Heck Of A Guy

Today’s post is a miscellany constructed from items - not all of them eulogies but each offering a significant thought about or insight into the memorialization of one recently deceased - found (or remembered) during the past week’s Heck of a Guy Heck of a Eulogy project. ¹

Charles Bukowski's Perfectly Titled “Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame”

Eulogy To A Hell Of A Dame
By Charles Bukowski

some dogs who sleep At night
must dream of bones
and I remember your bones
in flesh
and best
in that dark green dress
and those high-heeled bright
black shoes,
you always cursed when you drank,
your hair coming down you
wanted to explode out of
what was holding you:
rotten memories of a
rotten
past, and
you finally got
out
by dying,
leaving me with the
rotten
present;
you’ve been dead
28 years
yet I remember you
better than any of
the rest;
you were the only one
who understood
the futility of the
arrangement of
life;
all the others were only
displeased with
trivial segments,
carped
nonsensically about
nonsense;
Jane, you were
killed by
knowing too much.
here’s a drink
to your bones
that
this dog
still
dreams about.

An Ovation At The Final Finale

From Prarie Home Companion - Post To The Host

Peter Sellers Selects Mood Music

From Comment To Above Post:

In this regard, I think Peter Sellers had it right. He used “In The Mood” as the music at his cremation. Apparently, he hated it, but could not think of a more incongruous tune for the occasion. Attendees record that it replaced tears of sorrow with those of utter hilarity.

Some people just know how to make an exit.

Maybe It’s Not The Perfect Eulogy - But It Is Pretty Darn Good

From The perfect eulogy: Short, sweet and honest by Crag Wilson. USA Today 10/26/2004

Charlie Matthau eulogizes his father, actor Walter Matthau, in August 2000:

“My father taught me to have a sense of humor about everything, no matter how sad — not to take life too seriously because none of us is getting out of here alive, and little of what we do is going to matter in a few years. I remember him telling me about the funeral where everyone hated the deceased and nobody knew what to say, so the eulogist got up there and said, ‘Well … his brother was worse.’ It’s the opposite of the situation we have today.”

I didn’t give the eulogy at my dad’s funeral. I couldn’t rise to the occasion, no matter how much I wanted to. I saw no purpose in standing up there and blubbering away, making everyone uncomfortable, so I let the minister do the honors while I sat in silence, thinking of everything I should have been saying. I regret that decision now, but I still believe it was the right one at the time.

After the funeral, I was going through my father’s wallet and found a scrap of paper folded between his driver’s license and credit cards. It was a small note written by me years ago, a note I stuck into a Father’s Day card. I had no idea he had carried it around in his back pocket for 30 years.

“Dad — When I succeeded you stood back and took no credit, and when I failed you were by my side. What more could a son ask? Love, Craig.”

I like to think of that as my eulogy. Short. Honest. And better yet, he got to enjoy it.

Reading Ones Own Eulogy - Kinda

Alan Tudyk, the actor who played Hoban “Wash” Washburne on Firefly, the TV series considered by its sizable contingent of fans to be the greatest Sci-Fi program of all time, reads the winning entry in the DragonCon 2006 Eulogy Contest. The eulogy is for his character, Wash, who dies near the end of the 2005 film, Serenity (a sequel to Firefly), when a harpoon launched by a Reaver ship impales him, killing him instantly.²

Even if you don’t know anything about the story line, even if you detest Sci-Fi, even if eulogies aren’t your thing, this video is worth watching. [Alert: the camera work is a bit shaky, especially as the performance becomes funnier]

`

Churchill’s Precisely Correct, Comforting Words In Honor Of King George VI

From King George VI Eulogy: ‘For Valour’-King George VI, In Remembrance of His Late Majesty, given by Winston Churchill³

Robertson Davies Writes The Consummate Epitaph For Robertson Davies

From Madeleines From … Reading The Cunning Man

I am a fan of Robertson Davies, the Canadian novelist, playwright, and journalist, who died in 1995. My favorite tribute to Davies at the time of his death was an elegant newspaper advertisement placed by Penguin Books, Davies’ publisher in paperback. The advertisement was quite simple, consisting of a photograph of Davies, the dates of his birth and death, and the final paragraph of The Cunning Man, his last completed novel:

Great But Sometimes Difficult Recommendations A Memorable Funeral

From On The Event of My Death, or: why the winner of Malagasy Idol will sing at my funeral

About a year and a half ago, I started to notice an irritating stabbing pain in my chest. It wasn’t so bad that it felt like a sultan thrusting a scimitar into my torso or anything, but it was still painful enough to stop me in my tracks. I could feel it when I breathed in really deeply, when I sneezed, when I bent over to tie my shoes, when I exercised, or if I spread my arms out to hug my wife. Now, I lived with a smoker for a good twenty years (since infanthood, even), and second-hand airborne carcinogens were part of my daily diet. Despite never having smoked a day in my life, I had been exposed to enough toxic chemicals to kill one horse per week. Needless to say, I put two-and-two together, and decided that I had contracted lung cancer.

I immediately went to the doctor, who ordered a series of goofy x-rays and chest exams. Days and days went by, during which I was held hostage by the constant possibility of lethal disease and impending death. On the day my wife told me she was pregnant, my only response was a sad, flippant “Well… name the baby after ME, then.” Now, I know that a diagnosis of a malignant tumour doesn’t guarantee an automatic demise at a young age, but it really did put me in touch with my mortality, and got me thinking about a lot of morbid things - like my eventual funeral.

Fast forward to a month ago, when I drove out to Montreal to attend a funeral. Not the happiest of occasions, I know - but the funeral was interestingly conducted in two languages I don’t speak - French, and Malagasy. Don’t get me wrong, I was able to pick up a few phrases here and there - “La vie est fragile,” I was able to decipher, and “Le mot ‘adieu’… ‘a’ et ‘dieu’” I pieced together as well (er, pardon my spelling errors). Basically, I sat quietly at the back of the church as one of the only white people in attendance (me, the Minister, and a few other clearly-not-born-in-Madagascar-folks) and observed for the entire 90-minute service. I can take away several things from the entire adventure, and add it to my ever-growing list of funeral-related experiences from which I will cull a general outline for MY eventual funeral (you’ll find the outline elements in bold as we go).

The first funeral I remember going to was back when I must have been between the ages of six to nine. My parents’ friends had adopted two children, and then found themselves pregnant with ‘their own’ kid who wasn’t expected to live very long due to gestational issues (or something). The baby was born with some pretty awful deformities (keep in mind that this is all remembered via the mind of my very young self), and died two or three months into his tragically short life. The turnout for the funeral was massive. We’re talkin’, like… hundreds of people. The reception was in some sort of stone-encrusted building that looked like the hall at the end of Star Wars where Luke and Han receive their medals. I’m sure it was different, but that’s how I remember it.

1. Hold ceremony in a room reminiscent of a set from Star Wars.

The two adopted children, themselves even younger than I was, were each given a balloon to hold during the ceremony, and when the casket was buried, they each symbolically let the balloons go. I definitely remember people being confused and weirded out by the presence of the balloons, which were also used as decorations. For the sake of the kids in attendance, the funeral was to be a beautiful celebration of life, and not a miserable rumination on death. I think that’s pretty cool.

2. Decorate funeral with colourful party balloons.

I have to leap ahead several years to remember my next funeral, which occurred when I was in the tenth grade. I remember skipping a day of High School (which included the dreaded math class) to drive three hours north to cottage country, where the owner of the resort my family vacationed at every summer had passed away. His funeral was jam-packed to the gills with people - and it was in a pretty small church. My family had been going to this guy’s resort for generations, and so there was a familial connection. Plus, my Dad is also a writer, so they had him do the eulogy. Let me tell you - he brought the place down. Not with sadness, mind you, but with humour. My Dad wrote and recited the world’s funniest eulogy ever, and to this day people still stop him on the street to compliment him on it. Talk about a way to relieve the tension in a ‘tough room.’ I can’t remember much of it, but I distinctly recall Dad mentioning the departed’s notoriously loud sneeze in the piece.

3. Make sure the eulogy is funny and mentions sneezing.

Once again, we leap ahead several years. Another elderly family friend, this time an immigrant from Mauritius. Here was a guy who got married when he was thirteen years old, and had seven (eight?) kids, brought them all to the frozen wastes of Canada, and lived in a teeny tiny house with most of them just off of the Danforth. I think there were fewer people in attendance at the ceremony than lived in his home on a daily basis, but it made for a pleasant and intimate gathering - but part of me thinks that a guy who lived such an amazing life should have had more people at his funeral. Oh well, whatever. One thing that really sticks out in my head is when his wife, who missed her best friend so badly, threw herself onto his coffin in a fit of pathos. That made everyone really sad - understandable, but the antithesis of the funeral I’d like for myself.

4. Widow-proof glass / a sneeze-guard must be installed around my casket.

A few years later, the widow passed on as well. By the time she went, however, some of their eight children had families of their own, and some of THOSE families had families. Needless to say, there were tons of kids running amok at the funeral. Also, way more invitations went out to way more people - as a result, you had a lot of folks being re-united, a lot of family members meeting for the first time… it was more a social gathering than a funeral. I for one forgot why I was even there, I was so happy to see so many familiar faces.

5. Invite lots of long-lost friends, and have rooms reserved for pleasant socializing.

When my Mom’s brother died, his will revealed that he didn’t want a funeral at all - just a small, intimate social gathering for family and friends. I remember it being a bit odd - my brother and I got there late (I got lost in Richmond Hill), and by the time we arrived most of the attendees had already gone. My Uncle’s Wife, whom I haven’t seen or heard from since, seemed completely stunned and shocked. But can you blame her? Her husband died when he was what, in his sixties?

6. If possible, schedule the funeral for a few weeks after the terrible shock of my death has worn off. I won’t be getting any less dead.

And another thing - if you meet long-lost relatives or friends at a funeral or a wake or a cremation or whatever, keep in mind that you’re celebrating someone’s life, and you’re making connections and stronger bonds with grieving parties or old chums. That’s not a license to suddenly vanish from one-another’s lives as soon as the body is six feet under. I’m sure the deceased parties would want it that way.

7. Make sure there’s an email registry/sign-up thing, and plan future funeral-related engagements.

On my nineteenth birthday I learned of the death of a school friend, who had died in a horrible car wreck. She and I weren’t best friends or anything, but we got along really well and were both in the high school musical together (which, some of you will know, is like being in the army or a prisoner of war camp). I chose not to go to this funeral for two very basic reasons. First off, she was very popular both in school and in the local Christian community. I imagined thousands upon thousands of people lining up to make it into her funeral, and from what I’ve heard, I was right - they had to set up closed-circuit televisions broadcasting the ceremony for those who had to wait in the lobby, the bathrooms, or the parking lot. Second, I had my first day of Frosh Week scheduled for the day of the funeral. I don’t regret my decision… I believe in collective cathartic grieving, but only to a certain extent.

8. Cap the attendance at 1000 - perhaps the wristband policy should be in effect.

…and besides, I didn’t know her very well, and a lot of people who knew her or her family even less than I did made sure they had front-row seats. Now, I’m not saying that there should be wedding-style seating plans at a funeral, but in the case of a high-profile, big and crazy funeral (which mine probably won’t be, so the point is a bit moot), I’d rather the ‘big ones’ - my wife, daughter, parents, dog, dentist, etc - should get preferential treatment.

9. Reserved seating for blood relatives and pets.

A family friend’s funeral, held just a few years ago, was another large one up in Richmond Hill. As a young woman she escaped Iran when the Shah was deposed, and brought her family to Canada. She didn’t speak a word of English, but managed to make friends with virtually anyone she ever met. When I was a baby, my Mom would bring me over to her house and teach me to read and talk from picture books… and this sweet woman would recite the lessons with me (”Book”, “Baby”, “Ball”, “Banana”, etc). She was a very beloved woman who survived an awful lot in her life, and had a big family to show for it, too. There were hundreds in attendance, and especially the delegation from the Persian community. I don’t know if any of you reading this have had the pleasure of hearing Persian chanting, but if you haven’t, for goodness’s sake, do yourself a favour and crash a Persian funeral.

10. Invite the Persian community, and arrange for some chanting.

Finally, we’re back to the funeral I mentioned at the top of this article. This woman was thirty years old, a mother to a six-year old, and the wife of one of my very good friends. Their families were primarily living in Madagascar, and as such very few relatives could attend the funeral across the ocean in Montreal. What appeared to be the entire Malagasy population of Quebec attended however, to show their support, and I think a few of my friend’s co-workers put in appearances. When he lived in Toronto, we worked together for several years, along with a handful of other fellas. To say we were a close, tight group was an understatement (Still, I was the only one who didn’t have anything better to do than to go to his wife’s funeral). I know my attendance surprised him, and I really hope it comforted him - lord knows what he was going through. A funeral can be a surreal, strange thing at the best of times, happening smack in the middle of the most awful, tragic moments of your life. To show support - in person - is the LEAST a real friend can do. I’m not just saying that because I was mad that I was the only one who drove out there - I was mad because his other ‘friends’ (who I’m not ready to forgive on his behalf, even though I’m sure they’ll have good explanations) couldn’t be bothered.

11. My wife’s best friends MUST attend and comfort her, and will be escorted to the ceremony at gunpoint if necessary. Don’t leave her hangin’.

My favourite part of this funeral was when the #1 Malagasy recording artist working in the French Canadian industry rocked the Yamaha electronic keyboard and performed a really off-key love song - something about ‘la nuit’ and ‘les yeux’ and ‘je t’aime’. It wasn’t sung in any scale recognizable to my ears. But still, it was sweet and I at least found it humorous - he was really belting that song, singing at the top of his lungs, decked out in gold chains and a white turtleneck. He high-fived the gaggle of wiggly pre-teen girls as he returned to his pew, and I couldn’t help but notice that the Minister seemed to be finding it as oddly surreal as I did. Nothing says ‘funeral’ like synthesized violins. Honestly - that guy quite accidentally brought the tension level down through his awful rendition of that song. Unintentionally brilliant.

12. Hire the #1 Malagasy recording artist working in the French Canadian Music Industry to sing whatever he wants.

Now, when I’m dead, I probably won’t give a rat’s patoot what goes on in the land of the living (at least in regards to my funeral). I don’t need to be buried in a ten thousand dollar casket - a cardboard box will suffice, or for irony’s sake, a comic book bag-and-board combo. Just to be dead AND funny, I’d like to be buried on the exact spot where my soul vacates my body (which will be even funnier should I die on an airplane). From the above list, you can see that I’ve managed a quick list of pointers, but seriously, if they aren’t followed, what am I gonna do about it? Haunt those responsible? Basically, my funeral should be a celebration of my life, or of life in general. Eat, drink soda, and be merry. See old friends. Give my wife a hug. Have a few laughs. Be there for one another. It’s what I’d want if I was there.

As for my cancer scare - turns out that while weight lifting, I had torn the cartilage connecting my sternum to my ribs… a rare injury that can usually be prevented by NOT wildly ‘windmilling’ your arms in order to stretch beforehand. That, and high cholesterol. No surgery required - I just needed to take ‘er easy, and avoid strapping anvils to my chest. But hey, a brush with mortality is always good for the ego, right?

- Evan Long

Footnotes

1. The series of Heck of a Guy blog entries dealing with eulogies includes the following:
   He Was One Heck Of A Guy - The Eulogy
   Graham Chapman And The Parrot Are Dead - A Eulogy To Die For
   The Opposite Of Eulogy Is - Eulogy
   Eulogy For Chuckles Lauds Clown, Laughter, Trouser Effervescence

   ↩

2. See Wikipedia, which has a competent, succinct history of the character in Firefly, the Serenity comic, and the Serenity movie.↩
3. The Churchill Centre ↩

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Mary Tyler Moore reacts to eulogy for her WJM colleague, Chuckles The Clown

A little song,
A little dance,
A little seltzer down your pants

Chuckles The Clown
WJM TV Minneapolis, MN

____________________

Chuckles Bites The Dust Is The Heck of a Guy Heck of a Eulogy Award Winner In The Following Categories:

• Best Eulogy For A Fictional Character
• Most Delightful Eulogy
• Best Eulogy Delivered Using The Phrase, “I hurt my foo-foo”

The Life and Death of Chuckles

The Wikipedia entry for Chuckles the Clown is admirable for its thoroughness in tracking that character’s appearances on the Mary Tyler Moore Show prior to the October 25, 1975 episode in which, as its title notes, “Chuckles Bites The Dust,”¹ and its refusal to indulge in histrionics over the death of a TV entertainer.

In “Chuckles Bites the Dust” Chuckles is chosen as the grand marshal for a circus parade. During the parade, tragedy strikes. Lou Grant breaks the news to the folks at WJM.

Excerpt from script:

The circumstances of Chuckles’s death occasions much joking and laughter, except for Mary, who remonstrates the others for behaving disrespectfully.

Excerpt from script:

The Funeral

At the funeral, however, everyone except Mary is overcome with grief while Mary cannot help but laugh during the service - until the minister observes that her laughter was congruent with Chuckles’s wishes, at which time she suddenly breaks into inconsolable sobbing.

The Eulogies

While references to the eulogy in Chuckles Bites The Dust invariably have to do with the minister’s oratory at the end of the episode, Ted Baxter serves up a dandy ad-lib offering at the end of his newscast after Lou Grant tells him about the traumatic death of Chuckles during a commercial break.

The official funeral eulogy is even better, at least within the context of the funeral scene:

The Video

While the entire Chuckles Bites The Dust episode has been on You Tube and other sites, I found this morning that they have been replaced by the notation, “This video has been removed due to terms of use violation.” A semi-desperate search was rewarded with the discovery this specimen showing the last 6 minutes of the show, including the minister’s eulogy.

I suggest watching it now because (1) it’s a great segment and a fine eulogy and (2) the video may be removed soon.

Footnotes

1. Chuckles Bites The Dust was ranked #1 on TV Guide’s “The 100 Best Episodes Of All Time.” It was directed by Joan Darling and written by David Lloyd, who received an Emmy for “Outstanding Writing in a Comedy Series.”↩

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An Aside On The Meaning Of “Eulogy”

Two observations from my recent research on eulogies¹ follow:

1. Every formal definition of eulogy revolves around its approbative quality - to eulogize an individual is to praise him or her.

Consider, for example, the accumulation of definitions and descriptions of “eulogy” found at Answers.com:

• A laudatory speech or written tribute, especially one praising someone who has died. Or B. High praise or commendation.²
• An expression of warm approval: acclaim, acclamation, applause, celebration, commendation, compliment, encomium, kudos, laudation, panegyric, plaudit, praise.³
• Definition: praise, acclamation
  Antonyms: calumny, condemnation, criticism< ⁴
• Words of praise, often for a dead person, but also a staple in introducing speakers, in nominating candidates, and on other such occasions.⁵
• A eulogy is a speech or writing in praise of a person or thing. The word is derived from two Greek words - ευ (pronounced “you”) meaning good or well and λογος (pronounced “logos”) meaning word, phrase, speech, etc. The term “eulogy” may refer to a funeral oration given in tribute to a person or people who have recently died. … Eulogies can also praise a living person or people who are still alive, which normally takes place on special occasions like birthdays etc.⁶

2. In English-speaking regions other than dictionary-land, the meaning of “eulogy” extends to include any commentary about an individual triggered by that individual’s death.

Q: If a eulogy is characterized as positive and laudatory, what does one call a written or spoken exposition that censures and viciously criticizes the recently deceased?
A: A eulogy

Yes, in the vernacular, “eulogy” is routinely used to designate not only a tribute to the dead⁷ but also its counterpoint - the lambasting, the denouncement, the vehement accretion of insults that derides the recently departed as the most dastardly of scoundrels, the basest of criminals, and the most heinous of villains.

While a “contemptuous eulogy” is certainly an oxymoron under the rules and regulations set forth by Merriam-Webster adherents, it is just as certainly a phenomenon that occurs frequently in the rhetorical jungle of print and broadcast journalism, blogs, and web sites.

Moreover, these pronouncements are brandished in print without irony; there are no real or implicit quotation marks or linguistic equivalents of a sly wink to signal that the writer is consciously using the term, “eulogy,” to denote the opposite of its literal meaning, knowingly sharing the joke with the reader.

Who Cares If Eulogy Obviates Malogy

Somewhere in this favored land, a dictionary-loving prescriptive grammarian may have composed a scholarly rant predicting the downfall of civilization as we know it lest we repent of this sloppy wielding of “eulogy” to mean an entity and its opposite, but if so, I didn’t find it. Where is the outrage?

Or, if this extension of the original meaning is a fait accompli, why are the reference books silent on the point?

I dunno, but I do want to make it clear that

Eulogies for me should follow the precepts of the original concept - praise, admiration, acclamation, … that sort of thing.

Three Exemplars of the Malevolent Eulogy

Only occasionally is this ditty referenced as a eulogy (possibly because it lacks an explicit listing of the sins of the departed) but my personal fondness of the song compels its inclusion here.

Hunter S. Thompson’s essay on Richard Nixon following news of the ex-president’s death, published in Rolling Stone, June 16, 1994, is routinely labeled a eulogy despite the absence of approval or praise among its expressions of disgust and loathing.

HE WAS A CROOK
by Hunter S. Thompson

MEMO FROM THE NATIONAL AFFAIRS DESK DATE: MAY 1, 1994 FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER…. HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA…. BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

“And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.”

—Revelation 18:2

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing — a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that “I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon.”

I have had my own bloody relationship with Nixon for many years, but I am not worried about it landing me in hell with him. I have already been there with that bastard, and I am a better person for it. Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

Nixon laughed when I told him this. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about you.”

It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he’s gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive — and he was, all the way to the end — we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon’s style — and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don’t fight fair, bubba. That’s why God made dachshunds.

Nixon was a navy man, and he should have been buried at sea. Many of his friends were seagoing people: Bebe Rebozo, Robert Vesco, William F. Buckley Jr., and some of them wanted a full naval burial.

These come in at least two styles, however, and Nixon’s immediate family strongly opposed both of them. In the traditionalist style, the dead president’s body would be wrapped and sewn loosely in canvas sailcloth and dumped off the stern of a frigate at least 100 miles off the coast and at least 1,000 miles south of San Diego, so the corpse could never wash up on American soil in any recognizable form.

The family opted for cremation until they were advised of the potentially onerous implications of a strictly private, unwitnessed burning of the body of the man who was, after all, the President of the United States. Awkward questions might be raised, dark allusions to Hitler and Rasputin. People would be filing lawsuits to get their hands on the dental charts. Long court battles would be inevitable — some with liberal cranks bitching about corpus delicti and habeas corpus and others with giant insurance companies trying not to pay off on his death benefits. Either way, an orgy of greed and duplicity was sure to follow any public hint that Nixon might have somehow faked his own death or been cryogenically transferred to fascist Chinese interests on the Central Asian Mainland.

It would also play into the hands of those millions of self-stigmatized patriots like me who believe these things already.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon’s funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern — but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man — evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him — except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.

It is fitting that Richard Nixon’s final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. “It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard,” said one. “And it fucks up my children’s sense of values.”

Many were incensed about the howitzers — but they knew there was nothing they could do about it — not with the current president sitting about 50 yards away and laughing at the roar of the cannons. It was Nixon’s last war, and he won.

The funeral was a dreary affair, finely staged for TV and shrewdly dominated by ambitious politicians and revisionist historians. The Rev. Billy Graham, still agile and eloquent at the age of 136, was billed as the main speaker, but he was quickly upstaged by two 1996 GOP presidential candidates: Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas and Gov. Pete Wilson of California, who formally hosted the event and saw his poll numbers crippled when he got blown off the stage by Dole, who somehow se