Firing Line
Season 9
Firing Line was an American public affairs show founded and hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, Jr., founder and publisher of National Review magazine. Its 1,504 episodes over 33 years made Firing Line the longest-running public affairs show in television history with a single host. The erudite program, which featured many of the most prominent intellectuals and public figures in the United States, won an Emmy Award in 1969.
Where to Watch Season 9
29 Episodes
- Government and Public ConfidenceE4
Government and Public ConfidenceSenator Muskie's Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations had just commissioned the Lou Harris organization to conduct a poll on Americans' knowledge of and confidence in their country's institutions. The results on both counts were, as WFB relates them, pretty depressing. The bulk of the hour is spent--sometimes heatedly--analyzing the poll and debating how close it comes to reality. - Ulster: 1974E9
Ulster: 1974An unusually lucid discussion of a tangled situation. In reply to Mr. Buckley's question--"Now, if something can last between 1921 and 1968, why can't it last out the balance of the century?"--Mr. Hume gives a masterly account of the threads that came together in the late Sixties to produce the violence that led, in 1972, to Britain's suspending Stormont and assuming direct rule of Northern Ireland. - The Limits of Journalistic InvestigationE23
The Limits of Journalistic InvestigationCarl Bernstein and Bob Woodward discuss the Watergate investigation and their own doubts regarding certain investigative decisions. A debate ensues regarding their contact with grand jurors to glean more details about the Watergate case. - Can You Strike Against the State?E37
Can You Strike Against the State?Mr. Wurf, the leader of the fastest-growing union in the United States, answers the title question with an emphatic Yes. Mr. Buckley, citing "public figures ranging from Calvin Coolidge to Franklin Roosevelt," answers with an equally emphatic No. A heated but frequently illuminating debate that keeps returning to a recent strike by some of Baltimore's policemen after the mayor had refused any form of arbitration. - Russia and the Food CrisisE39
Russia and the Food CrisisIn 1972 the Nixon Administration had made an agreement to sell grain to the Soviet Union that, as WFB puts it, "Mr. Earl Butz, our Secretary of Agriculture, proudly announced [as] the largest grain deal in four thousand years." The immediate result was to help our farmers, our trade balance--and of course the Russians, in that Year of Detente. The result over the next two years had been sharp rises in our own food prices, over and above the general inflation we were suffering. - Democratic CultureE41
Democratic CultureWilliam F. Buckley's guest is writer/professor Leslie Fiedler. Fiedler's essay "Love and Death in the American Novel" has become recognized as both highly controversial and profoundly influential in the worlds of literary criticism and academia. The discussion opens by debating the question of whether American culture is too much wrapped up in itself. - The Energy Crisis and the EconomyE44
The Energy Crisis and the EconomySoon after the Arab states clapped on their embargo and then boosted the price of oil by 400 per cent, WFB reminds us, President Nixon appointed William E. Simon energy czar, "and the American people were introduced to ... [this] cyclone from Wall Street who bedazzled the Congress, the bureaucracy, and the press, and got us through the winter." But oil was still $10 a barrel, and where do we go from here? - The Prospects for Democratic ModerationE46
The Prospects for Democratic ModerationMr. Udall, WFB begins by telling us, is running for President, and "a number of Democrats ... see in him someone who could bridge the gap between, say, the McGovern wing of the party and the Muskie-Humphrey wing." (Historical piquancy: the others whom WFB mentions as serious candidates for 1976 are Henry Jackson, George Wallace, and Lloyd Bentsen.) But the substance of the conversation is on Mr. Udall's principal preoccupations: energy and the environment.
