They’re Laughing in Heaven

For decades Art Buckwald brought his unusual penchant for wisdom cloaked in wit to his newspaper column, various books, and to the dinner circuit. He was more than a columnist. He was an institution.

He died last week.

No doubt heaven is now a happier place than it was a few days ago.

Favorite Story

My favorite Art Buckwald story harkens back to his days as a Paris Reporter. He was covering a political convention, and hordes of onlookers were waiting outside the event. It was late. It was dark. And the crowd was starved for attention.

Buckwald stood before a large window and raised his hand. The crowd responded. He raised his hand even higher. They responded with more enthusiasm. And so it went. They assumed or wanted to assume he was a bigwig at the event. He was in fact a short man who at the time was little more than a columnist for the Herald Tribune.

He and his sisters were orphans. He lied and bribed his way into the Marines. He lied his way into USC where the GI Bill funded his activities. He learned he could get the GI Bill in France. And so he went to France, and lived a leisurely life until his funding began to run dry.

He talked his way into a job with Variety. This eventually led to a job and various columns he wrote for European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Eventually he and his wit returned to the United States.

Some of Buckwald’s More Notable Achievements

At his peak, his column, Capitol Punishment, was published in over 500 newspapers. He published over thirty books.

He married in 1952. He and his wife adopted three children.

He is rumored to have had an affair with Marylyn Monroe.

He was one of the first European reporters to do an in depth interview with Elvis Presley.

He persevered through two painful bouts with depression.

He won a lawsuit against a movie studio. He asserted that the Coming To America—which started Eddy Murphy—was based on a treatment he had written. The movie made over 350 million dollars but according to the accounting wizards in Hollywood did not make a substantial profit.

In February of last year he refused kidney dialysis. He said it was too expensive. He survived.

He good naturedly helped a friend out of a real pinch. Unless this was an unusual act for me, he probably was a very nice guy.

In 1982 his syndicated column won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary.

He established a scholarship at USC for the most irreverent student.

Throughout his lifetime he made various comments that suggested that as fantastic and bizarre many of the exaggerations he wrote about in his columns were, he could not compete with the bizarre realities that occurred in life.

A few of Buckwald's More Notable Comments

Before Nixon resigned, in 1974, Buchwald told Holy Cross College graduates, "As a humor columnist, I need President Nixon more than he needs me. I worship the quicksand he walks on."

He wrote:

"What is the patriotic consumer to do? I went into a shopping mall the other day to purchase a Star-Spangled Banner Sweat Suit. The salesman said they had some from Hong Kong for $10, some from Taiwan for $15 and a few from Pakistan for $4.
`Don't you have any that were made in America?'
`No. The only American-made items we have are these Buddhist robes. They are hand-sewn in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, by the Amish people.'"

"In the good old days, smokers could be counted on to die far before their time, and therefore did not use up their Social Security benefits or health plan credits. Nonsmokers, on the other hand, live too long and to this day are a tremendous drain on the country's finances. We're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars. So, every time we turn a smoker into a nonsmoker we're destroying the entire pension system of the United States."

"I don't want to be a wimp, but senior citizens have to pay $140 for a prescription. To make it up to them, they only pay $5 to go to the movies."

"President Bush keeps referring to the discovery of Iraq's missiles as `the tip of the iceberg.' There are some, not many, who feel that if weapons are the tip of the iceberg, then Mr. Bush is the captain of the Titanic.”

"Every two years I put out a new book and then make a tour of the talk shows plugging it. I can't do it any more because this year it's impossible for someone who is not really weird to get on TV."

"I am known in the hospice as `The Man Who Would Not Die.' How long they allow me to stay here is another problem. I don't know where I'd go now, or if people would still want to see me if I weren't in a hospice. But in case you're wondering, I'm having a swell time the best time of my life."

“Dying isn't hard. Getting paid by Medicare is.”

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Too Serious A Matter provides intelligent, provocative, and often funny commentary on the convoluted intersections of politics, strategy, and history. The title of the blog comes from de Gaulle’s comment, “Politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.”