Lowry to Buckley: You Canceled Your Own Goddamn Column

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By Matt Haber

October 14, 2008 | 4:51 p.m

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Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review, has responded to Christopher Buckley's announcement on Tina Brown and Barry Diller's Daily Beast that he was "fired," as the story's URL shows, or "sacked," as its headline read until it was recently changed to "Buckley Bows Out of National Review." (Buzz moves fast, and as The Times David Carr wrote roughly 300 hours ago, "Given Ms. Brown’s reputation for frantically changing everything in the final hours of closing every magazine she has edited, perhaps a medium that absorbs — indeed, requires — constant reiteration will suit her.")

Writing on 'The Corner' blog, Mr. Lowry claims:

Over the weekend, Chris wrote us a jaunty e-mail with the subject line 'A Sincere Offer,' in which he offered to resign his column on NR's back page and said that if we accepted, there 'would be no hard feelings, only warmest regards and understanding.' We took the offer sincerely. Chris had done us the favor of writing the column beginning seven issues ago on a 'trial basis' (his words), while our regular back-page columnist, Mark Steyn, was on hiatus. Now, Mark is back to writing again, and—I'm delighted to say—will be on NR's back-page in the new issue.

So, according to Mr. Lowry, it was Mr. Buckley's jaunty little email, not the "flood" of hate mail Mr. Buckley says was sent to The National Review after he endorsed Senator Barack Obama, that did him in.

It hardly seems to matter. Maybe we'll get to read all the messages—jaunty, hateful, or otherwise—when Mr. Buckley puts out a sequel to his father's 2007 book, Cancel Your Own Goddamn Subscription.