Art
I haven’t read the guy’s columns in years, but when I was a teenager, he was my introduction to the op-ed pages of my local paper, the only guy that was interesting to read, probably because he was funny. Buchwald’s writing led me to Mike Royko, who had a similar, albeit darker, tone. Also, Buchwald looked EXACTLY like my Uncle Ted, who was fat, funny, smoked cigars and drank Meisterbrau.
Until a few years ago, my mom gave me an Art Buchwald collection every year for Christmas. By that time I was kind of beyond his gentle humor, and most of the books went unread.
Still, I can’t help but feel a pang for Mr. Buchwald, who died last night at 81. Why he had to go is a mystery to me, when there are so many better candidates, whose expiration would make the world a better place: rotten, awful people like Charles Krauthammer, George Will, Fred Hiatt, Cal Thomas, Richard Cohen, David Brooks, and William Kristol, all of who have had such a negative and humorless impact on our political discourse.
Art Buchwald dies, and these troglodytes and hobgoblins live on: more proof that there is no God.
