At a moment when America feels angry and betrayed, when our leaders have forfeited our trust and jeopardized our future, we lost an American icon who stood for traits that have been in short supply in the Bush administration: shrewdness, humility, decency, generosity, class.
When I asked W. in 1999 if he identified with any literary heroes, he said no, but he was drawn to Paul Newman’s defiance in “Cool Hand Luke.”
The Texan cast himself as an anti-hero and rebel. But as president, he knew how to strut only in photo-ops, not when actual calamities loomed or hit.
Newman was a rare liberal who loved the label; he made it onto Nixon’s enemies list for supporting Eugene McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam run. In 1997, I called him when he began writing a bit for The Nation (where he was an investor). He ranted about right-wingers “popping out of rat holes” but also faulted the Clintons.
He did not want to talk about his movies; he wanted to talk throw-weights. He liked Bach and Budweiser and playing goofy practical jokes. (Once, when we were driving, he began high-speed bumping the car in front of us, driven by his friend.) He was bored by fashion and embarrassed by women who brazenly flirted with him or asked him to take off his sunglasses to show his blue eyes.
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