I'd like to pour a little of my 40 on the ground as a libation to Paul Newman, Studs Terkel and John Leonard.
Leonard was able to vote for Obama, whereas Newman and Terkel passed away before the election.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote of Leonard:
When I read anything by my longtime friend John Leonard, his voice is that of a total stranger. He is too polite in ordinary conversations, with me at least, to set off the fireworks of all he knows and feels after reading and comparing and responding to, in the course of his long career as a literary critic, a thousand times more books than I have even heard of. Only in print does he light the night sky of my ignorance and intellectual lassitude with sizzles and bangs, and gorgeous blooms of fire. He is a TEACHER! When I start to read John Leonard, it is as though I, while simply looking for the men’s room, blundered into a lecture by the smartest man who ever lived."Newman I loved in Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Slapshot, Nobody's Fool etc. Victor Navasky wrote about how Newman and his wife Joanne Woodward helped save The Nation. Terkel himself had a bit part in the pictures in Eight Men Out.
