Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; 1; Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?
- Episode Number
- 1
- Episode
- Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?
- Producing Organization
- WOR-TV (Television station : New York, N.Y.)
- Contributing Organization
- Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University (Stanford, California)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/514-c53dz03t3s
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- Description
- Episode Description
- President Johnson had just declared war on poverty, and Mr. Harrington, an avowed socialist who had started out on the staff of Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, had been among the first to enlist. On this show (the first Firing Line taped, though not the first aired), Mr. Harrington begins by describing the despair and consequent lack of initiative engendered by poverty; WFB engages him on the issue of whether we can hope to alleviate either material or emotional poverty through government action. MH: "Being kicked around and being pushed down, living in dense, miserable housing, and dealing with cockroaches and rats are not the kinds of things that make one a balanced, content, normal, and adjusted healthy personality." WFB: "I couldn't agree with you more. But I'm trying to raise the following question: To what extent... can we count on [a poverty program] to alleviate all these concomitant miseries?"
- Series Description
- The television series Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. was a venue for debate and discussion on political, social, and philosophical issues with experts of the day. Firing Line broadcasts from 1966 through March 1971 were produced and syndicated by WOR-TV, a commercial station in New York, but some of them were also broadcast on noncommercial television stations. Starting in April 1971, Firing Line broadcasts were produced by the Southern Educational Communications Association, an arm of South Carolina Educational Television. Hoover Institution Library & Archives' Firing Line collection guide can be found at: https://www.hoover.org/library-archives/collections/firing-line.
- Date
- 1966-04-04
- Asset type
- Episode
- Genres
- Talk Show
- Topics
- Public Affairs
- Subjects
- United States; Poverty
- Rights
- Copyright held by Stanford University. This copy is provided for educational and research purposes only. No publication, further reproduction, or reuse of copies, beyond fair use, may be made without the express written permission of the Hoover Institution Library & Archives on behalf of Stanford University.
- Media type
- Moving Image
- Credits
-
-
Guest: Harrington, Michael
Host: Buckley, William F., Jr.
Producing Organization: WOR-TV (Television station : New York, N.Y.)
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
Stanford University
Identifier: 80040.1 (Hoover Institution)
Generation: Proxy
Duration: 0:50:00
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- Citations
- Chicago: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; 1; Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?,” 1966-04-04, Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 9, 2026, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-c53dz03t3s.
- MLA: “Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; 1; Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?.” 1966-04-04. Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 9, 2026. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-c53dz03t3s>.
- APA: Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.; 1; Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?. Boston, MA: Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Stanford University, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-514-c53dz03t3s