• She Did Make a Rough Mother

  Posted Monday, April 27, 2009 1:33 PM | By Hanna Rosin
  
  
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  Emily, I am reluctant to excuse Pat Buckley's behavior as a mother on the grounds of her generation. If she'd been a writer, or actress or astronaut, instead of the devoted wife of William Buckley, she likely would have tortured her colleagues instead of her family. She certainly would have been less famous than she was. I found the excerpt of Christopher Buckley's memoir such an interesting psychological portrait of family, more so for being only partially digested. Christopher Buckley wanted so much to eulogize her as a great woman, and was almost apologetic about condemning her. But the condemnations overshadow. A young friend of her granddaughter's, a Kennedy relative, comes over for dinner, and Pat Buckley tortures her at the table with made-up stories about Michael Skakel, the murderer in the Kennedy family. The good news for feminists is, dad doesn't sound come off all that much better, failing to visit his 11-year-old son in the hospital, skipping out of his son's graduation because he was bored. My takeaway from the story: this is why I'm not a conservative.
   
  
   
  Filed under: Pat Buckley, christopher buckley's memoir, bill buckley, Michael Skakel
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