In Memorium...and a Touch of Class

I'm just back from North Carolina, where my good friend Doug Marlette was buried on Saturday in a country churchyard near Hillsborough. Some of you may have seen this appreciation, which I wrote for the print magazine:

A Southern-Fried Rebel
"Y'all oughta come to Renaissance Weekend," the anarcho-cartoonist Doug Marlette once told me. "It's the annual meeting of the Bill Moyers wing of the Southern Baptist Convention. The sociology is just gothic!" Doug's ability to offend--gracefully, brilliantly, effortlessly--went into overdrive when confronted by high-minded Dixie earnestness. One year he unveiled his version of the Clinton Memorial at a Renaissance workshop, with Hillary Clinton sitting in the front row: a statue of an unzipped zipper. Doug reveled and rebelled in his Southernness. He wrote a novel about his grandmother, a textile-union militant. He called his comic strip Kudzu, because he loved the twisted symbolism of that vine. He was enthralled by irony, and I wish Doug were around to reflect on the gothic ridiculousness of his own death, at age 57, on a back road in Mississippi, in a collision with a loblolly pine that was as straight and true and stubborn as he was. As Doug would say: Lord, I'm gonna miss that boy.

But there's an interesting postscript. On Saturday, the Marlette family received the following message:

Doug Marlette, with a sharp wit and an even sharper mind, always managed to find great humor and insight in the most serious issues of our day. I always loved his contribution to our political dialogue, even if I wasn't always happy being a character in his cartoons! I am deeply sorry for your loss and will join countless fans in always remembering him fondly. Doug was a true character, and we will always miss his unique point of view.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton

An incredibly classy act on the part of New York's Junior Senator. But I think both Clintons know that, in their case, Doug's corrosive brilliance was based in whimsy, not malice. He reserved his malice for those who really deserved it.

It is was a sad and hilarious funeral, which is the very best kind. And the very best line was the last one uttered by the last of Doug's ten--count 'em--eulogists, his best friend, Pat Conroy: "The first person to cry, when he heard about Doug's death, was God."