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thedrifter
02-07-07, 07:45 AM
Driver's Seat
Memories of Art Buchwald

By BOB DRIVER, columnist

I don’t worship anyone, but I do admire a number of people. One of them was Art Buchwald, who died a couple of weeks ago, at 81, after a lifetime of writing thousands of funny and perceptive columns about whatever he felt like.

Along with Mike Royko, Andy Rooney and a few others, Buchwald was one of the bright stars of the op-ed pages during the second half of the 20th century.

He had a crummy childhood, but was rescued by World War II, the U.S. Marines and a couple of million enemy Japanese who were waiting out there in the Pacific. Things got better for Art after V-J Day.

He migrated to Paris, ostensibly to study under the GI Bill. Instead, he took a job with the French edition of the N.Y. Herald-Tribune, and spent the next 13 years covering the highlife and lowlifes of postwar Europe. He came back to the United States in 1962, and set up shop in Washington, D.C. There he skewered as many political targets as the law allowed. Art said he never had to search for a topic – he just picked up a newspaper each morning and the stories sort of fell into his lap.

All of the obit articles about Buchwald said good things about him, and they should have. But none of them (as far as I know) mentioned one of the most important things about his columns: they were short.

I’m sure he could write long, and he probably did, from time to time. But if you go back into Buchwald’s books – he published 30 collections of his columns – you will see that few of his pieces ran much longer than 500 words.

That’s plenty. If you’ve got something to say and you can’t frame it and spit it out in 500 words or thereabouts, you might think of going into another line of communications. Start a blog, or rent a lecture hall.

Like many, if not most, humorists, Buchwald was not especially funny away from his typewriter or the speaker’s platform. He suffered from depression most of his life, and would not readily offer up a smile and a friendly handshake just because one of his fans spied him in a restaurant.

Years ago when I worked for the Toledo Blade, I heard Buchwald speak to a dinner meeting of a journalism fraternity. His address was first-rate, as I recall. But he expended little effort charming the reporters who sat next to him at the head table. Nor should he have; that wasn’t why he came to Toledo.

Buchwald’s columns were meant to puncture and deflate attack-worthy institutions and public figures, but his style was not mean. Unlike some of today’s Jack-the-Ripper pundits such as Maureen Dowd and Bill O’Reilly, Buchwald refrained from name-calling and pointed insults. Instead, he crafted semi-fictional characters and situations that closely resembled real life. Buchwald inserted the needle without triggering libel suits. That’s a fancy dance, but Art knew how to bring it off.

Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.

Article published on Wednesday, Feb. 7, 2007

Ellie