This morning brought an e-mail from Bibi Farber, one of Barry Farber’s daughters. She, her sister Celia, and Barry’s widow, Sara Pentz, sent it out to mark what would have been Barry’s 95th birthday. Tomorrow will mark five years since Barry left us, on May 6, 2020, the day after he turned 90.
As my friends and many of my subscribers should know, Barry was a dear friend and one of my heroes. I have mentioned how one of the highlights of my life was being Barry and Sara’s houseguest for a week and appearing every night on Barry’s internet radio show, which was something I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a teenager listening to Barry on a transistor radio under my pillow.
When Barry died I wrote a memoriam which appeared on World Net Daily, and can be seen here. Barry wrote a weekly column for WND, and it was my honor and privilege to edit that column for him for more than ten years, as well as editing one of his books: his volume of memoirs, Cocktails with Molotov.
The e-mail featured some clips from Barry’s 1980s TV show, one of which I’ll share with you here. As he did on the radio, he often featured guests with sharply conflicting viewpoints, and he likened the resulting spectacle to that of “two scorpions in a brandy glass.”
Among all his accomplishments, one that I feel particularly stands out is that Barry Farber emphatically and unequivocally put the lie to the claim (which is the basis of so much Leftist propaganda) that racial bigotry is part and parcel of American political Conservatism. I hope you’ll see this in the clip below and also in Bibi Farber’s remarks in the tribute to Barry that is linked to at the bottom of this post.
Note: At the end of this clip (which pits Julian Bond against a Grand Wizard of the KKK), Barry makes reference to C.P. Ellis. For those who don’t know, C.P. Ellis was a Grand Dragon of the N. Carolina KKK who, in the course of debating with an activist for better housing for poor Black people, Ann Atwater, underwent a sea change and became a civil rights activist. The story was chronicled in a book called The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South by Osha Gray Davidson, and was made into a 2019 film, The Best of Enemies, starring Taraji P. Henson and Sam Rockwell.
It’s the sort of story that Barry Farber loved to tell.
Other times I’ve written about Barry include:
A 2016 American Thinker piece in which I suggested Barry Farber would make a great addition to Trump’s cabinet as SecState.
A Substack post earlier this year with an example of Barry’s wit.
A Substack post with the audio of Barry, Sara and me talking about romance (among other things).
A recent Substack post with the audio of me telling Barry about my life as a Boardwalk Pitchman.
And the Talkers magazine tribute to Barry Farber may be viewed here. Celia and Bibi appear starting at about 0:45. My own appearance starts at about 45:02.
ST
I listened to and loved Barry Farber for decades. I listened to his show on WOR for several years before I joined the Air Force. But that didn't stop my listening. I managed to get assigned to McGuire AFB, New Jersey, where I could still listen to him on WOR. It was a good listening post ... I could also listen to Jean Shepherd, also on WOR. In 1975 I called in to Barry's office on some topic, and wound up on his show along with a couple of other people. Now THAT was an experience!
You’ve really had an interesting life!