General Discussion

Art Buchwald. Older Buzzkillers will remember Art Buchwald, the columnist who lampooned politics and politicians from the 60s through the 90s, with diminishing effect in the last ten years of his career. But in the 1960s he was a fresh voice of quick but, frankly, shallow humor directed at American leaders, and using the gossip of the political and military chattering classes I mentioned a minute ago to fuel his newspaper column. Buchwald’s syndicated column of June 1, 1967 provides the first evidence of the use of the use, “bomb them back to the Stone Age.” Buchwald was making fun of the more militant wing of the Republican party, members of which were thinking about ways to defeat the Democrats in the 1968 election. Those militants thought Johnson’s approach to Vietnam was far too soft, and that a more, shall we say, “complete” strategy was needed.