Word: buchwalds
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...Buchwald's view of Washington is equally predictable. He's adjusted well to the Reagan Administration--to Nancy's conspicuous consumption and the President's Wednesday afternoon horseback-riding, to the Stockman safety net and the Weinberger window of vulnerability. On the cover of his latest book, Laid Back in Washington, Buchwald relaxes on a Lafayette Park bench, the White House in the distance, a Smith-Corona portable in front of him. the clothes have changed temporarily to Reaganesque cowboy duds, but it's the same old Art, grinning slyly from somewhere within the folds of his paunchy face...
...Naah. He sees bureaucrats running seminars on wasteful office management, secretaries seducing bosses for Elizabeth Ray-style autobiographies, and PR moguls trying to sell oppressive Latin American regimes to hick Congressmen. As long as the elite gather in dark Connecticut Ave. bistros to eat lousy steaks and exchange gossip, Buchwald will be in business, for that is his Washington...
Laid Back is yet another compilation of Buchwald columns, covering events in the capital from the summer 1980 campaign to the Janet Cooke-Pulitzer Prize scandal. Though divided into unnamed chapters, the book has no obvious thematic thread. Pieces on nuclear war alternate with those on garage sales and cocktail parties. In almost every 750-word spurt, Buchwald manages to get in some downright funny lines, and from time to time an entire installment is clever. For example, no one has challenged Buchwald's claim to the invention of the MX missile-Amtrak gag, which has since become an integral...
...draining resources from the cause of the underdeveloped. "We shouldn't put a cut-rate price on our friendship," Ahmed responds. "The fact that we make everyone pay the same shows we respect you as much as we do the West German imperialist." The images are never complicated, and Buchwald doesn't hesitate to repeat his point for emphasis: the only way to follow politics is to laugh at it, and in the end, the trivia of day-to-day life is probably more interesting...
Granted, then, that Buchwald exceeds the minimum requirements of his job. He fills the space, as he has since arriving in Washington in 1962, and he can still provoke a har-dee-har-har from time to time. But given an opportunity to examine his work over an extended period, his ideas have a disturbing sameness. It's not just the reused one-liners, but more his failure to dig behind the cliches. His only unwaving concerns are those of Washington's upper-middle class when they examine personal relationships...