Doctor Charles Krauthammer, a paralyzed psychiatrist and irascibly syndicated columnist, writes that he has only weeks to live.\u00a0 The letter is matter-of-fact, and the fact is that it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n
This unwelcome sentence is occasioned by a fast-moving cancer which had looked to be beaten, but which gained the upper hand.\u00a0 A rapidly invasive, mid-abdominal cancer \u201ceverywhere\u201d sounds perhaps like the miserable interconnected pancreas\/gall bladder.\u00a0 I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer about a year ago, and if you know how to do the \u201cpancreas salute\u201d, then you know that this one is meaner than many.<\/p>\n
Krauthammer has been a fixture on the TV screens of reasonable and unreasonable people alike, depending upon whether or not you agree with me about politics.\u00a0 I parted with him in many of his views.\u00a0 He (if I recall correctly) was never more than lukewarm about Trump, and was famously not going to drink the Kool-Aid that me and the boys been brewing in the fever swamp.\u00a0 Doc Chuck (to those who pretend to know him) was over there on the far bank of the river, swollen by a raging flood and newly dividing the conservative crowd.\u00a0 Reasonable and frustrated people on my side, and the squinting likes of Bill Kristol o\u2019er dere.\u00a0 George Will.\u00a0 I rest my case.<\/p>\n
Except that they got Krauthammer on that bank, and I always made a welcoming exception for him.\u00a0 Some of it was an awe-filled respect for the demonstrated mental abilities of the man.\u00a0 Some of it was no doubt a forbearance granted to a man with a physical struggle on top of the struggle that is life itself.\u00a0 cf. Dean \u201cChowdah!\u201d Barnett, whose death while I was in Afghanistan rattled me deeply. \u00a0 Some of it may or may not have been a dopey smile and the way he clearly enjoyed himself in the back and forth with cohort and commies alike.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t recall any specifics, and I haven\u2019t looked anything up.\u00a0 You can listen to an airhead sibilate her fricative way through his letter on the post that Pencilvania put up.\u00a0 For some reason, I want to write this based just on my memory to date.\u00a0 Memory is important to me now, as I grow older, as the new patriarch-at-a-distance of my wing of the family.\u00a0 What will they say of me?\u00a0 Who will look me up to see what I thought?<\/p>\n
No, no need to look it up with CK.\u00a0 I recall a general sense, a clutch of favorite moments now abstracted into my sense of the notorious Chuck K-Hammer.\u00a0 He engaged in a respectful banter with his opponents.\u00a0 Krauthammer, the wrecked man who towered over the bad guys even while sitting, propped up in his wheel chair, would let his interlocutor get what he had to say off of his chest.\u00a0 And when the guest got stupid, he bade us all witness the power of this fully operational battle station<\/em>.\u00a0 Sometimes cross, sometimes gasping for breath more than usual, always effective, he would scorch his trespasser with a withering professional fire.<\/p>\n I said good bye to a good number of Never-Trump people based on their nastiness, or their fickleness, or their just plain wrong-headedness.\u00a0 But for some, whose wrongness was leavened by a history of personal respect and epistemological gratitude, I held no grudge.\u00a0 Thomas Sowell comes to mind in a way that, oh say, Rich Lowry does not. And I have written about Bill Kristol and Jennifer Rubin and John Podhoretz in a way that, oh, say, Charles Krauthammer would not.\u00a0 Not just because he may agree with those sorts more frequently than I, but because he is a fine and upstanding gentleman, whereas I am a jerk.<\/p>\n Perhaps it is a failing on my part to carry water for some folks on the opposite bank, but I confess my sins and keep right on doing it.\u00a0 Charles is a better man than I am, even when he is wrong<\/em>, and it costs me nothing to admit it.\u00a0 His fight has been fiercer, and his victories more sweet.\u00a0 Oh, and he has victories.\u00a0 I do not know if we shall ever again hear him parry and thrust while chronically short of breath, breathing itself looking to be an exhausting task for him.<\/p>\n He has written a sawed-off little good-bye letter, which is more eloquent in its brevity, and tender in its bluntness than any rambling eulogial blog post could be.\u00a0 I haven\u2019t the words to get this right, and I haven\u2019t the skill anyway.\u00a0 Let\u2019s not blame the words, then, as they served Krauthammer just fine.<\/p>\n Soon, he will know how it feels to be on his own, finishing the journey that we each must make, and which we each must make alone.\u00a0 He will walk where he once had sat, and relax where he had always fought.\u00a0 There will be a moment where a phrase popular on the right, the empty chair, will take on a special meaning in honor of the memory of Doctor Krauthammer.\u00a0 Fox News will have the privilege of saving him a spot for an episode or two.<\/p>\n Like a rolling throne.<\/p>\n Originally published at Ratburger.org by yours truly.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.ratburger.org\/index.php\/2018\/06\/08\/a-farewell-to-zings\/#comment-13179<\/p>\n Doctor Charles Krauthammer, a paralyzed psychiatrist and irascibly syndicated columnist, writes that he has only weeks to live.\u00a0 The letter is matter-of-fact, and the fact is that it\u2019s over.<\/p>\n This unwelcome sentence is occasioned by a fast-moving cancer which had looked to be beaten, but which gained the upper hand.\u00a0 A rapidly invasive, mid-abdominal cancer \u201ceverywhere\u201d sounds perhaps like the miserable interconnected pancreas\/gall bladder.\u00a0 I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer about a year ago, and if you know how to do the \u201cpancreas salute\u201d, then you know that this one is meaner than many.<\/p>\n Krauthammer has been a fixture on the TV screens of reasonable and unreasonable people alike, depending upon whether or not you agree with me about politics.\u00a0 I parted with him in many of … Continue reading
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