Art Buchwald has died at 81. He was the premiere political humorist of his time, a Jon Stewart of print. He made fun of everybody of all political persuasions, but his humor was a little more gentle than what we see today. I grew up reading him, and I never thought about it, but his influence probably contributed to my interest both in newspapers and writing about government and politics.
As with many outwardly funny people, he had his demons, but he had a warped take on those, too:
But in his 1993 memoir, Leaving Home, Buchwald revealed that he was hospitalized twice — in 1963 and 1987 — for suicidal depression.
Two of his oldest friends, TV correspondent Mike Wallace and author William Styron, who died in November, also suffered from depression.
Styron wrote a bestseller, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness, which prompted Buchwald to quip: "He and I had depressions at the same time. And the only difference is, he made a million on his, and I didn't make a dime on mine. We argue about who had the worst depression. He says his was 9.9 on the Richter scale and mine was a rainy day at Disneyland."
The humor that makes me laugh the most is that which comes from an appreciation of human foibles and one's own weaknesses. That's the kind of humor Buchwald had and laregly seems to be missing today. So much of it is just plain meanness.
