The sea coast of Bohemia
LETTERS
From Wm F. Buckley Jr, Christopher I. K. Tallack. Eric Taylor, Boris Kalcev, Humphrey Wynn, T. H. Berrill, FRCS, Anthony Eisingc•r, Mrs I. S. Mason, Elspeth Rhys-Williams, D. E. Folkes, Shadrack Jollifie, Patrick Carroll.
Sir: Your distinguished contributor Professor D. W. Brogan writes (28 April) in a piece about San Francisco's hippies that 'In the 1964 campaign, the mother of William Buckley, the Charles Maurras of the Radical. Right, launched a campaign of "Mothers for Moral America," protesting against topless performances, and issued a film showing what kind of exhibitionisni was ruining the country. This particular campaign collapsed in laughter, and it was asserted that the film was at once snapped up by Elks Clubs, and that Ecdysiast was not paid for her trouble.'
I do not mean to be taking Professor Brogan's journalism too literally. He should not be expected always to carry the heavy cross of the historian, indeed I'd be the last to tamp out that flicker of hippiness in him which makes him so enduringly bearable. But for the record: (1) my mother, Mrs Wm F. Buckley Sr, though very much in favour of a moral America—and indeed of a moral England—never joined, let alone launched, the 'Mothers for Moral America'—though it is true that her name was coopted, in one document, as one member of a large committee of sponsors; (2) my mother has to this day never seen the film, nor read its script—let alone did she 'issue' it; (3) the 'campaign' did not collapse either in laughter or in tears—because the film was never released for viewing, Senator Goldwater having seen it and ruled not that there were too many breasts exposed, but that there were too many negroes visible in the riot scenes; (4) the sexy parts of the film were clearly subordinate (I did see it) to those that illustrated an endemic disregard for law and order, which was the point the writer (a young Californian father by the way, and not a mother) had sought to make; and (5) I am quite certain that Miss Ecdysiast was paid in full. The Republican party under Mr Goldwater was not victorious, but it war solvent, and any debt to achieve toplessness would certainly have been regarded as a debt of honour, to be paid in full if necessary by appealing to mothers for a chivalrous America.
Sir Denis Brogan goes on to meditate on the special fascination for American men of female nudity, evidently wondering whether we are likely to outgrow that fascination. Who knows? Recent figures indicate that the United States has now emerged as the leading homosexual country in the world. As a historian, perhaps Professor Brogan can tell us how that happened. Could it have been the Brain Drain?
Wm F. Buckley Jr National Review, 150 East 35th Street, New York
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