He has been forgotten’: why humorist Art Buchwald should be remembered
This article is more than 2 years old
A
new biography celebrates the sharp humour and difficult life of the
Pulitzer-winning newspaper humourist, once known as ‘the wit of
Washington’
David Smith
David Smith in Washington
Tue 7 Jun 2022 15.29 AEST
On
the red carpet at the Kennedy Center in Washington in April, the
comedian and activist Jon Stewart was asked if he would ever consider
running for political office.
“Show
business is a good training ground ego and arrogance-wise for
politics,” he told the Guardian, “but the art of compromise and the
different transactional natures of what they do is generally
antithetical to misanthropes who sit in rooms and write jokes. It’s too
tempting to blow up meetings.”
That
night, when Stewart received the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor,
the presidential historian Jon Meacham said of him: “He likes to say
that he’s not an activist, not a player of the arena, but only an
observer. Well, Jon, we love you – but you’re really wrong about that.”
The
line between player and observer is worth keeping in mind when
considering Art Buchwald, the most widely read newspaper humourist of
his time, whose memorial service was held at the Kennedy Center in 2007.
Dean Acheson, a former secretary of state, called him the “greatest
satirist in the English language since Pope and Swift”.
Buchwald
is now the subject of a biography, Funny Business, by the historical
researcher Michael Hill, who draws on his most memorable columns and
unpublished correspondence. Its dust jacket blurb includes praise from
Meacham for an “absorbing, illuminating, and wonderfully entertaining
book”.
Columist Art Buchwald costumed as Benedict Arnold. (Photo by Dick Swanson/Getty Images)
View image in fullscreen
Photograph: Dick Swanson/Getty Images
Buchwald
moved in elite circles that included Robert, Edward and Ethel Kennedy,
the Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee and publisher Katharine Graham,
actors Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and writers John Steinbeck and
Irwin Shaw. But he always regarded himself as an outsider, the court
jester who points out that the emperor has no clothes.
Speaking
via Zoom from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Hill, 68, says: “He viewed
himself as a satirist trying to wake people up about about certain
issues. Good political satirists are important if not essential – and I
think Buchwald would agree with this – to a healthy democracy. If a
bureaucrat is doing something absurd, if a self-involved celebrity is
doing something absurd, he felt it was his obligation.
“Buchwald
made it his goal to always be anti-establishment. He was against
anything that he perceived to be the establishment, but particularly the
absurdities of the establishment. He didn’t care what political party
it was: he was going to go after them. He felt very strongly about
freedom of satire and freedom of speech and he was never going to be
muzzled.”
Just
after Bill Clinton’s election as president in 1992, for example, a
friend approached Buchwald at a party in Georgetown and remarked that,
now a Democrat was in the White House for the first time in 12 years,
Buchwald would presumably go easy. Hill adds: “Buchwald said, ‘What are
you talking about? This is my job you’re talking about. This is what I
do.’”
Born
in New York in October 1925, Buchwald had a wretched childhood. He
almost never saw his his mother, Helen, an immigrant from Hungary, who
was admitted to a mental hospital a few weeks after his birth and
confined for the remaining 35 years of her life. With his father
struggling to pay bills, Buchwald and his sisters were sent to foster
homes.
“It
left a horrible, dark impression upon him, which is part of the reason
that he battled depression for the rest of his life,” Hill explains.
“But the positive side of that, if there is one, was that he became very
independent early on and he also realised that the only way he was
going to be able to survive all the crap life was throwing at him was to
be funny, be the class clown, which is what he did. He decided that I’m
going to be a funny guy. So that became his goal.”
In
the 1940s Buchwald dropped out of high school, joined the marines and
served in the second world war. He got wind of an opportunity for
veterans to go to Paris and study so bought a one-way ticket to Europe
and talked his way into a job at the New York Herald Tribune.
He
became the quintessential American in Paris, mingling with Ernest
Hemingway and others, and writing popular columns such as “Paris After
Dark”, “Mostly About People” and “Europe’s Lighter Side”.
Art Buchwald on Set of Mannix
View image in fullscreen
Art Buchwald on the set of Mannix. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive
Hill
continues: “He said later that those 14 years he spent there were the
happiest years of his life. A lot of his friendships that were started
in Paris carried over for the rest of his life, particularly Ben
Bradlee, who was without doubt one of his closest friends and
defenders.”
Some
friends advised Buchwald against leaving the high life in Paris but he
returned to the US in 1962. He soon established himself through a
Washington Post column syndicated in 500 newspapers worldwide. In 1982
he won a Pulitzer prize for outstanding commentary.
Hill
explains: “He was able to tap into the beginning of anti-establishment
fervour and then, of course, with Watergate, you had a whole new period
of not only rebellion but disillusionment.
“He
helped people keep their sanity and laugh at things, laugh at the
absurdity of politicians and what they were doing. It was a respite from
the grim headlines of Vietnam and Watergate and so forth. People were
able to take a break and read Buchwald.”
But
the brand of humour was less crass or savage than some of Buchwald’s
comic heirs. “He said at one point, ‘I don’t go for the jugular’. There
was a line that he didn’t cross. He could be sharp, he could be pointed,
he wasn’t afraid to go at it but he wasn’t mean-spirited or profane
about it.”
Buchwald
himself once explained that the key to his humour was to “treat light
subjects seriously and serious subjects lightly”. No topic was too big
or too small or too esoteric.
Hill
continues: “If somebody wanted to have a fun offbeat way to understand
the political, cultural, social issues of the 60s, 70s, 80s and even
90s, go back and read Art Buchwald’s columns. He talked about
everything. It was not only politicians and bureaucrats but it was
celebrities, miniskirts, baggage claims at airports. He touched on
everything.”
Hill’s
favourite column is from 1964 and entitled “J Edgar Hoover Just Doesn’t
Exist”, suggesting that the FBI director was a “mythical person thought
up by Reader’s Digest”. It sparked a debate across the country about
whether the assertion was actually true. Hoover and the FBI did not see
the funny side.
Buchwald’s
numerous columns mocking President Lyndon Johnson’s conduct of the
Vietnam war ruffled so many feathers that the National Security Agency
put him under surveillance. As the conflict worsened, Buchwald proposed
sending in superheroes Batman and Robin (the Batman star Adam West saw
the column and wrote to Buchwald promising to rush to his rescue if
Johnson retaliated).
Naturally
“the wit of Washington” also had a field day with President Richard
Nixon and the Watergate scandal. “He said he wished Nixon would run for a
third term because he was providing such great material.
Art Buchwald in 1977
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Art Buchwald in 1977. Photograph: Mikki Ansin/Getty Images
“He
said he’d go after both sides but going after the left was a little bit
more delicate because, if he did, they would say, ‘Aren’t you one of
us? Why are you doing this?’ It didn’t deter him but he said it took a
little bit more courage to take a whack at the left.”
Some
of the columns are now eerie historical rhymes. In 1976 he offered
“Art’s Gun Control Plan”, demanding a federal mandate to cut off
“everybody’s trigger finger at birth” in an effort to curb gun violence
in America. “The constitution gives everyone the right to bear arms,” he
writes. “But there is nothing that says an American has to have ten
fingers.”
In
1989, the celebrity tycoon Donald Trump launched an ill-fated airline
with characteristic bluster and invited Buchwald to fly on it. Buchwald
replied in a letter: “… thanks for all the free mileage you are handing
out. As I understand, if you say the word ‘Trump’ in a gathering of over
twenty people, you get forty-three miles of credit on your OnePass
account.”
So
what would Buchwald have made of Trump the president? Hill reckons: “He
would have had the time of his life and maybe he might have been a
little bit sharper with him.
“Buchwald
would have fared pretty damn well in the social media Twitter age
because he had a wonderful off-the-top-of-his-head wit. If he were alive
today, he could win an all-out Twitter war with anybody. Like any great
satirist, he could throw a good punch, he could take a punch and then
he could throw a good punch back.”
Buchwald,
who had three children, enjoyed playing chess and poker and smoked six
to eight cigars a day – his “pacifier” – until quitting in 1988 on
doctor’s orders. In the 1990s he finally went public about his long-held
“dark secret” in a series of interviews revealing his lifelong struggle
with depression.
He
even went on tour with two friends, novelist William Styron and
broadcaster Mike Wallace, who also battled the condition. They called
themselves the “Blues Brothers” as they shared their stories in the hope
of providing comfort.
Hill
reflects: “He went public because he wanted to try and help other
people deal with it. I know he heard from a lot of people who said him
going public helped a lot. It was something he battled all of his life
but again that’s part of what’s great about Buchwald: from early on he
was always beating the odds. He wasn’t afraid of anybody.”
At
one point Buchwald was everywhere with a radio show, a slot on the TV
current affairs show 60 Minutes, a Broadway play, lectures all over the
country and bestselling compilations of his columns. Yet 15 years after
his death at the age of 81, as the torch passed to a new generation
including Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah and John Oliver, his
fame has dwindled faster than expected.
“He’s
dropped from the public consciousness and it’s a shame,” Hill laments.
“He has, unfortunately, been forgotten. I hope this book will bring him
back to life. I hope people in this tough time might get some laughs out
of it too.”
