Michael Hill - Funny Business: The Legendary Life and Political Satire of Art Buchwald

BY CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY

I missed Art Buchwalds memorial service at the Kennedy Center in March 2007, but I had a good excuse. My mother was dying. An apt excuse, too, for she thought Art Buchwald was the funniest human being on the planet. I first heard her say this when I was about ten years old. She continued to say it after I became a Washington-based political satirist, by which point I began to find it irksome. I finally asked her to stop saying it, at least in my presence. Being a good mother, she did. But then Id run into someone whod just been with her and theyd say, Your mother spent the whole time talking about Art Buchwalds latest column. She thinks hes the funniest man on earth! I find it interesting, mystically speaking, that both Mum and Art shuffled off this mortal coil at about the same time. This could be a case of taking Get a room, you two to the next level. Meanwhile, Im haunted by the certainty that shes up there, going from cloud to cloud, telling everyone Art Buchwald is not only the funniest person in heaven but also an absolute angel! Shoot me.

Being asked to contribute this foreword to Michael Hills totally marvelous bookMum would doubtless call it the best book ever writtenis an honor. But I hear Arts distinctive growl muttering, Damn straight it is! I gobbled it up in two sittings. It made me wish Art were still around to make us laugh. Theres so much going on these days that only Art Buchwald could turn into humor.

Being a diligent persondiligence is one of my many virtues, along with complete absence of envyI read all the tributes to Art that were published after he died. Theyd fill a volume just by themselves. My final act of due diligence was to rewatch C-SPANs tape of the memorial service that I missed. You should check it out for yourself, but only after youve read Michaels book and bought a copy for every person you know. Its celluloid (pixel? Whatever C-SPAN stores stuff on) evidence that Art Buchwald was not only the funniest human being on earth, but also just maybe the most beloved human being on earth.

I lived in Washington for thirty years. There are two maxims about my dear old former hometown. The first is If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog. The second is A friend in Washington is someone who stabs you in the chest.

I loved D.C. and I made good and lasting friendships there, but those maxims are, generally speaking, valid. (Otherwise they wouldnt be maxims, right?) Arts memorial service stands as a maxim-busting testament that Washington can be a place capable of abounding warmth and fuzziness. At least for friends and fans of Art Buchwald.

The last lyric of the last song the Beatles recorded goes, In the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make. Art Buchwald made more love than Elizabeth Taylor had husbands. Hed have a funnier metaphor, but you get the drift.

How did he manage to turn a city of wolves, baboons, and sharksyes, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Im talking about youinto a petting zoo?

Two ways: 1) he was a mensch, and 2) he made people laugh. Everyone. As youve seen from the epigraph to this book, he made P. G. Wodehouse and James Thurber laugh. And Dean Acheson. Id bet my fee for writing this brilliant foreword that it was harder to make Dean Acheson laugh than it was Wodehouse and Thurber.

Columnist Dave Barry, who knows a thing or two about humor, concluded his tribute, He talked funny, he wrote funny, he lived funny, and damned if he didnt find a way to die funny. As the saying goes, Dying is easy. Stand-up is hard. Art did stand-up for half a century, mostly while sitting down.

His daughter Jennifer told the crowd at the Kennedy Center that she once asked him who he wanted to win the presidential electionthe Republican or the Democrat? He wanted the one who would make his life easiest, she reported. So that he could do his column and be on the tennis court by ten-thirty. Bet you double or nothing this was the 1968 election. Richard Nixon was proof that God loves political satirists.

In the Dying Funny category, Art famously spent five months in a hospice, not dying. His son, Joel, said, Dad was probably the only one in history to gain weight in hospice. A Washington Post headline from his year of dying livingly: Washingtons Hottest Salon Is a Deathbed. Daughter Jennifer said the most important lesson he imparted to his children was Eat ice cream every day. This was, after all, a man who talked his way into a job on the Herald Tribune by convincing an editor that his job in the military was the food taster for the United States Marine Corps. What better qualification for being a restaurant reviewer in Paris?

What fun it must have been to be one of Arts kids. He sent Jennifer a postcard from China in the early 1990s: All the women here are barefooted and collect rice for 15 hours a day, seven days a week. I think youd love it here.

After moving to D.C. from Paris in 1962, Art became an adjunct member of the Kennedy family. Ethel Kennedy asked him to be godfather to one of her children. Her eulogy brought down the proverbial house.