WASHINGTON – Satirist Art Buchwald, who turned his infectious wit on politics and then on his own failing health, is dead at 81.
Buchwald’s son, Joel, said his father passed away quietly at his home late Wednesday with his family.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and author chronicled the life and times of Washington, D.C., for four decades, then cheated death and laughed in its face in a richly lived final year that medical science said he wasn’t supposed to get.
Buchwald had refused dialysis treatments for his failing kidneys a year ago and was expected to die within weeks of moving to a hospice on Feb. 7, where he held court as a parade of luminaries and friends came by to say farewell. But he lived to return home and even write a book about his experiences.
“I’m having a swell time,” he said of his dying. “The best time of my life.”
Buchwald was called the “Wit of Washington” during his years here and his name became synonymous with political satire. He was well known, too, for his wide smile and affinity for cigars.
Among his more famous witticisms: “If you attack the establishment long enough and hard enough, they will make you a member of it.”
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