case” written in defense of Fr Leonard Feeney by writer Gary Potter.
Maybe there was a lot more to Buckley's spy novels. My being 'out to lunch' bigtime back then, it's probable. The one thing crawled to mind hours after commenting was the name of his protagonist. Having now read Mr Hoffman's enlightening book Twilight Language, the name seems to be flaunting itself: Blackford/Blackie Oakes.
Thank you! What a theme! And Blackie O, a capital O being twice the size of a small o, makes it a double O, I guess, maybe. (Think I'll be reading another of your books instead of his next.) As Saul Bellow wrote, (forgot which novel), "Nothing is too rum to be true." Thanks to you, I suspect he may have been referring to Bacardi Rum's logo BAT. Maybe. Anyhow, thanks and thank you for tolerating.
When did swearing allegiance to the bar absolve a president's oath to the country of which he holds office
Mr Hoffman, thank you for your article. I read it with great interest. We are hosting granddaughters this summer whose choice of swimwear is immodest. This has motivated me to question my own choice of daily clothing so for a week now I have worn a skirt everyday and I can sense a change in my attitude towards myself. I cleaned out my closet of shorts. I researched the history of immodest swimwear-the bikini was invented by a French MAN, who tried to hire models to advertise his invention, all of whom refused. He found a French prostitute who agreed to model the scandalous swim attire which made its way into films, magazines, and television, and finally acceptance by the culture. I’ve even witnessed young teens wearing “booty” shorts at the Holy Sacrifice. When asked by my friend, the priest refused to address immodest clothing saying this was for the “bushas” (grandmas in Polish) and the mamas. We desperately need a revival of modesty and reverence. And I sincerely regret and repent of my own immodesty and vow to make reparation by my own example without judging or looking down on others. Thank you for suggesting this movie. I’m looking forward to watching it.
Thanks for the movie tip. The description reminds me of David Lynch's The Straight Story, a critic and fan favorite but a dud in my opinion (a snoozer you're supposed to appreciate for the artistry but his depiction of midwest weirdness is too, well, unbelievably Lynchian). Interestingly, in "Pilgrimage" the Brit walks 627 miles. In "Straight Story" the American rides a lawnmower 240 miles.
Didn't our buildings and destinations get ugly first. and we followed, dressing accordingly? The English don't have to go far for inspiring architecture. In the US we dress for pilgrimages to our 2 mega-churches, Walmart and Costco. Many still dress respectfully at funerals held in cemeteries. That old world's disappearing though, for ceremonies like the 'brothers' taking Billy Fullthrottle's cremains to his favorite biker bar and flushing them down the toilet, (which [upside] deprives Anubis of a client). We dress for the concrete, drywall, steel, and florescent & led lighting, where we're watched over by security cameras, not God, angels, or holy saints.
Yesterday Mr. Ozzie Osbourne passed away. He of the "Hail Satan" commercial brand, no doubt advanced for strictly commercial reasons. Nonetheless, as an apparent marketing tool he spread the meme of devil worship. Years later he felt no duty of repair. There was no repentance or mea culpa, as far as I am aware. In death he's rehabilitated by the media as a gentle family man.
He boosted capitalism while posing no threat to the Cryptocracy and thus he's mourned on TV and in newspapers coast to coast. It's a lesson in how seriously confused and double-minded is our culture.
And Ozzie and Black Sabbath were superstitiously fond of crosses, (crosses not crucifixes, far as I can tell). Reminds me of when Alice Cooper got golf buddy Pat Boone to dress like the character Stanley in the movie The Ninth Configuration (A sexually bent brute, Satan. Another character, Richard, seemed to be Lucifer, the brains -- a useful device in a movie about doubles.). Pat Boone wrote the words to the Exodus movie song. Confusion is an understatement.
Susa, Katya here yet again because now I can't get the Exodus song out of my head: as a youngster I had my parents buy the music, learned to play it and sing it, taught my sisters to sing it, and now my husband Roscoe from the most purely Christian and conservative background I thought possible, tells me that his family bought the record and played it constantly! How Judaized we were, we who thought we were purely Christian, and I had no idea that Pat Boone, whom I always loathed, wrote the words -- tho, of course his name would have been on the score which I still owned until a few years ago. This is Maimonides, the subtle programming of the goyim, the buried material in Christians' lives, and why we silently go along with the supremacy of Israel. And Black Sabbath--the stuff I never paid attention to --did that become elevator music? How deeply and undetectedly does all this lie in our buried, profoundly passive to evil, too busy to notice, lives? I can't bear it that I so loved the Exodus music. Sal Mineo, Eva Marie Saint, Paul Newman -- what was not to love?! --had to get that off my mind, sorry.
Roscoe himself commenting this week:
It was gratifying to read Michael's comments on Pat Buchanan, who twice within the Republican party in 1992 and 1996, sought the nomination in the Presidential race and in 2000 ran as an independent. He was correct on three big issues: he opposed the off shoring our manufacturing, endless military intervention in other parts of the world (what Harry Elmer Barnes called "perpetual war for perpetual peace") and unrestricted immigration.
Of course, the Republican party would not stand for this. In December 1991, National Review (a silly rag that long ago appointed itself as the keeper of the Overton Window as to just exactly what opinions "conservatives" are allowed to express) basically devoted the entire issue to giving William F. Buckley Jr. free rein in the hatchet job of asking "is Pat Buchanan an anti-semite?" This later spun off a book, "In Search of Anti-Semitism," which Nathan Glazer reviewed in the New York Times and from which the following excerpt is taken.
"Two passages suggest he is edging toward this conclusion. Mr. Buckley argues that anti-Semitism morally disqualifies a person from seeking public office, and then asks, Would anti-Catholicism disqualify a candidate? A Catholic himself, Mr. Buckley says no: "There is no geographical promontory out there, populated by Catholics who are exposed to terminal persecution. . . . I am ready to concede that in our world, in our time, Jews have inherited distinctive immunities." And again, going even further, he says: "Anyone who gives voice, especially if this is done repeatedly, to opinions distinctively, even uniquely, offensive to the security of settled Jewish sentiment involving religious or ethnic or tribal pride engages in anti-Semitic activity."
In his scathing obituary of Buckley, "William F. Buckley Jr., RIP--Sort Of," Peter Brimelow suggested that,
"I do know that Buckley's political ambitions were not merely symbolic. After his race against Lindsay, he convened a private meeting including F. Clifton White and long-time National Review Publisher Bill Rusher, both veterans of the Draft Goldwater movement, to discuss the question of how he could run for president. They assured him, very unimaginatively I believe, that it was unthinkable. So Buckley stepped aside. But had he and not James won the Senate race in 1970, he would have been a contender. It was a fatal mistake. Conceivably, it could have broken his heart.
"Unquestionably, in my view, it explains the fratricidal savagery of Buckley's 1992 attack on Pat Buchanan, a fellow Irish Catholic conservative who had dared to make the jump from pundit to presidential candidate. As a much-celebrated Catholic, Buckley must have known that Envy is one of the Seven Deadly Sins. But that does not mean he was immune."
Buchanan, a gracious, intelligent man with a sense of humor and with decent instincts, never stood a chance in a party that likes mean spirited people: the Bushes, Dole, McCain, Romney, Trump. But I am grateful that he made the effort.
Well said, Roscoe. Buckley pursued Buchanan and also led an in-house inquisition against his own senior editor at "National Review," Joseph Sobran. A special issue of the magazine was devoted to it. Hugh Kenner, the literary authority and friend of Ezra Pound was permitted to write in and say that he wished Abe Foxman (then head of the ADL) would "moderate his frenzies." Sobran eventually defended himself in the Catholic "Wanderer" newspaper where he wrote an erudite weeky column, making readers aware of Buckley's contempt for working class Catholics.
Mr. Buckley worked behind the scenes to elect Democrat Joseph Lieberman to the US Senate in CT. Buckley was a former CIA agent, and a member of the Skull and Bones secret society at Yale. A virtuoso con man possessed of impressive polemical skills (though James Baldwin wiped the floor with him at Oxford). Reruns of his TV show "Firing Line" continue to fascinate. He was a skilled sailor, harpsichord player and man of letters. Most of his potential was of course squandered in service to our enemies.
His statement, which you reference, "I am ready to concede that in our world, in our time, Jews have inherited distinctive immunities" is vintage Talmudism. It is pandering of a particularly ignominious type, and remains in force in Gaza ,where the genocidalists proceed to perpetrate atrocities immune to interdiction by their American enablers.
Thank you Michael for the amplification in regard to WFB jr's capacity for knavery and treachery. Joseph Sobran was another who should have watched his back.
Overpraised as a writer by people who should have known better and apparently believing every word of it, Buckley's prose was often elliptical and vague. Buchanan was the better writer, often achieving eloquence by not striving for it.
Many years ago, after any appreciation I might have had for Buckley had worn off, I was given a subscription to National Review by my mother (bless her). I plodded though each of them looking in vain for something worthwhile and it was only with every other issue, when "The Misanthrope's Corner" by Florence King appeared, that I was rewarded. Buckley was outclassed even in his own publication.
Whew. I thought it meant I was stupid finding Buckley's spy novels boring. They did-- maybe -- help glue two words, "insouciant" and "tatterdemalion", to America's verbal map; and it's been a flag since to wonder if & how those fond of them have passed through his verbal fields. Then there was the fun waiting to see if his chair would tip over backwards.
Katya chiming in behind my husband, Roscoe, who not only brought Pat Buchanan into my life, but also, just yesterday, educated me regarding Ozzie Osborne, of whom I can say with joy I had never heard.
But simply, following the Copeland theme with “Fanfare for the Common Man”, composed at a time when America was so filled with hope, I want to suggest to readers the books of a fairly obscure Catholic writer, Stephen Faulkner. His theme is also Pilgrimage: just a few years ago, with almost no money, he took his teenaged son to retrace the route of Father Jacques Marquette by canoe from St. Ignace, at the northernmost tip of Lake Michigan, all the way to St. Louis, MO, all by hand-paddling, no motors, an absolutely extraordinary contemporary pilgrimage through a forgotten current of American history, providing such balm to our minds so overworked today by the incessant assembly line of dire news. He and his son manage to find a Catholic Church nearly every Sunday, climbing from the banks of their shoreline camps, to attend Mass. A pilgrimage of two months, of spirit, of history, of reflection, of what we might be capable of without our machines, of time out of mind —all with very little money. The book is called “Waterwalk” and is filled with stories of Pere Marquette, with poetry, Augustine, Scripture, and the cruel pressures of modern life.
Faulkner’s second book, called “Bitterroot,” describes father and son’s overland trip to trace the route of Father De Smet through the West. They do as much on foot as they can manage in our highway covered land, which is another of the loud but invisible tyrannies of our lives.
These books by an obscure Catholic writer are contemporary chronicles of “decency and hope,” of faith and commitment, as Michael describes. I believe a movie was made of “Waterwalk,” but the books are a very restful and inspiring read. So that we might remember who we are and where we came from, and how much we actually owe to our forgotten holy Fathers Marquette and De Smet. My plan is to send Steven Faulkner a copy of Hoffman’s “The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome,” or maybe “Usury in Christendom” for Christmas this year. Such reading will be a pilgrimage, maybe even like running and capsizing in a rapids. (They’ll be maytagged, says Roscoe! I’ll leave the politics to him.)
Thank you, Michael, for the lovely interlude.
Via Katya here, author Faulkner has rekindled the memory of the intrepid Frs. Marquette and DeSmet, the latter having had a huge impact in the Idaho wilderness. Watching Hollywood cowboy movies one would think that it was mainly Protestant parsons who ministered in the Wild West. Narcissa and Marcus Prentiss lost their lives in the course of their missionary efforts in Washington state, and other Protestant evangelists were equally heroic. The Catholic missionary effort however, is largely overlooked. Yet travel to western Montana and observe the Catholic names of many frontier-era towns, including St. Ignatius and St. Regis. Observe the Catholic cathedral in Helena. In Cataldo, Idaho visit the oldest building in the state, a Catholic Church, and the resplendent Priest Lake region to the north, named for the Catholic clerics who long ago labored for the salvation of souls there. The recovery of historical memory is paramount.
Katya just adding that so much of the Midwest is/was Catholic, especially in Wisconsin where Fr. Marquette canoed (with fur trapper Joliet, a Catholic, and his crew) from Lake Michigan down the Fox River from Green Bay to Oshkosh and on down (against the current) to the Wisconsin, which flows into the Mississippi. The memory of Marquette was everywhere, and there used to be many roadside shrines to Mother Mary. Just a quote from a Russian-Georgian Orthodox who was killed by the new atheists outside of Tbilisi in 1907: "A nation that forgets its own history is like a beggar who knows neither his past nor where he is going." And, "A nation whose language is corrupted can no longer exist as a nation." Ilia Chavchavadze, whose son helped restore churches ruined by the Soviets, and then later in Grozny, Chechnya. The Catholic and Apostolic church history seems especially under attack.
I learned a lot about the Catholic history of especially the American southwest in the book, “After the Boston Heresy Case” written in defense of Fr Leonard Feeney by writer Gary Potter.
Second try, a p.s. to Mr Roscoe and Mr Hoffman?
Maybe there was a lot more to Buckley's spy novels. My being 'out to lunch' bigtime back then, it's probable. The one thing crawled to mind hours after commenting was the name of his protagonist. Having now read Mr Hoffman's enlightening book Twilight Language, the name seems to be flaunting itself: Blackford/Blackie Oakes.
“Saving the Queen” (of England) was the general tenor of his espionage novel.
Thank you! What a theme! And Blackie O, a capital O being twice the size of a small o, makes it a double O, I guess, maybe. (Think I'll be reading another of your books instead of his next.) As Saul Bellow wrote, (forgot which novel), "Nothing is too rum to be true." Thanks to you, I suspect he may have been referring to Bacardi Rum's logo BAT. Maybe. Anyhow, thanks and thank you for tolerating.