ART BUCHWALD IS DYING

It is sad to read that political satirist Art Buchwald is living his last few days, having decided he did not want to be tethered to a dialysis machine so many hours a week.

When I was younger, much younger, I eagerly awaited his three-times-a-week newspaper column, where his exagerated fictional characters pointed out the failings of the people in power. I think I started reading him when I was in high school. Somewhere along the line I stopped reading him--perhaps it was when I moved to New York, and his column wasn't available in the Times.

But also somewhere along the line I acquired a comedy album he did. It's around here somewhere--I'll have to dig it out. It explained how he became a Paris-based columnist for the New York Herald Tribune--without ever having graduated high school or college. (When USC discovered he lacked a high school diploma, they made him a "special student." He said he later got his revenge, when he was named alumnus of the year.)

I also remember seeing him at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Fund Pro-Am Tennis Tournament out in Forest Hills. He wasn't exactly the greatest player. All he hit was lobs. Totally. When he played Billie Jean King he called the match "The Lobber vs. the Libber."

So now he's spending his last few days in a hospice, attended by family members, various Kennedys, and award-bearing writers. Except it's gone beyond a few days. They're calling him "The Man Who Wouldn't Die," as he explained in a Washington Post column a few days ago. He checked into the hospice at the beginning of February. He's been there so long Medicare has stopped paying for it. Meanwhile, he's having the best time of his life, he says.