Everything about L Brent Bozell Jr totally explained
Leo Brent Bozell, Jr. (
15 January 1926 –
15 April 1997) was a U.S. conservative activist and Catholic writer. His father was Leo Bozell the co-founder of
Bozell Worldwide. His wife was Patricia Lee Buckley, sister of
William F. Buckley, and their children include
L. Brent Bozell III, also a conservative activist and the founder/president of
Media Research Center, a conservative media watchdog group and publisher. Another son,
Michael Bozell is a Benedictine monk in
Solesmes Abbey.
"A young, energetic red-haired Yalie from Omaha", as he's described in, Bozell was the best friend and debating society teammate of
William F. Buckley, Jr. at
Yale University, before becoming a practicing attorney and co-authoring (with Buckley) a defense of Senator
Joseph McCarthy in
1954,
McCarthy and His Enemies. Bozell became a speechwriter for the embattled senator and joined Buckley, by now his brother-in-law, when the latter founded
National Review in 1955.
In
1958 Bozell ran for the
Maryland House of Delegates and lost. He later worked as a speechwriter for Republican senator
Barry Goldwater, for whom he ghost-wrote the 1960 book
The Conscience of a Conservative.
In 1960 he took his family to
Spain, where he founded the
Catholic magazine
Triumph in 1965, while writing
The Warren Revolution (1966), a scholarly critique of the
Supreme Court under chief justice
Earl Warren.
Bozell suffered from
bipolar disorder, writing publicly about his experiences, suffering, and recovery in the introduction to
Mustard Seeds, a collection mostly of his post-
National Review writings (including many from
Triumph) published in
1986. The book included "Poland's Cross---And America's," Bozell's first
National Review essay in almost two decades. It also included the
National Review essay for which he may be remembered best, "Freedom or Virtue," which touched off a robust debate between himself and the magazine's more libertarian-inclined book section editor,
Frank Meyer, mostly around whether freedom or virtue should be the paramount consideration for American conservatives. (Meyer published his sides of the exchange in his own collection,
The Conservative Affirmation.)
Bozell died in 1997 after several illnesses. His son,
L. Brent Bozell III, spoke of those struggles when eulogizing him:
Manic depression by itself is enough to break the spirit of any man, but Pop was no ordinary man. He suffered from peripheral neuropathy, sleep apnea, osteoporosis, degenerative disk disease, asthma, and Alzheimer's. One by one they came, and when it seemed that no part of his body had been left untouched yet a new illness was diagnosed. We wondered how he could endure so much, accept this torture with such nobility, with never one word of complaint.
Quotes
- "A conservative electorate has to be created out of that vast uncommitted middle—the great majority of the American people who, though today they vote for Democratic or Modern Republican candidates, are not ideologically wedded to their programs or, for that matter, to any program. The problem is to reach them and to organize them."
Works
(contributor) The Best of Triumph. Lawrence, E. Michael, ed. Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press ISBN 0-931888-72-7.
McCarthy and His Enemies (with Buckley, William F., Jr.) Chicago: Regnery, 1954. Reissued as ISBN 0-89526-472-2.
The Warren Revolution. (New York: Arlington House, 1966.)
Mustard Seeds: A Conservative Becomes a Catholic. Front Royal, VA: Christendom Press ISBN 0-931888-73-5.
Sources
Buckley, William F., Jr. Brent Bozell, RIP
Perlstein, Rick, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus
Stout, David. L. Brent Bozell, 71, a Champion of Conservatism
. The New York Times: April 19, 1997
Further Information
Get more info on 'L Brent Bozell Jr'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://l__brent_bozell_jr.totallyexplained.com">L. Brent Bozell Jr. Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |