Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)

Subject: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: Wesley S
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 11:25 AM

As reported by CNN:

Columnist Art Buchwald dead at 81
POSTED: 10:53 a.m. EST, January 18, 2007
Art Buchwald died Wednesday of kidney failure
• Kidney problems followed a stroke in 2000
• Friends say the columnist died peacefully
• Buchwald wrote columns of political satire for decades


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Art Buchwald, who took humorous jabs at Washington politicians in syndicated columns for decades, has died, a close friend said Thursday. He was 81.

Buchwald died late Wednesday, said CNN anchor Kyra Phillips. Buchwald was her mentor for 18 years, and she became a close friend of the family. The unofficial cause of death, she said, was kidney failure.

She said Buchwald's son and daughter-in-law were at his side, "holding his hand. He passed away peacefully."

"In the last few weeks, he knew it was his time," she said. "He said his good-byes to everybody."

That included his colleagues at the Washington Post, which published his columns after he moved to Washington in the 1960s. (Watch Buchwald's dramatic life recalled by Jeff Greenfield )

Buchwald suffered a stroke in 2000, and was plagued by kidney and circulation problems, which led doctors to amputate one of his legs below the knee.

He checked into a Washington hospice February 7 after he chose to quit life-prolonging kidney dialysis. His last treatment was February 1. However, Phillips said Thursday that he continued to make hospital visits because of minor infections from the amputation.

He planned his funeral when he went to the hospice.

"I went to the hospice to die," he told Phillips in November. But he defied the odds, and in July he was flown to Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, to spend the summer.

"I had two decisions. Continue dialysis and that's boring to do three times a week, and I don't know where that's going, or I can just enjoy life and see where it takes me," he told writer Suzette Martinez Standring, who spent two days with him in late February.

He resumed writing, including a book about his near-death experience.

"The last year he had the opportunity for a victory lap and I think he was really grateful for it," his son, Joel Buchwald, told The Associated Press. "He had an opportunity to write his book about his experience and he went out the way he wanted to go, on his own terms."

An American in Paris
Buchwald launched his career as a columnist in 1949 in Paris, where he wrote about the light side of Paris nightlife in the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. He returned to the United States around 1962 and moved to Washington, where he began writing columns filled with political satire for The Washington Post.

Some of Buchwald's observations:


During the Watergate scandal, Buchwald explained that the sound in the 18 1/2-minute gap in the White House tapes actually was Nixon humming.


"Just when you think there's nothing to write about, Nixon says, 'I am not a crook.' Jimmy Carter says, 'I have lusted after women in my heart.' President Reagan says, 'I have just taken a urinalysis test, and I am not on dope.'"


"Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?"


"Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was."

Pulitzer Prize for commentary
Buchwald won a Pulitzer Prize for outstanding commentary in 1982, and in 1986 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He began writing columns, later syndicated, for The Washington Post in the late 1960s.

The humorist authored dozens of books, including two memoirs, "Leaving Home" (1993) and "I'll Always Have Paris" (1996). He also wrote "Paris After Dark" (1950), "Son of the Great Society" (1961), "Washington Is Leaking" (1976) and "While Reagan Slept" (1983).

Buchwald and producer Alain Bernheim filed a lawsuit in 1988 against Paramount Pictures, contending the company used Buchwald's script idea as the basis for the movie "Coming to America," without giving them credit or profits. Buchwald won the case.

Despite his ill health, Buchwald enjoyed his friends and social events, and celebrated his 80th birthday in 2005 at the French Embassy in Washington.

'The patron saint of political satire'
According to Standring, Buchwald had a parade of celebrity visitors, including several members of the Kennedy family, and he still loved to joke with people.

Standring visited Buchwald to present him with the 2006 Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, calling him the "patron saint of political satire."

The writer acknowledged that Buchwald likely wouldn't be alive by June, when the organization's meeting will be held.

According to Buchwald's assistant, Cathy Crary, her boss wrote three columns a week until about 1995, and penned two weekly until January.

Buchwald, she said, always has been humble and accessible.

Listed in the phone book
"He's listed in the phone directory and always has been. People see his name and can't believe it's the real Art Buchwald, but that's how he is," Crary said.

Buchwald was born in Mount Vernon, New York, where he and his two sisters spent their youths in foster homes, according to The Washington Post. His mother was committed to an asylum soon after he was born.

"Buchwald doesn't see himself as courageous, nor does he feel shored up by supernatural spiritual strength," Shandring said. "To fade away naturally is the decision he made when faced with the alternative of being hooked up to a dialysis machine three times a week, for five hours at a stretch for the rest of his life."

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 11:32 AM

Really sorry to hear this. Also, for some reason I thought he was a lot older. What a Class Act, all the way.

You've earned your rest, Mr. Buchwald. May it be Peacefull.

kat

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: Amos
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 11:49 AM

Aye, a class act. Exactly so. Ciao, compadre.


A

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: Mrrzy
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 12:25 PM

Wow, how did I miss this in the news! Thanks!

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 12:47 PM

He had a second wind like few people ever get. I remember hearing him interviewed by Diane Rehm when he was at the hospice. His death was as remarkable as his life.

SRS

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: Rapparee
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 02:10 PM

If ya gotta go you'd be hard put to find a better example.

I heard it on NPR this morning. A real loss.

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: autolycus
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 02:35 PM

News is usually a poor source of obituaries,especially when the media is in the hands of the young who don't know who the dying are.


Buchwald was called "the wit of Washington".

Sorry to hear of his death (not least because I share his birthday,and because the death of any humorist is a big loss.





      ivor

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: GUEST,Mike Miller
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 02:41 PM

I can not count the number of Art Buchwald books I have read. I'm not even sure how many I still have on my bookshelves. When I lived in Ireland and Israel in the late 60's and early 70's, I bought the International Herald Tribune, just to read his column.

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: katlaughing
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 04:23 PM

Here's a Boston GLOBE obit for him, well-written, imo:

by Bryan Marquard, Globe Staff

"With wit that never lost its edge, Art Buchwald used his newspaper column to skewer politicians in the nation's capital and over the decades millions of Americans began their morning by reading his unfolding chronicle of history, writ small and satirical. At the end of his life ill health gave him a new subject, his own death, and he wrote his own epitaph in a series of poignant dispatches from a hospice center that he left after outliving his stay.

Mr. Buchwald, who had entered hospice care a year ago when his kidneys failed, died in his Washington, D.C., home Wednesday evening, according to his son, Joel. He was 81 and had published a book last year, "Too Soon to Say Goodbye," that celebrated the unexpected coda in his long life of achievement.

"The purpose of the hospice is to help you pass away gently when all else fails," he wrote. "You are supposed to do it with as little pain as possible and with dignity. It didn't work out that way for me."

After a year-long respite that his son described as "a hell of a victory lap," Mr. Buchwald began receiving hospice care at home 12 days ago. "He died comfortably with his family at his bedside," the family said in a statement.

Mr. Buchwald, who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1982, had lived in Washington nearly 45 years, dividing his time between the capital and a second home on Martha's Vineyard for the past 35 years.

"There was no better way to start the day than to open the morning paper to Art's column, laugh out loud and learn all over again to take the issues seriously in the world of politics, but not take yourself too seriously," US Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat, said in a statement.

In columns written after entering hospice care, Mr. Buchwald confronted the topic of dying, though with a hint of the puckish observations readers have come to expect when reading a column accompanied by a photo of Mr. Buchwald with his lopsided grin and horn-rimmed glasses.

"By the way, people always talk about heaven as the place where we are all going," he wrote last March. "The problem with thinking about heaven is that you then have to think about hell. The irony of our culture is people are constantly telling other people to go to hell, but no one tells them to go to heaven."

During the weeks after Mr. Buchwald entered the hospice, his room became a place where laughter -- usually his own -- often rang out as his bedside became a mandatory stop-over for the bold-faced name set. A headline for a New York Times report on his hospice room declared, "Washington's Hottest Salon Is a Deathbed."

Instead of dying, his health improved and he left the hospice on July 1.

"The whole point is I didn't expect to be here," he told the Globe in an interview last July at his gray-shingled house on Main Street in Vineyard Haven. "My plan was to leave the earth. And then I thought, to hell with it, I'll go to the Vineyard."

Though he was known for the humor he culled from politics, many younger fans might be surprised to learn that Mr. Buchwald cut his teeth in his 20s writing about restaurants and nightlife for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune. He expanded into writing about celebrities, and the column was first syndicated as "Art Buchwald in Paris."

Against the advice of friends who thought it would be difficult to repeat his Paris success, Mr. Buchwald relinquished his status as arguably the most famous American in the City of Lights and relocated to Washington in the early 1960s. The move made him even more successful. At its height, his column was syndicated to hundreds of newspapers and many of the more than two dozen collections he published were bestsellers.

As a political humorist, he employed a style and an approach that were deceptive in their simplicity. He would tear an article from a newspaper, tuck it in a pocket, and mull the topic -- sometimes for days -- before quickly pounding out a column in unadorned prose that, often as not, turned the topic of the day on its head.

"I can now reliably report that Vice President Spiro Agnew has no intention of dumping Richard Nixon," he wrote in 1971 as Nixon prepared for his re-election campaign. "A spokesman for the Vice President told me that Agnew was very satisfied with the job his President was doing and that he even intended to give him more responsibilities than any Vice President has ever given his President before."

"Mr. Buchwald and his wife and children first started going to Martha's Vineyard in 1971, to escape the summer heat in Washington. A few years later a friend, the playwright Lillian Hellman, tipped off the Buchwalds that a 1888 house on Main Street in Vineyard Haven was for sale and they bought it.

"Along with using the island as a vacation retreat, Mr. Buchwald served for many years as master of ceremonies and auctioneer at an annual fund-raiser to benefit a consortium of social service agencies.

"I don't know how it happened, but I've become the Jerry Lewis of Martha's Vineyard," he told the Globe in 1996.

"In hospice care, Mr. Buchwald retained his sense of humor and took pleasure in being able to eat whatever he wanted after deciding to forego dialysis treatment, which would have prolonged his life, often having McDonald's meals brought in.

"What's beautiful about death is you can say anything you want to, as long as you don't lord it over others that you know something they don't," he wrote in his March 14 column. "The thing that is very important, and why I'm writing this, is that whether they like it or not, everyone is going to go. The big question we still have to ask is not where we're going, but what were we doing here in the first place?"

"In addition to his son, who lives in Washington, Mr. Buchwald leaves two daughters Jennifer of Roxbury and Connie Buchwald Marks of Culpeper, Va.; two sisters Edith Jaffe of Bellevue, Wash., and Doris Kahme of Delray Beach, Fla., and Monroe Township, N.J.; and five grandchildren.

"A family spokeswoman said Mr. Buchwald will be buried in the Vineyard Haven Cemetery in Martha's Vineyard, Mass., where his wife Ann is buried."

Subject: RE: Obit: Art Buchwald
From: GUEST,EBarnacle
Date: 18 Jan 07 - 11:14 PM

Once again, although Mr. Buchwald is diagnosed as havihng died of kidney failure, he did not die of kidney failure. He died by refusing treatment.

It is quite possible that, had he chosen to continue treatment, he would have lived for several years. The circulatory problems suggest that he was also a diabetic and that he chose refusal of treatment as a more acceptable death than the slow deterioration that would likely have occurred. If his eyesight was also going, this would likely have been what is called renal-retinal syndrome. this syndrome is relatively common among advanced diabetics. These failures are related to circulatory deterioration, which is often manifested by loss of other body parts as circulation to them also degrades.

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: catspaw49
Date: 19 Jan 07 - 12:15 AM

A true great. One of the best and also one of the last of a type of columnist America may not miss until they are gone. Too many now pride themselves on incisive and cutting edge analysis taking themselves and the world far too seriously in the process. Art Buchwald saw the same problems through the lens of humor and enjoyed the juxtaposition of the serious and the ludicrous that is ever present in all things political. It is a vision that far too few today have and sadly don't seem to want.

Thanks for it all Mr. Buchwald.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: Ron Davies
Date: 19 Jan 07 - 09:23 PM

Evidently when he didn't die as soon as he expected to, he said something along the lines of "I had to replan my funeral, notify all sorts of people----and start worrying about Bush again."

That's class--right to the end.

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: Big Mick
Date: 20 Jan 07 - 12:35 PM

I loved the comment he made in which he said he didn't want to go to heaven because he wanted to meet Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, and Rita Hayworth. He also wants to meet Judas, because as a fellow Jew, he wants to find out what the problem with Jesus was. I laughed out loud when I read it.

Mick

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: Nancy King
Date: 20 Jan 07 - 07:22 PM

Having grown up in Washington DC with a journalist father, I was introduced to Buchwald early, and remember him as one of the true greats. Hard to imagine Washington without him.

My all-time favorite column was originally written in 1953, when he attempted to explain Thanksgiving Day to the French. It was faithfully reprinted every year since; here is the 2005 version.

Nancy

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: 282RA
Date: 20 Jan 07 - 08:44 PM

One of the things that kept me reasonably sane in the military was reading Buchwald's books. My mother gave me one for Christmas and I was hooked.

I think he claimed the record for traveling in a tour group at the Louvre and visiting its three principal masterpieces (Mona Lisa, David, and I forgot the other one) in a span of 5 minutes and 56 seconds.

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: katlaughing
Date: 20 Jan 07 - 09:36 PM

Nancy, thanks for the link.

CSPAN II is doing a thing on him, tonight, at 1115p Mudcat time.

Subject: RE: Obit: Columnist Art Buchwald (Jan 2007)
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Jan 07 - 02:34 PM

The interview was excellent. Here's a link to watch it: Click. It was very touching.