Lloyd Grove Remembers William F. Buckley
Jump to full article: New York Magazine, 2008-02-29
Author: Lloyd Grove
Intro: --"He was simply my friend's dad, the guy who plied me--a 20-year-old college kid when we first met--with expensive brandy and Cuban cigars ("You should definitely inhale," he mischievously advised).
Grove studiously ignores the prominent role cigars played in Buckley's emphysema and untimely death, a role Buckley bitterly bemoaned in a widely-circulated column he wrote just 3 months ago:
"Half a year ago my wife died, technically from an infection, but manifestly, at least in part, from a body weakened by 60 years of nonstop smoking. I stayed off the cigarettes but went to the idiocy of cigars inhaled, and suffer now from emphysema, which seems determined to outpace heart disease as a human killer.
"Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes."
--Buckley, William F. Jr., "My Smoking Confession" NY Sun, Dec. 3, 2007.
http://www.nysun.com/article/67349
I hope Grove never took Buckley's advice.
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By geneb5 on 03/01/2008 at 6:19pm
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