TV REVIEW : ‘Firing Line’ Changes Format but Buckley’s Still the Boss

He’s still wearing a buttondown shirt, clutching a pencil in his right hand and dropping his pet terms such as a fortiori.

But after 22 seasons, some big changes have come to conservative guru William F. Buckley Jr.’s “Firing Line” show.

The PBS series--which not so long ago was the only regularly scheduled forum on TV where you could find undiluted conservatism and conservative/liberal ideas being debated--has been cut from an hour to a half hour, and it’s got a whole new format as well.

Don’t fear, Ronald Reagan fans. The liberals haven’t started the counter-revolution yet. The New Republic’s feisty neo-liberal editor, Michael Kinsley, may be the new permanent moderator, but Buckley, the prolific writer, speaker and happy sailor whose National Review magazine almost single-handedly kept the American conservative political movement alive in the 1950s and ‘60s, is still very much the centerpiece.

Unfortunately, however, this weekend’s discussion of “Dirty Rock Lyrics” with Tipper Gore of the Parents’ Music Resource Center and Village Voice senior music editor Doug Simmons is disappointing on several levels. (It airs tonight at 9 on Channel 50, and Saturday at 3:30 p.m. on Channel 28 and 6:30 p.m. on Channel 15.)

The 30-minute length (which “Firing Line’s” producers say was adopted to satisfy long-running requests of PBS station managers who prefer it for scheduling purposes) still affords plenty of debate time.

But the bright and provocative Kinsley is completely wasted. He asks Buckley a pointy-headed lead-off question, quoting Irving Kristol and wondering if rock music’s excesses aren’t proof of capitalism’s inherent tendency to erode traditional family values. Then Kinsley sits dumb and dunce-like on his stool until show’s end, when he blurts out that it’s time for “The Summing Up” period, during which Buckley gets the last word.

Another problem is music writer Simmons. His instincts as defender of the rock ‘n’ roll art are sound, but intellectually he’s a forensic bust as a counter to Gore.

Gore goes overboard when she says things such as “Heavy metal generally deals with themes of suicide, rape, violence and abuse of women.” But she’s impressively lucid, reasonable and a borderline libertarian in her insistance that she is for individual choice, is not a censor and does not want government to restrict the freedom of the marketplace in any way. Her organization, she insists, wants record companies to label their products for lyric content in order to provide parents with a guide.

As for Bach-lover Buckley, he is as erudite as ever but gets an F for not doing his homework. He has no idea what heavy metal is and all too willingly clings to Gore’s most exaggerated and overwrought characterizations of it.

Buckley’s final argument, however, shows that although he may not have the facts just right, he’s still a wiz at constructing a logical argument: If heavy metal’s wantonness damages children, he says, and the state is constitutionally permitted to protect children, then he doesn’t see anything wrong with making it “a truly punishable crime to sell this kind of junk to children.”

In short, the “Firing Line” format has changed but Buckley remains his immutably conservative self.